how do i find my longtitude and latitude?.

hawker27

hi all i have my 1.2 metre motorised dish set up a while now,i can get most sats,but if i go any further east than 19.2 the signal gets worse,where as i can go down to 30.west and still get 70%signal quality.

i know its not quite right,but surely its not far off from being perfect,where would i need to make adjustments to get it tracking but sides of the arc perfectly?.

also i am in southeast kilkenny,what would my longtitude and latitude settings be for my declination?.

Ulsterman 1690

I was able to figure out my longitude and latitude by typing my postcode into multimap/

Dunno If it supports Irish postcodes (assuming you have even been issued with one yet) but there are a number of alternatives

1) Get hold of an ordinance survey map of your area and work it out from that
2) Borrow a GPS (satnav) unit
3) Try finding your house on google earth

ADDS From Multimap Kilkenny city is roughly 52.65 deg North and 7.26 deg West

hawker27

hello ulsterman thanks for your input m8,but we don,t have postcodes in the republic.no one i know has a gps.
just wonder is there anyone on boards that has a similar setup here in southeast?.

Supercell

Easiest way would be just to install google earth and find your own house on there and that will give you your precise coordinates.

watty

or buy the local OS survey maps.

Postcodes have exsisted many years Mr 1690, here, but to give An Post a commercial advantage in Direct Mailings, they won't release them. They are secret (I'm not kidding).

Dublin has AREA codes. These are NOT post codes.

Smeagol

Look here
Type in "Kilkenny" and work it from there. (Neighbours)

Bogger77

the gorbtrack program is what you want, it's got details long/lat for tiny townslands, and it's free

Bogger77

New Ross is: 6.937 West, 52.397 N
Waterford city is: 7.112 W, 52.258 N
Graiguenamanagh is : 6.955 W, 52.540 N

hawker27

spot on m8 good site,i got me details there cheers.

Smeagol wrote:

Look here
Type in "Kilkenny" and work it from there. (Neighbours)

Ulsterman 1690

Postcodes have exsisted many years Mr 1690, here, but to give An Post a commercial advantage in Direct Mailings, they won't release them. They are secret (I'm not kidding).

Yeah but arent you suposed to be getting a postcode system next year ?

Apparently some people in larger towns have already been told what the first part of their new postcode will be (So I hear)

hawker27

i have gotten the following latitude 52.860N longtitude 7.167W

what satelite should be my highest point on the above longtitude and latitude settings.i mean what satelite should be my highest point that i set my polarmount on?.would 8.west be my highest point as my longtitude is 7.167west.

hawker27

anyone any advice or help on getting my dish to track both sides of the arc perfectly?.
as i said its tracking the west side perfectly,but the east side is weak and after 28.5 i lose signal altogether,surely its not far off from been perfect,so what tiny adjustments should i make to get it track both sides properly?.

watty

There is no satellite at your highest point. 8W is nearly 1 degree away.

If both sides are not correct:
1) the motor 0 is not pointing at due south.
OR
2) The pole is not vertical.

1)
a) Use GoToX and USALS. Your own position MUST be put into the sat receiver. Make sure Motor elevation and dish declination set acording to manual or you get nothing...
b) Select 30W. Rotate whole motor on pole to peak signal
c) Select 8W. peak dish elevation. DO NOT adjust motor evation. that is from table in manual for you northlerly angle
d) Reselect 30W (or 42E better). Carefully rotate dish on motor arm to peak signal. (Makes sure dish is square on arm)
e) Reslect 8W, 5W, 1W. slight rotate motor on pole again. to peak signal.

Now if the pole is EXACTLY vertical all positions from 42E to 50W will be OK

2) If the pole is not EXACTLY vertical (plumb line down center is a good idea), then it will never work right.

hawker27

i use a polarmount and actuator arm and i use a old pace 508ip to move the dish,and when i was installing the pole i used a level and it is spot on.

what would be your advice on adjustments to polarmount using actuator arm,so my polarmount should be set on 1.west,which it is any how.

watty

Get a USALS/GOTOX 22KHz convertor for the Digital receiver to drive the Actuator. Motek and others make them.

1W is way out.
8W is much much closer, but 1 degree off the peak so if you peak the arc and move 1 degree west on actuator and then rotate the whole polar mount on pole to 8W transponder signal peak.


Read "Polar Mount" instead of motor in my previous post.

Zaphod

See here, esp post 15
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054965060

BTW you do realise that you can't bolt an offset dish directly to a polar mount like you can with a prime dish? The 'dish offset angle' messes up the declination angle and you end up cutting through the arc. So you must add in a third angle i.e. elevation + declination + dish offset angle

watty

Well if the offset dish has a true elevation scale, then you can set the declination angle on it. With a motor with a "bent" arm of course you can't enter the real decination angle, but instead an angle from a lookup table in the motors manual

The declination angle is basically because the satellites are "only" 22,500 mils above equator and not an infinite (or at least steller) distance away. This is why the declination angle is larger the further from equator.

The elevation angle it to make rotation axis parallel to earth's pole, or pointed at "pole star".

hawker27

when i installed my 1.2 metre prime focus irte dish i set the polarmount on 1.west and it tracks from 28.5e to 58.west.

so could that be my problem,that i should have set the polarmount on 8.west for true south?. and it would be my highest point.

watty

your true south is closer to 7 degrees.

New Ross is: 6.937 West, 52.397 N
Waterford city is: 7.112 W, 52.258 N
Graiguenamanagh is : 6.955 W, 52.540 N

So set the polar mount so that when peaked signal on 8W the actuator is 1W as you are at 7W approx. Setting the "zero" to 8W will create a 1 degree error which becomes more significant far west & east.

But if you find 8W at zero and then change actuator by about 1 degree and then refind 8W, you will be much closer.

1W would be OK in Oxford or some such place. 8W is fairly close in Limerick.

Zaphod

It's unusual to come across prime focus 1.2M dishes. That IRTE 1.2M is a nice piece of kit - where did you get it from?

watty

And leave it to me or Zaphod in your will.

hawker27

watty and zaphod i don,t intend on popping off yet:D .

i bought it about 3 years ago from a guy that was changing to a channel master 1.2 metre dish.
its a nice dish the irte very solid and robust polarmount on it.
only thing is it was sprayed black and has begun to peel off in places,i can see the silver aluminium in places where the black has peeled.

come the summer i would like to paint it,but don,t have a clue what paint i should use on it,all i know is not to use metallic or gloss.

also don,t fancey going out to get my dish tracking the arc perfectly as the weather is terrible.just want to get as much info as i can so i will be prepared for setting it up proper when i go at it.

it would be ideal if i could set it up on 7.west as watty said 7.west is just about right,now i know this is a very weak satelite,but is,nt the v polarity channels receivable in good weather,so if i could set my polarmount to 7.west and was lucky enough to get a signal on the polarity v channels well then it would,nt be far from being spot on.

what you think lads?.

Zaphod

With a 1.2M you're not going to notice much of a difference if you align it using 8W or 7W (assuming you can actually get Nilesat to lock).

If you want to have the dish tracking exactly, then you should not use either 8W or 7W. The reason being that the top of the arc is too flat -> there's too much room for error and it makes a precise tracking hit-or-miss.



That's why if you read through the scanned 'standard alignment procedure' article in the other thread, they specifically state that you should check the signal at the eastern and western extremes of the arc.

e.g. from Sirius 5E to Atlantic Bird 8W at the top of the arc, there is a difference of only 2.4 degrees of elevation for 13 degrees of azimuth. By contrast, I703 57E to Europestar 45E at the eastern end of the arc has a difference of 7 degrees elevation for 12 degrees of azimuth.

Again, on a practical level, your dish is too small either way, but with larger dishes (2M+) using 7W or 8W to align the dish is a bad idea.

hawker27

so what sat should i use then m8?.as my highest point?.

watty

8W, and correct later by 1 degree.

JHMEG

watty wrote:

or buy the local OS survey maps.

Postcodes have exsisted many years Mr 1690, here, but to give An Post a commercial advantage in Direct Mailings, they won't release them. They are secret (I'm not kidding).

Dublin has AREA codes. These are NOT post codes.

Watty, for once you're completely wrong!

OSI don't use long/lat, they use Irish Grid (old system) and Irish Tansverse Mercator (new system). Their co-ordinates are Eastings and Northings which look a little like long/lat (WGS84) co-ordinates. However, with some maths IG or ITM can be transformed into long/lat.

Postcodes do not exist in Ireland (yet). There is a Geodirectory which is a database of every known address in Ireland and its corresponding location in Irish Grid and ITM.

The Geodirectory data is owned by An Post, with the actual servers located in OSI. Access is open to anyone, but An Post charge a fee.

http://www.geodirectory.ie/index.html

Edit: as an aside, these are some of the reasons why companies such as Navteq have chosen to physically survey the country themselves. Along with huge inaccuracies in OSI's data, a very unclever database format, and unrealistic pricing for digital data. TeleAtlas traditionally buy data from established sources and hence their data on Ireland is brutal (they won't/can't buy from OSI).
Edit2: Navteq have paid for access to the Geodirectory, hence software using their data is able to geolocate house numbers within housing estates etc.

To the OP: you will locate your house using Yahoo, Mapquest, Maps24 etc, all of which use Navteq data. Google (maps and Earth) is useless for areas outside Dublin.

watty

MY OSI maps have Lat & long too. Look carefully on the edges.

I worked in a Postal related IT job once. An Post, despite what they publically claim do have post codes. The Geodirectory is something else.

I do also have SW that converts just about any coordinate system.

OSI information in machine readible format is horrendously expensive which is why even very big companies use SRTM for terrian data for radio planning.

If the Government was serious about making Ireland attractive for incoming companies and letting business here be competitive with other Countries they would have sorted An Post, Eircom, OSI etc years ago.

JHMEG

watty wrote:

MY OSI maps have Lat & long too. Look carefully on the edges.

Is that an actual map published by OSI? If so, which one?

watty wrote:

I worked in a Postal related IT job once. An Post, despite what they publically claim do have post codes.

Wouldn't have been a 8-digit number by any chance? Which is the Geodirectory reference number. (With a fully populated geodirectory, An Post would have no need for post codes anyway, as post codes are only good to street level)

watty wrote:

OSI information in machine readible format is horrendously expensive which is why even very big companies use SRTM for terrian data for radio planning.

It's actually 4 times the cost of a hard copy of the same data. Cost is not the only problem, accuracy and the inability to buy only the data you need are the others.

watty wrote:

If the Government was serious about making Ireland attractive for incoming companies and letting business here be competitive with other Countries they would have sorted An Post, Eircom, OSI etc years ago.

Couldn't agree more, and the ESB, Eirgrid and An Bord Gais too.

watty

Discovery Series. All of them. Absolute outside edge has lat & Long.

JHMEG

My apologies, forgot the Discovery and other photoshopped maps. What co-ordinate system is used for the gridlines?

watty

The Irish Grid thingy (the newer one).

JHMEG

Yeah, I thought I remembered rightly, that the long/lat is only in the corner on the photoshopped maps. Not present at all on the real maps.

hawker27

watty just 2 questions on my dish declination and elevation.
its kind of hard to know how to set my dish elevation because on my polarmount i have a long threaded bar with 2 nuts that holds my elevation,but its hard to judge how to set it because there are no settings or markings to set it up on.

also dish declination {which i persume would be my latitude 52.860n} do i set my dish declination to 52.860?.

what i had in mind was setting my dish declination first and then finding my elevation on 8.west,would that find my elevation correctly?.
i got manuals with my dish that give instructions on setting up dish elevation,but this one gets me as theres no settings or markings to go on.

dish declination has got markings from 0----5----10,so i would set it to 52?.

watty

The polar mount elevation is 90-52.9 degrees, or 52.9 if calibrated for latitude rather than elevation. The dish declination is thus elevation for 8W (28.5) subtracted from the mount elevation = (90-52.9) - 28.5

The dish MUST rotate on the axis parallel to the poles, thus the Polar mount elevation is taken into acount when calculating the satellite elevation

http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/ab2.html

If it is a FIXED non-rotating dish you just use the dish elevation directly.


I can't answer anymore as I have turned into a toad due to 9000 posts. Zaphod will have to help

hawker27

ok but how do u judge all this on a polarmount that uses a threaded bar for elevation,with no settings or markings on it?.

my elevation for alantic bird 2 @ 8.west if i was putting up a fixed dish would be 29.675
my latitude 52.860n
my longtitude -7.167w

can you calculate my polarmount elevation and my dish declination for me please.

watty

A protractor for elevation. The angle about which the dish rotates. 90-53 = 37 off the vertical
Tilt dish toward ground on the actuator/polar mout using its mount by 37 -29.5 = 7.5, though my estimation 28.5 = 8.5, but it can be fine tuned. do not fine tune the rotation axis elevation once set with protractor.

I may have made a mistake somewhere., Zaphod is more expert. I've only used either a manual home made polar mount or motor with integral polar mount.

hawker27

can you please tell me more about the protractor as i don,t know what this is,sorry for sounding a bit dumb.

watty

print it out

hawker27

watty man have them booming in here from 42e to 58w.

what i did was i downloaded gorbtrack and got me details off that.
it told me what time the sun would be at due south for my location,so it would be at 8.west at 12:41pm,what i did was point my dish earlier around 12:38pm.

as soon as i pointed it at the time of 12:38pm i tightned all bolts and went back in side and set my east and west limits.
then i searched for tv8 at 42.east and my god its booming in at around 70%,so then the tricky bit time to test west side,so i move dish way over to 30.west and to my big surprise 30.w is booming it in here almost 100%.

then i said i better check the middle sats so i went to 1.west and am getting around 60-70%.checked 19.2east getting around 70% 80%,same on hotbird 13.e.also 5.w,8w,15w all booming in.

i never messed with the declination or elevation as i said i would try to get the due south bit right first,and i am dead happy with the signals i,m getting now and its tracking from 42.e to 58.w so theres no point in messing about now.also this is not bad at all considering the c120 lnb i have on my dish is nearly fecked as it won,t work on some high frequenceys that have h polarity,it is a cambridge 0.6 its a couple of years old.think i will invest in a invacom 0.3 c120,that should peak the signal a bit more as well.

i would just like to say a massive thank you to you watty and zaphoid for your advice and patience:) .

watty

30W is strong.

Glad you happy. I'm having fun with a blind scanner (Fortec Star Beta) on my 1.1m Diseqc. A 2.5m with 36V, elevation motor and C-band option would be a nice upgrade

hawker27

the neighbours would think nasa has landed lol:)

A 2.5m with 36V, elevation motor and C-band option would be a nice upgrade