Now what? (is that it?)

[Doofuss]

I managed to get my Mercury II to autoscan nearly a buttload of satellites (73-139W and not listed as "C" band)in search of FTA transmissions and my results are

29 tv channels (I guess they are called channels in this instance)

18 for jesus
4-6 Chinese? of which one might be in English at one time or another
a couple in other languages
and maybe a few that registered but are in the fringe and not viewable.

A number of radio results, yet most are the 20500 and the other similar #,s "who knows what" returns.


Is there more to this than that?

If I scan, and log everything, including scrambled, will some come through but not have been identified as FTA.

Are there other channels that don't fall into FTA or scrambled?

Is there a current realistic forum somewhere that helps one find viewable feeds?

Do any of you have any suggestions as to where or what to look for like news feeds, or rental transponders? that come and go but can have interesting some at times I should add to my channel memory?

How many channels will a Mercury II hold?

Does my machine need a software update download right out of the box? and is that as easy as pointing it at a sat and pushing a button?

I'm at 121 west and feel free to PM if you want to.

Here is my current 1st try FTA list

[teched]

As near as I can tell from my Mercury:

Autoscan is not blindscan - it only scans the transponders it already knows about.

You have to blindscan (P-SCAN) each satellite individually. Please someone tell me I am wrong and there is a way to auto-blindscan selected satellites!

So go to 87 and blindscan for the PBS channels, then 97 for the international channels and then to 123 for the Equity stationsu. That should bump your channel count up quite a bit. Some of the others it is quicker to manually enter in the known information from LyngSat as there isn't much on the bird.

[Doofuss]

I did a "power scan" of 87 and all I got was one, the echostar "here we are channel" which is about as good as colorbars. I didn't catch any PBS or others at all.

[teched]

I was looking closer at the images... are you showing CCTV on IA5 97? (you chopped the others too much for me to figure those out)

If so you might want to check your alignment... I get CCTV on G3C at 95, where LyngSat shows it.

[teched]

Originally Posted by Doofuss

I did a "power scan" of 87 and all I got was one, the echostar "here we are channel" which is about as good as colorbars. I didn't catch any PBS or others at all.

That test card is at 85 degrees. You are out of alignment.

[Doofuss]

I've broken out the ladder and can adjust dish.

I think I might need an active transponder to look for at 87 on amc3

[teched]

The best advice: Go back and recenter for your "true south" satellite then work east and west verifying reality. Make sure the bird you think you are on is really the bird you are on.

Things I've done to avoid going back into unpleasant weather:
Fudging the longitude by 2 degrees. In your case try west first (+2) and compare with LyngSat. If that doesn't seem to match go east (-2 from the original value) and compare again. It is late, my math is suspect at all hours.

Alternatively you could reconfigure each satellite by ~2 degrees.

[Doofuss]

I turned the earth in my usals setup - 2 degrees and started a scan and the channels are piling in now.

I better write that down or record an active transponder to correct the issue later.

Thanks I'll be back tomorrow.

Thanks bye

[rainman]

if you have to fudge the usuals by 2 degrees your alignment is off you should realign your dish.see LyngSat - Lyngemark Satellite for active Transponders.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by rainman

if you have to fudge the usuals by 2 degrees your alignment is off you should realign your dish.see LyngSat - Lyngemark Satellite for active Transponders.

It is probably the case with this fellow, and possibly even in most cases, but I still do not agree with this at all. See When USALS Won't Work

I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this, I'm still convinced that being out of sync can definately be caused by the motor not being centered. If you look at the example I posed the last time Steve and I argued on this, ie

http://www.sadoun.net/forums/fortec-...sals#post48303

it becomes obvious (at least to me ) that USALS simply cannot work if the motor is not centered, and my motor was not centered when I got it. I'm pretty sure that this centering problem can be corrected by doing a hard reset on the motor, but I have not tried this yet.

My main reason for continually coming back to this issue, is that I'm convinced that it is possible to have a perfectly aligned system that doesn't work properly with USALS, and I think that in some cases people are being told to go back and disrupt the alignment of systems that are already aligned. (Again, not in this case, because I don't think it's possible for this system to be in alignment when the person doesn't even know what sat he is on).

[Doofuss]

I have since re-aligned dish to an a specific active transponder and re-autosearched 72-138 from 121w and recieved 150+- FTA

I have more questions but might need to start new appropriately placed threads to deal with them.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Doofuss

I have since re-aligned dish to an a specific active transponder and re-autosearched 72-138 from 121w and recieved 150+- FTA

I have more questions but might need to start new appropriately placed threads to deal with them.

That's good, and certainly means that you're close, but you still may be out of alignment, because alignment is a specific process, which you seem to have short cut a bit. There are a lot more than 150+ FTA, but that may well be appropriate for an auto-search that only looks at pre-programmed transponders. Hopefully you'll start find lots more when you start to do power scans. But if you start to notice known transponders that are weak or not there I'd recommend that you start doing some pull down, push up tests to make sure you are really centered on these sats. If you're centered on say 123 and 72, then you're OK, but if you find that you're not, you'll probably want to go back and follow one of the alignment processes in more detail. This process should be a bit easier (although it will be complicated a bit with respect to your altered longitude) since you've found the satellites needed.

[Greysquirrel]

Originally Posted by wejones

it becomes obvious (at least to me ) that USALS simply cannot work if the motor is not centered, and my motor was not centered when I got it. I'm pretty sure that this centering problem can be corrected by doing a hard reset on the motor, but I have not tried this yet.

My main reason for continually coming back to this issue, is that I'm convinced that it is possible to have a perfectly aligned system that doesn't work properly with USALS, and I think that in some cases people are being told to go back and disrupt the alignment of systems that are already aligned. (Again, not in this case, because I don't think it's possible for this system to be in alignment when the person doesn't even know what sat he is on).

This is the problem I had, I was always out 2 degrees, when I sent the dish to 0 it would stop one mark West of zero, I did a reset and I was able to pick up all sats without realigning my dish.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Greysquirrel

This is the problem I had, I was always out 2 degrees, when I sent the dish to 0 it would stop one mark West of zero, I did a reset and I was able to pick up all sats without realigning my dish.

Good info. What motor do you have. And I assume you're talking about a hard reset where you move the dish to it's real zero, then push the reset button on the motor, or something like that? Or was it a reset done with software from the receiver?
Either way, good info. I figured that this would work but wasn't positive, and since I had already programmed in all the sats with DiseqC1.2, I didn't want to mess things up, so I never bothered to try.

[Greysquirrel]

Originally Posted by wejones

Good info. What motor do you have. And I assume you're talking about a hard reset where you move the dish to it's real zero, then push the reset button on the motor, or something like that? Or was it a reset done with software from the receiver?
Either way, good info. I figured that this would work but wasn't positive, and since I had already programmed in all the sats with DiseqC1.2, I didn't want to mess things up, so I never bothered to try.

Have a SG 2100 and did a hard reset at the motor by moving the motor to 0 or as close as it would go, shutting down the power, by either disconnecting the F connector to the motor or shutting off the receiver, I chose to take my receiver outside and using it, then holding in the E & W buttons, reconnecting the power and when the led had blinked 15 times and stopped I released the buttons and the motor went to zero and I have no more problems. On the older motors with one button you get a paper clip and there is a small hole by the button that you put the paper clip into and it will reset, a much easier way I think to do it but they made it easier to jog the motor by using two buttons instead of one.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Greysquirrel

Have a SG 2100 and did a hard reset at the motor by moving the motor to 0 or as close as it would go, shutting down the power, by either disconnecting the F connector to the motor or shutting off the receiver, I chose to take my receiver outside and using it, then holding in the E & W buttons, reconnecting the power and when the led had blinked 15 times and stopped I released the buttons and the motor went to zero and I have no more problems. On the older motors with one button you get a paper clip and there is a small hole by the button that you put the paper clip into and it will reset, a much easier way I think to do it but they made it easier to jog the motor by using two buttons instead of one.

Thanks. Good info. I have the version that uses a paper clip, but I haven't tried that yet, since I'm OK using DiseqC1.2
Thanks.