Quote:
Originally Posted by jsattv
I am finishing up installing my Actuator Motor today on my 12 Foot Mesh Bud Dish. Is there a Procedure in setting and calibrating a 12 Foot Dish? That is, with my roof mounted 1 Meter Fortec Star Dish & Stab Motor I align it on G25 97.0W by bringing up a small TV and Sat Receiver to the Dish. I plan on powering 12 Footer Dish thru the 36 VDC ribbon cable already installed in the House with a Uniden 9900 Receiver and 9900P power supply left in the house, then bring my FTA Receiver outside to the Dish and connect it to the LNB Cables. Does the calibration and setup work the same way for a 12 Foot Bud Dish? ie setup South, then East and West limit Satellites?? |
Pretty much the same. The only significant difference is that with small dishes, the motor elevation is pretty accurate via the scale, but the dish elevation (which is how you set the declination) is NOT accurate, so you usually set the motor elevation, then peak on the south sat via dish elevation. With a big dish, however it is often the opposite, but not always. On my current dish, you can set the declination very accurately, so I set that and forget it, and peak the south sat using the motor elevation. On some other big dishes, you can't set the declination so accurately, but there are usually surfaces on a big dish that are (1) parallel or perpendicular to the rotation axis, and (2) parallel or perpindicular to the direction the dish is looking. Generally you can set the declination fairly accurately by measuring the difference between these two angles using an inclinometer. Once set this way, you can then peak the south sat using the motor elevation. On the 3 big dishes I've had, there was never any scale for elevation, so an inclinometer is nearly a necessity.
After peaking your south sat, motor over and find the furthest sat you can find toward either horizon, and peak that by moving the whole mount on the pole PLUS, after each adjustment of the mount on the pole, motor back and forth through the sat to see if you have improved it or made it worse. Once you've gotten the best you can do on the extreme sat, you are generally done, unless your pole wasn't plumb. You can then one by one find the other sats.
Finding sats with a big dish used to be easy, with an analog receiver, however now, that many sats don't have any analog channels, it becomes quite a challenge sometimes, particularly if the info in Lyngsat isn't up to date. It's usually better to align using Ku sats, because the beam width is narrower, however sometimes it helps to first find the sat via
C-band, then switch to C-band.
Aligning a big dish requires more precision than aligning a small dish, however it is often easier, because there are generally surfaces that you can put an inclinometer on, so you don't have to rely on the elevation scales, that are often innaccurate.