Metronic 450907 motor n00b setup

Mike 1972

Ive got a Metronic 450907, Mvision HD200 Combo and a Fortec Star 95cm dish

Currently I am getting 13, 16, 19 and 23.5 East but nothing else

The instructions which came with my motor were in French and Italian. Eventually I managed to download an English .pdf (printing it took a bit of fiddling but thats anoter story) however these instructions are not very good and contradict some of the stuff in the ICDG guide

Also trying to figure out my Latitude and Longitude on dishpointer I get different figures to those given by my GPS unit -Which should I believe ?

the ICDG wiki reckons that

Most diseqc motors use a special adjusted declination angle formula (based on the tilt of the rotating motor shaft) which will again be specified in your manual

But my manual doesnt mention anything about this

Apogee

They don't contradict each other as such, it just that the metronic manual uses a different method to set the alignment & declination. Arguably, it's more accurate than that outlined in the ICDG article, but it's also more difficult to get right, particularly for a first time alignment.

The metronic manual specifies the elevation (same as icdg), and uses the USALs approach to both determine motor alignment (same as icdg #2) but also to determine declination.

With icdg you set a ballpark declination, then sweep left/right to get the motor alignment. At that point, you can retweak the declination again to optimise.

With the metronic, you start with 0 declination, sweep left/right looking for a channel, then increment up the declination and repeat until a channel is found. When the channel displays, it means both the motor alignment and the declination are OK.

Re: lat/long - I can't imagine there is that much difference between the dishpointer/google maps numbers and the gps ones, certainly not enough to have any impact on a 95cm dish on a diseqc motor.

As you already have 13 - 23, you can figure out which angles are wrong using the diagnostic diagram in the icdg article. So go to 13, then to 10e, and push down or lift up the rim of the dish to see which causes the signal meter to rise. Note that. Then go beyond 23, to approx 28 and push/lift and note result. With that draw on a sheet of paper how your arc differs from the correct arc and you should be able to clearly see where you're wrong.

Mike 1972

Thanks

For Hotbird the manual (page 10/11) gives elevation at *my location as 32 (and a bit) degrees
Dishpointer says its just over 25 degrees (is the difference due to declination or something -the manual doesnt say) ?

It also mentions (page 11/14) something about an angular reading (~21 degrees at my location for Hotbird) Thought this might be the difference between the Hotbird position (13 East) and My Longtitude (6 West) but it still seems to be a couple of degrees out.

* roughly 6 (1/4) Deg West 54(3/4) North

Apogee

Dishpointer is giving you the dish elevation for a particular satellite, not the motor/mount elevation.

The elevation angle for a mount, whether for a 95cm diseqc setup or a 3M polar mount setup, will always be the same as those listed in the icdg page. So for a lat of ~55N, the motor elevation is ~34 deg.

Mike 1972

Had another look this evening and discovered pole wasnt perfectly vertical.

Got it sorted (or at least better than it was before). Gained 7 and 9 East but lost 21.5 East