birds two degrees off when moving motor

[goaliebob99]

hey now that i have bagged a few birds on the arch.. I have noticed when im moving that the birds will be a degree off on the elevation side.. for instance... when I move from hot bird to arab sat the elevation will be off one degree causing it just enough not to lock in the sat. when I move it in the middle I go from having great signal on one bird and none on the other.. to sh!tty signal on both birds.. what gives and what am I doing wrong here?? The elevation bracket on the motor is off on both sides.. the right side seems to have a higher elevation than the left. Is that what could be wrong? wich side on the motor do I use? Other than that is been really intresting experiance trying to bagg some american tv that is fta I did figure one thing out.. There will be no bbc for me as Austra, the bird bbc is on.. bbc is on spot beamed to europe.... Dammm bastards.. I havent yet tryed to bag in any other sats.. im going to do that here in a bit and see what happens

 

[jayelem]

Goalie BoB Where are You ? Manteno Illinois, I haven't looked at Lyngsat but the birds you mentioned sound Foreign to me .

 

[Mr Tony]

his signature kinda gives it away

*** I am Deployed in IRAQ I may not answer you back if you PM me, but I will try to answer your question in a timely manner. Thank you for your understanding! **

He's in Iraq.

Bob..I know you mentioned that you dont have a true south...did you use USALS to move the dish first before aiming? 2 degrees is a lot. Put the dish/motor back at zero and set up USALS. MOve dish first then aim at your closest satellite

 

[goaliebob99]

iceburg short answer yes.. i did..

long answer


this is what i did...being that I didnt have a true south... I moved the motor to zero.. entered my lnch and lat in the reciver.. moved usals to a bird that i knew was hot.. (hot bird ) positioned the motor using usuals to the position that hot bird is suppost to be at on my motor.. and pointed from there on to the bird... that got me onto the arch.. but when I move from bird to bird there is a diffrence in elevation by one to two degrees.. my problem is that many of the birds listed on lyngsat is spotbeamed to europe only so it does me no good to point there way as im too far out of the spot beam. Im actually racking my brains on this one as once i pointed to hotbird with the usals motor moved to its degree that hot bird is suppost to be at (if i had origionally pointed to true south and moved it to hotbird) i should thereticolly be on the arch as I am.. but i cant understand nore explain why i loose elevation when I move the dish causing for the loss of the left or right birds or really great signal on hotbird.

 

[mastermesh]

are you sure it's elevation that's off, or is it azimuth?... or is it maybe that the pole isn't 100% plumb? If it's just that it's 1 or 2 off it azimuth, changing location in the receiver's usals or 1.2 to match could help - for instance on my dish, wind or some birds or something knocked me out of alignment, so now stuff like 123 is actually 121.5, and the rest of the arc is about 1.5 degrees off too - enough to be annoying, but not enough to lose signals and want me to manually adjust stuff by hand since every time I do that I seem to lose the arc a little til I spend half a day redoing it all. Right now, I'm getting 60 percent on weaker tps and 99% on decent tps that are on pretty weak signal'd birds, so I really don't want to screw things up by hand. Instead I just adjust the usals, changing the nubmers to match the 1.5 degree difference on all birds. Probably not the "best" solution, but given that I spent a whole couple of 2 day weekend a month or two back getting it all just right, I really, really, really don't want to screw up the stuff by manually adjusting the dish to thow it off of the arc.

If it's elevation that's off on east/west parts of arc, check your pole.. make darn sure it's plumb.

 

[goaliebob99]

yea its the elevation.. I dont have a bubble level here to make sure its plumb.. So I have to eye it.. in the next couple of days im going to see if there is some one here who has a bubble level... I think im going to completly tear down the setup and redue it.

 

[mastermesh]

if you can't find someone with a level, I read online that you can make a level yourself using some sort of a cup or something that's flat on the bottom like that, and mark the insides with rings, measuring up and down... a glass measuring cup would be ideal since it's got the markings for you already, but you could probably make one by using a glass or some other clear cup or bowl, and marking it with marker, or some wax of some sort, or something after measuring up/down the edge with a ruler... fill it with water up to where the ring is, and then just sort of eye it to make sure the water is level with the rings on all 4 sides... wouldn't have to be rings all the way around, just some marks that are something equal all the way up/down... like 1 inch from the top, on all 4 sides or whatever... and make sure the water is level all the way across those rings.

Can't find a ruler - maybe use some of the markings on the dish and/or motor as a sort of temporary ruler, and mark the places on the dish or cup using that... if nothing else, just use a string or something as a ruler... main concern is that all the markings are exactly the same height.