Ok - one more wonderful day of peeking, poking, mumbling and grumbling.
I finally have a solid signal on 123W 11.800V now. It's bouncing between 87 & 70, but it's there and it's good.
Lak7, you will be happy to know that I finally settled on the bottom of a water bottle.
Yep.
Only, it wouldn't fit over the feedhorn, but it fit perfectly inside it. And no effect on Q level as far as I could tell.
After reading this, I wonder how many folks are going to be hunting for water bottles??
Anyway, I couldn't adjust the scaler out far enough to keep the F/D correct and get the FL right, so, I started digging around for washers whereever I could find them.
I stacked them between the dish and the feed supports. Raised the feed supports about 5/8" off the dish.
Another thing, I ditched the scalar that came with the 621. The feed fit so loose in that scalar that it was nearly impossible to get it to stay correct. I used the scalar from the 2nd 10ft dish I have - a channel master C only feed. I had to smooth out the ribs inside the scalar to allow the 621 to slide into it. Now there is hardly any 'wiggle room' for the 621 to move when you tighten it down. I had it bolted in and adjusted in under 15 minutes. Laser tells me I'm dead center.
OH - one thing I've noted about the 621 (at least mine) - the end of the feedhorn is not perfectly square. I couldn't level across the face of it, I had to line up along the side of it.
As for the skew, I have the 0 mark on the 621 dead-on 6:00. I tried it at 5:30, but the numbers were still off when I blind scanned. 6:00 reports everything correctly.
Next, it was on to peaking the actuator. It was set such that my East limit was 87W, but I could move it far enough West I could work on everything without a ladder... I tuned to 137W (since I don't see anything further than that of any interest to me), marked the angle of the dish, then moved the actuator to the west limit. Loosened the actuator arm clamp and slid the dish up to the 137 angle mark and tightened the clamp back down.
Now my range is 55.5-137W. I don't think that's too bad for a 24" actuator.
If I go further east, I'll loose 137, so I'll just keep what I've got.
Now I just need to clean up the cabling and get everything grounded.
Snapped a few pics. Not much to look at - just a basic, beat-up, 10ft mesh. Also shot one of the mount for the 8ft... I'm debating now as to whether I want to mount the 8ft or the 2nd 10ft next... I'm torn...