Some advice for motorised dish setup

slegs

I am pretty close to having my motorised dish setup correctly. I have channels coming in on different sats but there is still something not quite right.

I think my declination setting is incorrect as I am not getting all the regular sats at the same time i.e. I get Hotbird but then I move to Astra 28 and its not coming in but other sats are. I am using USALS with my correct latitude and longitude and the mounting U pole is vertical.

The elevation setting on the motor has a latitude setting so thats set for my latitude. The dish bracket has a groove with 90 down to 30 degrees. I am not sure what to set here presuming this is where I set the declination. There are settings in the motor manual which say I should take -7 from 35 degrees or something like that.

I am nearly there I think...any advice on the declination setting would be greatly appreciated.

I have an 80cm dish and Moteck SG 2100A motor..

Tony

Set the elevation at 36 and use Atlantic bird 2 to set the declination

slegs

All setup...now what to watch

I was actually closer than I thought last night. Some of the sats that I thought werent coming in were actually there. Its just that the first sransponder on the list wasn't necessarily being picked up but when I did a scan the channels came flying in.

Now for my next project....

snaps

Tony wrote: »

Set the elevation at 36 and use Atlantic bird 2 to set the declination

Just wondering tony how did you get that figure of 36? Now i know im much further west than slegs & i use 8 west as my south satellite.

My 1.1m is elevated to 39, im using same motor as slegs.

My long/lat is: 53.4N & 9.11W

Ive never understood how to get the dish elevation on a motorised system?

Tony

The dish elevation is the highest point of the arc that the dish is tracking, east or west makes no difference but the further North you go the lower the elevation and the further south you go the higher the elevation. All geo stationary sats are positioned above the equator so if you lived at the equator your dish would point straight up. For every location there is an elevation and declination for a motorised dish so atlantic bird is 29 on a fixed dish, add declination of 7 to give you 36. The reason for declination is the arc flattens out at either end.

Hope this makes sense

snaps

Tony wrote: »

The dish elevation is the highest point of the arc that the dish is tracking, east or west makes no difference but the further North you go the lower the elevation and the further south you go the higher the elevation. All geo stationary sats are positioned above the equator so if you lived at the equator your dish would point straight up. For every location there is an elevation and declination for a motorised dish so atlantic bird is 29 on a fixed dish, add delination of 7 to give you 36. The reason for declination is the arc flattens out at either end.

Hope this makes sense

Also i made a comment earlier about dishpointer.com, ive noticed that their long/lat for my position is different from what my gps receiver states? Its actually quite different! According to dishpointers gps for my location if i fed that into my GPS id be in the middle of clew bay!!

fat-tony

snaps wrote: »

Just wondering tony how did you get that figure of 36? Now i know im much further west than slegs & i use 8 west as my south satellite.

My 1.1m is elevated to 39, im using same motor as slegs.

My long/lat is: 53.4N & 9.11W

Ive never understood how to get the dish elevation on a motorised system?

The motor elevation should be set to your latitude (53 degrees across the centre of Ireland) or (90 - 53 = 37) if the motor has an elevation scale instead of a latitude scale. The Moteck has both scales. The motor setting is latitude dependent and has nothing to do with the southerly satellite elevation at your site. You may have to tweak it slightly afterwards to optimise tracking, though.
After setting the motor elevation, the dish elevation (or more precisely declination) is set dependent on your southerly satellite and on the amount of "bend" in the motor arm.

snaps

ive actually just now discovered that dishpointer.com has a application for motorized dishes! That says exactly what ive got.

Never knew dishpointer done all it does, ive only used it for fixed dishes!

Thanks lads.

slegs

fat-tony wrote: »

The motor elevation should be set to your latitude (53 degrees across the centre of Ireland) or (90 - 53 = 37) if the motor has an elevation scale instead of a latitude scale. The Moteck has both scales. The motor setting is latitude dependent and has nothing to do with the southerly satellite elevation at your site. You may have to tweak it slightly afterwards to optimise tracking, though.
After setting the motor elevation, the dish elevation (or more precisely declination) is set dependent on your southerly satellite and on the amount of "bend" in the motor arm.

Yes my motor had the latitude scale so that was easy. I just tweeked the other one on the dish (declination?) up and down until I hit on the highest quality. It was actually easier to setup than I made it. The advice I'd give is to hand pick known strong transponders on the various sats to check alignment.

snaps

Also ive found if you can get east access to you setup skew your lnb to the weakest bird your trying to pull in (I have mine skewed a fraction for 26east as i watch MBC channels a lot) Ive found that it doesnt effect the stronger satellites when the dish arcs, but 26 east comes in nice and strong.