Mercury II - Find satellites manually only?

[bill190]

For the Mercury II, I assume that to find each satellite, I need to select the satellite, then move the positioner back and forth until I find the signal, then set the position myself...

...And that there is no "automatic" satellite finder which would automatically turn the dish back and forth, find the signal, and then automatically set the position?

[Jose47]

You need to read the The User Manual. Everything you need to know is there. There two ways to track a satellite, best way is to use the USUAL. All you have to do is enter your Latitude and Longitude. The other way is using the DiSeCq 1.2. I got the Mercury ll about a month ago and it took me awhile to understand how this receiver operates. Patience is a most.

[CROSSBOLT]

Jose47, I am all ears about what I missed in the MercII user's manual and storing sat posits. I concluded like bill190 that one must manually "find" the selected satellite and then store its "position" in the Mercury II for future selection. I wanna know about the "auto find" if it is there!

Karl

[wejones]

Originally Posted by bill190

For the Mercury II, I assume that to find each satellite, I need to select the satellite, then move the positioner back and forth until I find the signal, then set the position myself...

...And that there is no "automatic" satellite finder which would automatically turn the dish back and forth, find the signal, and then automatically set the position?

Unlike most big dish IRDs, the Mercury does not have any automatic sat locator. If you are slaving to a big dish, then you don't need it, because your analog IRD already has the sat positions stored. If you are controlling a small (ie 3' ) dish then, if you use DiseqC1.2, then you are right, that you need to find each sat, then store the position in the motor. However, if you use USALS, after you have the mount aligned properly, you can often just tell the receiver what the longitude of the sat is, and the Mercury will send the motor to the proper position. I say "often" because USALS sometimes doesn't work properly if there are any centering problems with the dish/motor, however it will almost always get you pretty close. In fact I doubt that it will even recognize USALS GOTO-X commands.



EDIT: I just noticed, reading your other post, that you say that you are using a "Motec Positioner" . Are you talking about the V-Box thing??? And if so, is it driving an actuator? If so, then ignore what was said about USALS above, because that will only work when you are using a small dish motor such as the SG2100, etc, etc. USALS most likely can't calculate the sat positions when you are using big dish actuators.