Got my system!

[snathanb]

Got my system today. I was a little ticked at fedex. They put the box in my garage while I was in the shower. I keep checking the front steps all day.. when my wife came home from work, she asked me how long the box had been sitting in the garage! (8 hours after it was delivered!)

Anyhow... first step, I hooked it to my old Direcway dish which was still pointed at Satmex 5. Got around 85% link quality right off the bat. Took nearly 30 minutes to scan the satellite, however.

Second step, swung it over to my true south satellite, IA5. Took about 10 minutes, locked it down with 85% link quality. Scanning IA5 only took a few minutes compared to SM5.

Interesting batch of channels on IA5.

Tomorrow I'm mounting the motor and trying to mount my old 1 Meter DWay dish to it...

 

[Beachbum]

har har har, I also aimed at IA5 today, for the first time, not exactly interesting....but I watched for a little while.

 

[charper1]

off topic but how in the heck did the fedex guy get into your garage?

 

[Mr Tony]

IA5 does have a different batch of stuff (if you can speak the language)

G10 (123W) has the most English programming

 

[PSB]

I had a FED-EX delivery recently on a Saturday morning and the guy took off with the package (receiver) so I jumped in the truck and tried to follow him...............I lost him! Man those guys drive FAST! : )

I would go for AMC-4 next for the Peoples Network................

 

[snathanb]

off topic but how in the heck did the fedex guy get into your garage?

I was home so I had it open... I live in a very rural area.

 

[snathanb]

Got my System: Follow up questions

Ok... so I had no problem pointing my Dway dish at various satellites on it's fixed mount, but I went to "motorize" the system yesterday, and boy did I have trouble.

Mainly, the source of the trouble is that I am fabricating my own hybrid mount. I can't use the DWAY mount because it is just simply too big, and is oriented towards a mounting pole being pointed "UP", not down like the motor arm. I toyed with the idea of adapting it, but it was rather heavy, so I decided not to.

So... I adapted some parts off an old terk D* dish, and mounted it onto the back of the DWAY dish and started pointing.

Problem 1: Couldn't get enough elevation. Being in Texas, you gotta point way up! So, my hybrid mount couldn't get me high enough, so back to home depot for more parts, and rebuilt the mount.

Now: I could point my new mount nearly straight up at the sky, but I could still not get the signal in. Finally figured it out when I set the old DWAY mount on top of the pole for perspective... it was the angle of the mounting plate (IE, the top was too high, but the bottom too low). The part I used from the Terk was somewhat curved to fit directly to the back of a curved dish, and that threw the angle of the dish off...

So, I put some shims under the top part of the plate... and bang, signal came right in.
I quit for the day... Mind you, this was after working on it for 8-10 hours in the yard yesterday. Sunburned as all get out.

Today I need to actually hook up the coaxes to the motor and cross my fingers...

Here's my question before I even bother with it.

The instructions for the motor have you set the elevation of the motor, and then also set the elevation of your dish. In essence, I have a "fixed" elevation on my homebrew dish mount, and used the elevation adjustment on the motor bracket to lock in the signal on my true south satellite.

Do you think that not having my motor bracket set to the right elevelation will cause problems in finding the other satellites, or (as I am crossing my fingers), that as long as I have a good signal to my reference satellite, everything else will work fine?

 

[Dave C]

Here's my question before I even bother with it.

The instructions for the motor have you set the elevation of the motor, and then also set the elevation of your dish. In essence, I have a "fixed" elevation on my homebrew dish mount, and used the elevation adjustment on the motor bracket to lock in the signal on my true south satellite.

Do you think that not having my motor bracket set to the right elevelation will cause problems in finding the other satellites?

YES. If the motor elevation is not set correctly, the dish won't track the Clarke belt correctly. The motor elevation is determined by your Latitude - set it and forget it. Then adjust the dish elevation. You will probably have to rework your home-brew dish mount so it can be adjusted. Good luck

 

[snathanb]

Thanks for the response Dave! That's exactly what I experienced today.... I had no problem 10 degrees to either side of my true south bird, but after that, forget it....