Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaDawg
Hoping to get an answer before Monday.
I am brand new to FTA and installed my system today, a 90CM dish, Fortec FSIR-5400 receiver, SM3D22 motor, Invacom Quad Polar LNBF. Here's my issue for which I could find no answer in the manuals and paperwork provided. I set the Receiver positioner option to DiSEqC control and selected the 'Goto REF' option to center the motor. It WILL NOT CENTER no matter how many times I try. It will always stop about 10° off center to the west. I cannot find any reference to an option to calibrate this. So, I manually adjusted the dish to point to Anik E2 which is about .3° off due south from my location (Tucson, AZ) then manually fine tuned elevation and azimuth and successfully tuned in GOLTV from this satellite.
I can't find a reference to reset the motor in the manual so, my question is, is there a way to reset or calibrate the motor or should I just adjust the azimuth position of the motor mount on the pole to compensate for the 10° variation? I'm concerned that if I make the adjustment to compensate for this problem, that I will not be able to successfully tune in other satellites, especially those that are far to the east and west.
I suppose I could manually set them all but I'd rather let the receiver do that for me. |
First, before you assume that the zero position is off by 10 deg, see if there is a command to disable the east/west dish limits. If so, do this, then try the goto reference command and see what happens. If this helps, then you can manually move the dish to what you want the limits to be, then re-set the limits.
If it doesn't help, a motor reset command would probably help if your motor has one. I'm not familiar with that motor, but my
SG2100 has a reset where you manually move the motor to it's zero, and then push a recessed hardware reset button on the motor. However, taking a quick look at the on line manual for your
motor, I don't see any mention of a hardware reset button. Maybe
Sadoun knows if there is a hardware reset function not mentioned in the manual.
Another thing that might help is to try to use the DiseqC 1.2 re-sync command. I don't know if this will re-sync the motor completely, ie change the position of where the motor thinks it's zero is, or if it just changes the positions that are saved for the various satellites. If it changes it's zero, then you should be in business, but if it doesn't, then you will be unable to use the USALS function of your motor. You can still align your dish perfectly, but the USALS function assumes that it knows where south is, and if it is off by 10 degrees, then everything will be off. If you can't correct this 10 deg offset, you'll have to use DiseqC1.2 instead of USALS.
Re to your question of
"adjust the azimuth position of the motor mount on the pole to compensate for the 10° variation?" , the answer is NO. Like you said, this will make it so that you will not be able to track other satellites. What you should do, is manually move the dish to it's zero position, and locate your due south satellite (or if there is no suitable due south satellite, move the motor to the proper goto-X angle for the sat nearest to your due south satellite, and find the satellite). Once you've peaked this sat (using the dish elevation adjustment, and by moving the whole
mount on the pole (ie what I said not to do above, however since you haven't used the goto reference command, you're not compensating for the 10 degrees here, you're just getting a rough estimate of your true south orientation), save it using the DiseqC 1.2 commands. At this point, you need to go to a sat to your far east or west to complete the alignment, however without USALS, it might be hard to find a suitable sat. If you have a meter you can use at the dish, you can just move the dish say to the west (if you are in the east), or to the east (if you are in the west), and find a sat, peak on it, this time by both moving the whole
mount on the pole (ie what I said not to do above, but again, this is final tuning of the due south orientation), AND by manually bumping the motor east and west. Once you've peaked on this sat, figure out what sat it is, and save it using the DiseqC 1.2 commands. You should now be in alignment good enough to find all the other sats one by one. Finding the sats with DiseqC 1.2 is time consuming, but once done it is just as good or better than USALS.
Hopefully though, you'll find some way to reset the motor so that you're not off by 10 deg, because it's very handy to be able to find sats using USALS. Actually, you may be able to still use USALS if you offset your longitude by the 10 degree error. I had a similar problem as you, with my
SG2100, but I was only off by about 2 degrees, so I've never bothered to do anything about it. USALS will still bring the dish pretty close to the proper position to find sats, then I peak and save them via DiseqC 1.2.