Will Be Posting Ku FTA Layout For Review Soon

[Tron]

Some NPRMs have more "leeway" built in to plumb the pole than others. There are plenty of models out there. If you can, check to see if the area where you plan to put the NPRM is more or less level. If so, you don't really have to worry, the washers will take care of any fine-tuning needed to make the pole plumb.

 

[DavidBodner]

Hi Doctor Bob and Tron and All -

We will mounting on a detached, non-heated garage roof, sloped spot.

And we have the luxury of real wood for the roof, not plywood. 2 x 6 boards in great shape.

Tentative plan is to use backed-up bolts, all the way through for super stability. Plan to use metal sleeve retaining nuts on the inside. Hopefully stainless stuff and tar it afterwards. The non heat factor gives us great hope we won't help rot this old antique roof ;-)

Initially we plan to try it without a dish heater and see how it goes. Lately our winters are wimps compared with the good 'ole days. Bless that global warming!

Dave

 

[DavidBodner]

Telstar 5

Hi All -

I haven't posted in awhile - so I thought I'd bring you all up to date.

After a slight pause for gall bladder removal in April, I decided to take over the satellite package my in-laws had bought because they decided to go with cable.

I checked out several satellites and sites around my house. This is a fixed ground mount on a home-built heavy frame, about 350 pounds for stability.

As of a few days ago I have settled in on Telstar 5 (IA 5) at 97 WL.

Over 150 TV and over 100 radio channels, mostly not in English! But the 10 or so in English make it all worth it. My favorite is Russia Today: RT.

Since my view of the Clarke Belt is very limited, and since I like the selection I'm getting now on T5, I think I will leave things alone! That means I have a positioner up for grabs. Heavy little beast; so anybody interested and coming through this area (Manlius, NY) could stop by for a look and pick it up cheap, like half price. Any interest? Much too heavy to think about postage!!

And my greatest achievement on this is camoflaging it all from my cranky neighbors - a ground mount behind a (rapidly growing) hedge in the front yard.

Regards,
Dave
crumblinggorge@yahoo.com

 

[Doctor Bob]

Hi Dave,

Well I'm glad to see you back and glad that you locked into IA-5 OK... Now just settle in for some good listening time... LOL

 

[iafirebuff]

Try GNF Movies - great station!

 

[LordAlex]

Since my view of the Clarke Belt is very limited, and since I like the selection I'm getting now on T5, I think I will leave things alone! That means I have a positioner up for grabs. Heavy little beast; so anybody interested and coming through this area (Manlius, NY) could stop by for a look and pick it up cheap, like half price. Any interest? Much too heavy to think about postage!!



Regards,
Dave
crumblinggorge@yahoo.com

Not sure what you mean by "very limited" but if you can get 3-4 satellites and snag a few live feeds and such you might as well put the motor on since you have it. You'll like it.

:

 

[DavidBodner]

Thanks for the comments. Yes, I can see that the GNF Movies will be interesting. And there's several cartoon channels, which my wife will like - and it hardly matters if they're in English anyhow.

I have various S and SW "windows" through trees and I'm fortunate that IA-5 is "in" one of those windows. But I was getting AMC-5 on a different azimuth setting of my homemade ground-mount and did like KUEN, the educational network from Utah. So, I might just try the motor next year after I get some experience at viewing all these IA-5 channels.

Dave

 

[rdel]

Hi David
Have you tried g10r?

 

[black Bear]

setting up the dish without the motor first

Be sure to watch your prices on the system. I just checked Sadoun's site, one of the sponsors here at Satelliteguys. You could get a complete motorized system, receiver, motor, LNB, 36 inch dish upgrade, satellite meter kit(free) shipped to your door for $295.77. All you would need is your pole, coax, etc. FTA doesn't have to be expensive.

If I remember right I spent about $300 for my system. A pole, some concrete, some free coax from the cable guy, few days of pointing the dish, and I was watching FTA. I would definately go with the motor! I highly recommend setting up the dish without the motor first though. This will allow you to figure out the receivers menus, blind scanning, etc before tackling the motoring part.

I am new to FTA and was wondering if i need a skew positioner on the dish to set it up without the motor first .. Can i set up the dish without skewing it manually ..Do i just turn the invacom by hand to get the skew i need ?. I hope I'm not high jacking this thread ..Thx !

 

[updatelee]

if you dont have a motor, you'll need to skew the lnb.

http://satcalculator.freehostia.com/

is a good sat calc.

 

[PSB]

Everything you need to know about skew..................(From Sadoun)

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Installation/LNBF-Installation.htm

 

[DavidBodner]

Hi rdel -

I tried looking for G10R when I had the mount/dish in my "back yard." And I did find a couple others, including IA7, but the channel selections were few and not what interested me.

I'm using a heavy ("portable") home-made mount for stability on the ground. It takes about 3 hours to disassemble and move. And it needs to be like this so that we can take it with us if we move - which might happen in a year or two.

My back yard is a very unique situation since it's only about 2 - 3 feet wide toward a mudslide crater that then drops off 60+ feet to a river below. Because of this there is a safety consideration whilst working on the dish. Also, the weight I am working with (about 350 pounds) concerns me a bit since it could aggravate the unstable ground into possibly more mudslide.

For the same reasons a concrete/pole arrangement is out of the question since digging in this ground could produce additional mudslide.

For all these reasons I am happy to be out of the back yard. My front yard has a limited window and I am content to leave things alone and enjoy my reception at 97 WL.

However ;-) I think I may send CCTV an email and ask them if they ever plan on English subtitles on this particular satellite.

Dave

 

[DavidBodner]

Wandering North Magnetic Pole

This may be old news to many of you, but may be of interest to some. An article in the recent issue of National Geographic about the wanderings of the north magnetic pole got me to thinking about why I was always off by a few degrees when I wanted to aim my dish using a typical table of magnetic north satellite azimuths from my location. The software I was using had a difference (the magnetic deviation from true north) of about 13 degrees built-in.

If you check the attached PDF & JPEGs, the correct deviation of magnetic north from true north is a calculated value of about 7+ degrees for Central New York State, not the 13 degrees in the software. A re-aim on my dish confirms that! The 13 degrees is representative of where the north magnetic pole was about 25 years ago.

To do the spherical math, 83 and 120 are the latitude and longitude of where the north magnetic pole is now, and 76 and 43 are my longitude and latitude. “C” is the the north pole, “A” is my location, “B” is the north magnetic pole, and “a” and “b” are great circle meridians. Angle “C” is just 120 – 76, arc “a” is 90 – 83 and arc “b” is 90 – 43. I hope I got those right in this paragraph without typos! (if there’s any differences the yellow calculation sheets are correct).

[Note - these are rather large files, especially the PDF; so, don't open unless you're REALLY interested in the math!]

BTW, I finally decided to keep aimed at IA 5 (Telstar 5). In addition to Russia Today in English, Aljazeera English is also on now. Plus lots of other English channels + lots of great pictures on other channels that are not all or partial English language.

regards,

Dave

 

[Doctor Bob]

Nice Work David!!!

 

[SatelliteAV]

I might suggest that the 13 degrees declination is accurate for your region. You might be dealing with local anomalies in the magnetic fields.

Here is a great calculator for estimating magnetic declination:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/geomag/jsp/IGRFWMM.jsp

 

[DavidBodner]

Anomalies?

Hi Brian -

If you go to this month's (or last month's?) issue of National Geographic you will see that the only anomaly is how far the north magnetic pole has moved recently.

And the clincher is that when I use 7 degrees I find the satellite I intend to, rather than a different one when using 13 degrees.

The calculations are rather straightfoward based on the sketch in NG.
And just eyeballing it on a large globe you can see that the angle is approximately half what it used to be.

A few months ago when I was going nuts always getting the wrong aiming point and the wrong satellite with my compass I also thought there was some iron nearby that was messing me up on magnetic north. But the NG artricle clears it up - although they didn't bother to calculate any typical values for various areas of the US, for some odd reason: spelled "GPS."

Dave

 

[DavidBodner]

Anomalies?

Hi Brian -

I checked out that link you gave. It yields a very small change per year. But NG is showing about 25 miles per year, almost directly north for the wandering of the magnetic pole.

Either I vastly misunderstand what's going on here - which is always possible! - or the 2 "sources" should talk with each other.

Dave

 

[DavidBodner]

Another possibility

Another possibility here is that we all may be correct!

That is, in addition to where the North Magnetic Pole IS and local magnetic disturbances - what may be critically important in all this are any large magnetic concentrations or depletions in-between the magnetic pole and a locality. After all, the magnetic lines of equality are never shown straight, nor even just as great circles, when drawn on a globe. They are generally rather chaotic.

Maybe NG ducked the question of showing "new" typical values for good reason.

Dave