Help! What I'm doing wrong with this dish and motor???

[GMan73]

Hi people,
I bought 33" dish and SG2100 motor. I'm new with FTA but I didn't expected that I will have problem like this.

I have big issue with dish bracket. I'm in Toronto (44 Latitude) and I positioned motor at 44 on scale. Then I inserted motor in dish bracket and tried to position dish elevation to 40-6.6 (as manual instructed) and I got 33. But, I can't move elevation scale that much because motor is hitting bracket.

Where is a problem? Am I doing something wrong or is the dish bracket?

I attached photo so you can check it out.

Thank you in advance,
G

[DougRuss]

Something just doesn't look right with that Dish Bracket ??

[pmb1010]

is there another bolt hole so you can move it down the motor shaft, more towards the end?

It almost appears updside down. All the dishes/motors I've installed, the numbers "face the right way" when they are put up.

[StevenS]

To me it looks like that is a DNW bracket piece or that dish is too large for that motor. Either way that won't work. The DG2100 can handle an 80-90cm offset dish like the ones we sell. We also have a replacement shaft for that motor that will acomodate 100cm if it isn't too heavy.

[boz]

I think I might have a workaround for you, but I'm not sure as I've never tried it exactly. However, I have inverted a pole-end mount on a HH motor like yours, and it did work fine.

It appears the dish mount is made to mount at the end of a pole, so it doesn't have any offset from the pole to allow the dish to clear. So to get around this, you need to place the dish mount on the end of the motor shaft, except inverted from how you have it now. The problem with this is that the mount will not adjust to enough negative elevation to work and you would run across the same clearance problem.

I think if you take the shaft off the motor, and rotate it by 180 degrees, and then put the dish mount on the end, again inverted, and put the dish on the mount non-inverted, you'll find enough clearance to make it all work.

The motor shaft being oriented down and away from the pole and having the mount inverted at the end, will push the dish out away from the motor housing. Then you'll have to calculate a new dish angle, but it can be done. Of course, if you are really precise with the motor angle, and have a good true-south sat, you can adjust the dish angle by trial-and-error.

I'm just not sure that the shaft can be rotated. I've removed the shaft from one before to facilitate mounting, but I've never tried turning it around.

What have you got to lose?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by boz

I think I might have a workaround for you, but I'm not sure as I've never tried it exactly. However, I have inverted a pole-end mount on a HH motor like yours, and it did work fine.

It appears the dish mount is made to mount at the end of a pole, so it doesn't have any offset from the pole to allow the dish to clear. So to get around this, you need to place the dish mount on the end of the motor shaft, except inverted from how you have it now. The problem with this is that the mount will not adjust to enough negative elevation to work and you would run across the same clearance problem.

I think if you take the shaft off the motor, and rotate it by 180 degrees, and then put the dish mount on the end, again inverted, and put the dish on the mount non-inverted, you'll find enough clearance to make it all work.

The motor shaft being oriented down and away from the pole and having the mount inverted at the end, will push the dish out away from the motor housing. Then you'll have to calculate a new dish angle, but it can be done. Of course, if you are really precise with the motor angle, and have a good true-south sat, you can adjust the dish angle by trial-and-error.

I'm just not sure that the shaft can be rotated. I've removed the shaft from one before to facilitate mounting, but I've never tried turning it around.

What have you got to lose?

Interesting idea, and one that hurts my head to think about. And I guess it's worth a try, it might just work, but I'm not sure if I agree (or understand) the "dish mount on the end, again inverted" part above. Ie assuming you mean turn that whole mount upside down and use the hole at the end, then... it will look weird, but it might just work.

But before I forget, I'm confused a bit about the calculation in the initial post. Ie the 40 - 6.6 thing. For the SG2100, the calculation should be 30 minus declination, and for a latitude of 44, you should be using 6.0 instead of 6.6, so you should be aiming for 24 degrees not 33 degrees. HOWEVER, from the picture, I can see that YOUR SG2100 is entirely different from MY SG2100, even with respect to where the motor mount bolts connect, so it's entirely possible that the shaft on your mount DOES have a 40 degree bend rather than the 30 deg bend that I have in the shaft in MY SG2100.
But from the picture, it doesn't look like even using the 24 degrees, you can't get enough elevation with that dish mount. The bend in the motor shaft on MY SG2100 is 30 degrees, so looking for a declination of -6 degrees, you'd need an elevation of around 24 deg as I said above (or 34 if indeed the shaft angle is 40 instead of 30). If you have that shaft reversed by 180, then you have a positive elevation of 30 degrees from the motor shaft, and you'll need a negative (upside down) elevation of 36 degrees on the dish mount scale for it to work (or 46 if your bend is 40 deg). I still can't visualize this whole thing to figure out if you can get that mount to fit on the other side of that shaft without hitting the motor, but it looks like it just might fit.

HOWEVER, if it doesn't fit, perhaps there might be other options. If your shaft bend is 30 deg, you might possibly get enough clearance by drilling another hole through the shaft about 3/4 of an inch below the current hole. That might allow the bracket to incline a bit more while further away from the motor itself. You might experiment with this without the bolt in the bracket to figure out if it has a chance of working.

Another option might be to completely eliminate the inside portion of your current bracket, and try to adapt a Sadoun pole mount bracket ( ie http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/F...Pole+Mount.jpg ) to somehow fit inside the part of your bracket that connects to the dish. It would take a bit of drilling and bolting, but should be possible. The scale on the pole mount bracket would be completely meaningless, but it's relatively meaningless in many installations anyway.

Anyway, this is a strange combination of a mount that seems to be designed to be mounted on top of a pole and a motor that has a shaft aiming down, plus you have what seems to be perhaps a newer version of the SG2100, plus a dish bracket that as the other poster said "just doesn't look right" for some reason (I thnk because the angle indications are upside down, even though the bracket isn't upside down) . Overall a strange combination. I think it's possible to get it to work, but it will take some work.

[GMan73]

Wow, guys I can only say thank you so much for all those creative solutions!

This is my current situation. I bought dish and motor in store in Toronto, not over Internet. Before that I spent probably two weeks reading and learning about FTA so I can say that now I'm not so green. I decided to go safe and buy dish and motor in a same store in order to prevent situation where something is not compatible. But...

When I went to store I asked seller are this dish and motor compatible? Answer was "Yes". I also checked their website and there was information, I quote "This 33" dish also comes with U-bolt bracket for motor use". So what can go wrong?

I went home and assembled motor bracket and set angle to 43.6 which is my latitude in Toronto. In motor manual there is a text saying that this is new motor and all new SG2100 motor arms will be at 40 degree angle (older are 30). So, 40 minus declination is 33 for a dish.

From there everything goes wrong. First I noticed that dish bracket have numbers written upside-down. Also I was missing that U-bolt bracket that I should receive with dish. When I inserted motor arm in dish bracket I couldn't reach more that 20 degrees. I immediately sent email to seller (they don't have phone support for customers???) and answer was that I'm not qualified to install this dish, dish comes without U-bolt bracket, and they will be happy to send me phone # of their installer.

I thought, OK, maybe they are wright, maybe I really don't know how to install this, so let's do more research. I downloaded absolutely every photo and read every text about motor and dish installation. All pictures where with different bracket than mine. Then I sent new polite email explaining whole situation and I got email with basically same answer as previous.

Because this dish bracket has numbers upside-down, my only conclusion is that this is made for motors with their arms pointing up, and also, seller doesn't want to bother with his buyers after they leave him the money.

Since all this equipment is brand new I don't want to drill any hole or to make any adaptation to system which could lead to loosing warranty. Shifting dish bracket down didn't help, it's even worse. Also, It's not possible to rotate motor arm for 180 degree. Sadoun's adapter is very good solution, probably only for situations like this, but I bought this dish new in a store because they said it comes with U-bracket for motor use and I'm not going to accept this as my fault.

I will definitely pack this dish and return it to seller tomorrow and ask him for full refund or different dish model.

One again, thank you all for your fast replies. You really helped me to realize that I'm not so green.

Cheers,
GMan73

[wejones]

Originally Posted by GMan73

..... Also, It's not possible to rotate motor arm for 180 degree. ....

I'm curious as to why? I never tried it, but the shaft seems to connect with a bolt up near the motor. Seems like if you removed that bolt, and took off the arm, that you could then put it back on rotated 180. Is this not possible because it's keyed in some way, ie with a slot or something? Just curious. I know it would look really weird this way, but it might work.

Good luck returning the thing. If they won't take it back, then perhaps the easiest thing is the Saduon bracket, although that will probably take some drilling to connect.

[tha19]

I had the same problem with a package. I turned the dish bracket so the scale is on top and it worked

[BYX]

I hope this picture can help.
Please see attached.

[elgemcdlf]

The whole thing is upside down. Turn it over and the bolt you currently have in the top hold should be in the bottom hole of the motor shaft.