For several years, I've had problems with my dish getting stuck if I move the dish to the west. In the winter, I've had to install a steel bar with a weight to counterbalance the weight of the dish. I thought I had this cured last year when I found that I had the main axis bolts too tight, but it happened again this winter. I had to install the big log weight again. Last fall, I also started to suspect that the magnetic reed switch that gives the position pulses might be going bad, so I bought a replacement, but never installed it.
Well yesterday, I was trying to go to a sat just a bit to the east of me, and I couldn't find it. I've run out of sat locations on my Drake, so I've had to use my count spreadsheet to find this sat in the past. I looked, and looked, but couldn't find the sat. I finally went outside to look at the dish, and it was pointed nearly at the ground, so far east that the bar I installed to hang the log counterweight had jammed against the mount. Ran the dish back west, but was WAY out of sync... got back to AMC3, when the Drake said I was on AMC11. Resynced the Drake, and tried again. Looked and looked for the sat. Couldn't find it. Went outside to look. Same thing. Dish was
aiming almost at the ground again! Back to AMC3, resync, and I tried again. Started east again, this time watching the signal meter on the Drake as I moved the dish. Got to where I saw a signal, tried to back up, but the dish wouldn't move. Wouldn't go east or west... at least according to the count. However I noticed that even though the count wasn't moving, that the dish actually WAS moving, because I was seeing the signal level change.
Well it turns out that my magnetic reed switch had finally failed. The dish was actually moving but no counts. But for some reason this only happened when the dish was east of my true south. Ie when I'd bring the dish back to vertical, and did a resync, the motor would go fine between sats to my south and west, but move to the east, and the reed switch would stop working. So I replaced the reed switch. Everything working fine now even to the east. Really weird, because the reed switch isn't in a location where you'd think it would matter which direction the dish was aiming, ie it's down below a gear box where the motor attaches. Only thing I can figure out, is that when the weight is on the east side, it might slide one of the gears one way or the other on the bushings that hold it, and perhaps the magnets in the wheel get further from the switch, but I haven't checked out whether that is possible or not. My new reed switch came on a clear piece of plexiglas instead of cardboard, so I'll be able to see inside while it's working now.
Turns out though that my search for the sat was unsucessful. With the new reed switch, I went to where the sat should be, but signal levels were very low, even though sats on either side were strong. Went outside to look, and another big pine tree had grown another 3 feet or so. Just enough to block about 3/4 of the dish on that one sat. Luckily, this is a Ku sat, so I'm hoping that my Fortec can still see it. The Fortec is lower, and would be blocked even more, but it's off to the right where it might look around that tree. I'm kind of intrigued though, because I did a spectrum scan, and can see that in addition to the channel I was looking for, that there are a bunch of transponders not listed in Lyngsat. Signal levels all too low for me to lock anything though. Hopefully, I can give this a try later today to check it out.
EDIT: Just tried again with big dish, since it was wet yesterday. With dry trees, I'm getting the sat today, without moving dish. However the Fortec is blocked by another tree. :-(
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