How I love this hobby...

[northgeorgia]

Thought I would go out today and slightly "tweak" the Ku-band dish to get a few weaker transponders off of 30W that I recently lost. Oh no. A 15 minute project turned into all day disaster. Because my mount is on a heavy wood/metal panel instead of in the ground, things aren't as level as they should be. Furthermore, it seems that two of my screws have completely frozen up on the HH motor mount, making it practically impossible to adjust. So, yes, the panel moved, mounting bracket moved, (declination of dish already moved), mostly by accidental bumping while working on one part. Yay. Everything out of whack.

Now that full time transmissions on 83W are gone, I have to use 85W as my closest southern sat. I've tried to make everything as level and steady as possible, since this looks like a total re-do project. Yeah, I can find it each time, but typically it would be tracking the arc too high on the east side, and too low on the west side.
I even tried messing with the latitude of the motor...not that helpful.

Any suggestions? I feel like a newbie. Here were my thoughts...

1. Make everything as plumb as possible (I'm hoping to get some more U-bolts and washers tomorrow evening).
2. Set my latitude on the motor to the same as my physical latitude, and leave it there.
3. Attempt to point the motor assembly to true south.
4. Use USALS to go to 85W (closest southern sat)
5. Adjust the declination on the dish and manually adjust motor assembly East/West until it registers a good signal.
6. Go to several sats on opposite ends of the arc.
7. If 125W requires me to push up to get a signal while 30W requires me to push down to get a signal, it means the whole motor assembly should be moved westward.

-- Problem is, when I tried #7, I would keep moving west and there wouldn't be any significant change (as I moved further and further, the signal would drop out). I think there is a step 8 here that I'm not considering... Any ideas? It's too hot to think any more.

[DG380 motor, WSI 9036 90cm dish]

 

[Cham]

How steady is the pole your motor is mounted too? make sure it doesn't (bend, shift, etc) as the dish moves across the arc. Check your pole and motor are "plumb" when your motor is close to the end of it's travel; at 30w and 125w. It's amazing how badly the support pole can bend. I am using a 2 1/2" pole on my 90cm dish now to keep it steady (maybe overkill but I had the mast lying around anyway).

The motor and dish assembly can add significant moment force to it's support assembly especially at the end of travel.

Nice day here was mid 70's, was doing some dish tune-ups myself before the mosquitoes come out!

 

[northgeorgia]

Thanks. The pole itself is fine. But I think the mount is slipping quite a bit because of the frozen screws. Still, even being out at the dish and making sure the assembly doesn't slip, there's something I'm not doing right in hitting the arc. Probably several things. I realized I got sunburned about an hour ago, so I think I'll at least wait until tomorrow to make adjustments.

 

[jorgek]

I have never been able to get perfect (max Q) at my extremes of 30W and 125W. So I have fixed dishes for 30 and 125. Everything inbetween is on the USALS dish.
I don't have the patience for perfection.

 

[northgeorgia]

I'm starting to wish I hadn't touched the dish this morning, and gone on a trip to the mountains instead

 

[danristheman]

North Georgia try multiple lnb setup or multi dush setup like I have.

 

[northgeorgia]

Can't until I get my house built. Stuck with the single dish and motor for now...

 

[northgeorgia]

This morning, I could take a better look and feel much better in my abilities. When I do everything properly, the dish seems to be following the arc, except for the up on one side, down on the other issue. As simply moving it east or west didn't work, I took another look at the mount that I thought I had leveled out. But no, the motor mount seems have a gap between it and the pole and appears to be leaning 5 degrees on the left side. Both of the top U-bolt nuts are frozen and there's no way to level the mount if I can't loosen or tighten them. Fortunately, I have another U-bolt set that I can put on later this week, so I think that will resolve everything. You just can't make an non-level pole or mount work on a motorized system, so until things are nice and plumb, I wash my hands of it. And got somewhat decent quality from 95W to 125W to watch some programming (but miss the feeds). Hopefully, this is all temporary. I'll keep you posted.

 

[northgeorgia]

Yep that did it. A little off on the 125/30 edges, but can still get some channels. I may try a slight adjustment in the future, or see if I can fool the receiver into picking up all the stations. It is so nice to have both Oklahoma and Montana PBS come in at 60-70 Quality.

Goes to show you, no matter how well you think you understand what's going on, make sure your pole and mount is plumb and level as much as possible, even if it means yanking out the old and putting in the new.