Fixed dish and the Clarke belt

[Mike1234]

Question for P*star dish users...

How difficult is it to hit satellites when using a P*star dish? Will the fixed pole mount on the dish allow a few degrees of movement before loosing "the belt" and having to readjust the elevation? I have not installed the dish yet, but it appears this will be a problem.

Thanks in advance!

 

[PSB]

All the satellites at the top of your arc should be pretty close to each other in elevation. Then as you start to point further east and west the elevation angles will start to drop pretty sharply.

 

[Alec]

arc

25 yrs ago or so, my bro had a C band dish. Started with out motor, tripod had adjustable tube angle for dish arc, side arm had hand clamp to sucure dish direction, scribed marks on side arm to aid manual location of sats. Same could be done for smaller dishes, just an economical means of turning dish......as long as its easy to get at.

 

[Mike1234]

Thanks for the info guys.

Alec, that is probably the route I will be taking. I'm not certain yet how to devise an 'arm' like that, but I am still at the drawing board phase of this project. I remember an aunt that had a system like that...she would 'crank' the dish to a new satellite.

 

[Mr Tony]

All the satellites at the top of your arc should be pretty close to each other in elevation. .

depending on where you live in the US/Canada, you may have a lot of satellites with almost the same elevation. Here in MN within a 1/2 a degree we can get
G11
T6
G3
T5
AMC4
and I think AMC3

 

[jerryt]

In Europe Polar Mounts are available for small dishes.

The mounts allow you to set the proper deinclination angle to track the Clarke belt. Just the same as H-H motors do.

Google "Satellite Polar Mount". It would not be too hard to build your own.

 

[snathanb]

Question for P*star dish users...

How difficult is it to hit satellites when using a P*star dish? Will the fixed pole mount on the dish allow a few degrees of movement before loosing "the belt" and having to readjust the elevation? I have not installed the dish yet, but it appears this will be a problem.

Thanks in advance!

I used essentially the same size dish for Direcway pointed at SatMex 5. It's KU just like the FTA stations. In 2 years I never had to move the dish, once I got it pointed.

As to loosing "the belt", keep in mind that if you are not a motor, you also have to take dish skew into account.

 

[Mike1234]

Thanks for the advice...you folks are full of it! (advice that is)

I hope to start on the project soon, and if I get any 'bright ideas' i'll let ya'll know. I'll try to get a new thread started to detail some of my results...I'm in an apartment so it should be interesting!