Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagee
i wish i lived near you,id like to copy your settings bibbler,do i add or subtract for my declination to find from 180degrees ive tried everything.but i live in grovetown,ga.33.2lat 82.2long ive used evry calculator and angle finder and still no luck.maybe i alt to break dn. and get a declination meter.any suggestion will be of help ive been working this since 3 weeks so far.Thank goodness my back up 31in dish works..oh im trying to put in a 6ft fortecstar dish with hh180.
|
Make sure you don't confuse declination with declination.
What I mean is that there are 2 terms involved called declination here. The declination I think you are referring to is magnetic declination, which is the difference between true south and magnetic south. For you, according to
NOAA's Geophysical Data Center - Geomagnetic Data it is 5.7 deg , which means that your true south is a compass heading of 185.7 deg.
The other "declination" is the angle below the plane perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis, that the dish aims. This is because the plane perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis describes a plane that is parallel to, but above the earth's equatorial plane that the sat is in, so your dish has to look down a bit to see the sat. For you, the declination of a sat to your south would be 5.4 deg, and the declination of a sat to your east or west is 4.8. You should try to use 4.8 (even though most calculators you find will say 5.4) . The big question is how to set the declination. As I mentioned above, it looks like on that motor's mount, that declination is set vis the bolt on top of the brass section. It looks like that would allow the dish to tilt down a bit. To set it, you'd have to find flat surfaces either parallel or perpindicular to the aim of the dish , and either parallel or perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis. On Al's picture, his home-made piece he bolted to is perpindicular to the dish's aim, and either the top of the motor or a flat surface put on top of the brass piece would be perpincicular to the motor's axis of rotation. I'd compare one measurement to 90 minus the other, and adjust until the dish's elevation was a bit less than 5 degrees lower than the motor's plane of rotation.
Once you've done that, and have oriented the dish to your true south, just raise and lower the motor's elevation until you find your true south satellite. I don't know if that motor has latitude, elevation or no markings on it's scale, but it's not important, as it is only a starting point. Ideally, you should be using an elevation of about 90-33.8=56.2 (and if it has a latitude setting, use 33.8 instead of your latitude).