Help with Stab HH90 please

[KI7FK]

My SG6100 motor quit after 14 months and so it was time for another. There were no more of those to be found, so I opted for the HH90. The old motor worked great covering 72w to 125w but I have had no luck getting the HH90 to do the same. Hours of frustration later, I am asking for some guidance here in the forum.

My Lat is 44.1n / Lon 121.3w and according to the Dish Pointer website, the following should be used with the Stab HH90;

Motor Latitude: 44.1
Declination: 6.7
Dish Elevation: 38.0

I have double checked the mast and it is plumb, but with these settings, I get nothing. A bit of tweaking on the dish elevation does let me hit each sat spot on, but the dish elevation varies enough that I can either have the far east sat, or the far west sat but never both. I have to raise the dish to get the 125w bird, and lower it for the 72 bird. I have tried changing the motor elevation, but nothing seems to work. I am no expert here, but was able to get the old motor working fine. Any help or suggestions are more than appreciated! Oh, and the dish is a Geosat Pro 90cm with USALS.

Thanks

 

[FTA4PA]

I have double checked the mast and it is plumb, but with these settings, I get nothing. A bit of tweaking on the dish elevation does let me hit each sat spot on, but the dish elevation varies enough that I can either have the far east sat, or the far west sat but never both. I have to raise the dish to get the 125w bird, and lower it for the 72 bird. I have tried changing the motor elevation, but nothing seems to work. I am no expert here, but was able to get the old motor working fine. Any help or suggestions are more than appreciated! Oh, and the dish is a Geosat Pro 90cm with USALS.

Thanks

This might be helpful: http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/attachments/installation-of-a-motorized-dish-pdf.43002/ If you look at page 35, from your description (I need to raise the dish to get the 125W and lower it for the 72W), it seems you may have your motor a bit too far east.

 

[KE4EST]

Was thinking the same thing sounds like you need to move the whole motor assembly on the pole just a bit. Let us know how it goes after reading the thread that FTA4PA linked to above.

 

[spongella]

The Stab 90 H H motor mount bracket has two different mounting slots based on your latitude; am assuming you are using the upper slots?

Using the STB, did you first set the motor reference to zero?

 

[KI7FK]

Thanks for all of the advice and the great article! Very good information (kudos to Gordon!)

It was still another long frustrating day of dish/motor alignment. I still cannot receive the entire arc no matter what I seem to do. After hours of poor results, I decided to check the pole again and I found that the bubble level that came with the mount was not seating properly so I grabbed a level instead and did find it was slightly out of plumb. Since it is a wall mount on the house, I do have a couple of points to refine the alignment, but even that did not change things much. I finally put a level on the motor bracket and there was definitely a problem. When the clamps are tightened, it pulls the motor mount down on the east/west sides. Nothing I tried with clamp adjustment made the slightest difference, so I compensated with the fine adjustments I had in the mount. Bad weather and thunderstorms are on the way, so I just peaked it for 103w so I could watch something until the weather passes. It turns out that with those adjustments, I now receive all the sats except the east and west extremes (72w and 125w). Since I am at 121.3w, I guess I really don't have much east of that on Ku in my arc so not very "extreme".

Overall, I am not very impressed with the Stab HH90. After all of this, I hope it is more durable than my previous one, but this thing is very slow moving. It is at least half the speed of the SG6100. It takes 45-50 seconds to move from 125w to 72w. I used to cancel the "dish moving" message with the old one since it was moved already. With this one, the message disappears but the motor is still going! It is also very much louder than my old one. With the mount on the house, I sure know when it is moving!

Thanks again everyone. Very much appreciated! I am not sure how far I got with this today, but I will make another attempt in a day or two.

 

[FTA4PA]

Sorry to hear that about your motor. These are usually a high quality units - hope it's just a fluke and not a sign of lower quality.

 

[KI7FK]

Success! And my hats off to FTA4PA and KE4EST for their correct diagnosis. Nothing was going to help until the motor bracket was plumb on the pole, but with a break in the weather today and a few tweaks I am back in business. I am still not thrilled with the speed and noise of the HH90, but at least I am back to watching my programs again and maybe this one will last longer than 14 months. Many thanks!

 

[FTA4PA]

Success! And my hats off to FTA4PA and KE4EST for their correct diagnosis. Nothing was going to help until the motor bracket was plumb on the pole, but with a break in the weather today and a few tweaks I am back in business. I am still not thrilled with the speed and noise of the HH90, but at least I am back to watching my programs again and maybe this one will last longer than 14 months. Many thanks!

You're welcome! Glad you got it working again!

 

[KE4EST]

Glad to hear you are up and running!!! It's always a great feeling.