MINUTE Adjustments - Signal, declination, elevation. azimuth?

[skTheTwo]

I finally got my setup ( Fortec 90cm dish, Sg2100 motor feeding a TwinHan 1027 PCI card on a PC with dvbdream and MYtheatre
software) pickup AMC4 ( 101W). I'm at 105.02W and 40.04 N 5036 ft above sea level. So I have some success under my belt.
I'm a total newbie at satellite things. My questions:
1. While I can get the SF95 meter to squeal simply by turning the knob UP, it was only the time, when during peaking I'm repeatedly brought
the dial down, almost to the quarter turn position and yet had a significant signal like 5 and a squeal too that I software
actually locked to a TP and picked up the 10 or so channels. Is that a good rule of thumb then - viz. to disregard any squeals etc
unless they also occur at low dial settings ?
2. The dish is heavy, the motor is heavy yet one has to make minute adjustments to them. You have to basically loosen
the nuts, yet keep it where it WAS then add a little, TINY bit in one direction or another. Any tips, tricks, neat ways
of holding things steady while adjusting ?
3. Many of the adjustments are quoted to 1 or 2 decimal places ( like the declination, or the longitude of a satellite)
but the scales on the equipment are MUCH more coarse than that - I couldn't set 23.76 as the declination ( the 30 minus
number in table bit ) just using the scale on the dish mount - no way.. Same even zeroing the position of the motor.
Apart from having such a constricted view of the motor position gauge, it wayyy too coarse to be able to say with
honesty that you really hit zero. Same with the compass too IMO. I can be off by 2 degrees just by parallax error
I reckon.
4. What is the right declination for my dish size, lat, long and height above sea level - I read that a 90cm dish real declination
may be 5 degrees less than the table but the fortec website has nothing about that.. I really mean that with this biz,
what with NASA etc, this biz has to pretty exact - one shouldn't have to guess or just do trial and error surely ? Maybe its
simply a case that real precision requires really precise instruments which is major moolah that is out of the hobbyist sphere?
So far I've just done a hack to see what's what.. I aim to do a proper full installation tomorrow / day after and more if needed - all satellites locked in and watchable just by using the remote - all the time
every time ( without having to go outside and fiddle with the dish ). We already have a 4 room DISH subscription service that works really well ( just too many d*mn ads arrghhhhhhhh ) and the wife ( and me ) would find it quite unacceptable to settle for anything less friendly. So answers to the above so that I can hit the high quality are really appreciated.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

......
I'm a total newbie at satellite things. My questions:
1. While I can get the SF95 meter to squeal simply by turning the knob UP, it was only the time, when during peaking I'm repeatedly brought
the dial down, almost to the quarter turn position and yet had a significant signal like 5 and a squeal too that I software
actually locked to a TP and picked up the 10 or so channels. Is that a good rule of thumb then - viz. to disregard any squeals etc
unless they also occur at low dial settings ?

With the SF95, like I think you found, you have to turn it down around half scale to just below where the pitch changes, and look for sats both by the squeal pitch changing, and by watching the meter. On some sats, the changes are so slight they are hard to recognize, and if you are close to a DBS sat, like the 101 sat, the meter will sometimes lead you in the wrong direction.

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

2. The dish is heavy, the motor is heavy yet one has to make minute adjustments to them. You have to basically loosen
the nuts, yet keep it where it WAS then add a little, TINY bit in one direction or another. Any tips, tricks, neat ways
of holding things steady while adjusting ?

When I put up my system, I set the motor angle before I ever mounted it on the pole, and then never touched that again. You'll do your search for the sats with the dish elevation only, which isn't quite as heavy as lifting the dish and motor.

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

3. Many of the adjustments are quoted to 1 or 2 decimal places ( like the declination, or the longitude of a satellite)
but the scales on the equipment are MUCH more coarse than that - I couldn't set 23.76 as the declination ( the 30 minus
number in table bit ) just using the scale on the dish mount - no way.. Same even zeroing the position of the motor.
Apart from having such a constricted view of the motor position gauge, it wayyy too coarse to be able to say with
honesty that you really hit zero. Same with the compass too IMO. I can be off by 2 degrees just by parallax error
I reckon.

Yeah, everything is quoted to way more precision than you can attain, but you don't need that precision. With that dish, you'd have a hard time seeing any difference in signal on moving your dish more than a degree. When I look at something like the 23.76, I just try to get a bit lower than 24. That dish only has a resolution of 2 degrees, so no need for 3 or 4 digit resolution.

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

4. What is the right declination for my dish size, lat, long and height above sea level - I read that a 90cm dish real declination
may be 5 degrees less than the table but the fortec website has nothing about that.. ....

I would recommend using a declination of 5.6 degrees rather than the 6.3 that was probably recommended on your tables or calculator. However this requires you to use 40.7 on the *latitude* scale on your motor, instead of 40. Using the 5.6 deg declination puts your dish elevation at about 24.4 instead of 23.8, ie just a bit above 24 instead of below 24. However this is just a starting point. You fine tune this by peaking on a satellite. If you purchased the U-bolt dish mount, many have found that this combination (90cm/U-bolt) mount can be off by 5 degrees. Also if the lnbf arm is bent, the apparent aim of the dish can be significantly altered, and you'll have to compensate for this by changing this dish elevation a bit. I wouldn't recommend messing with the motor elevation however.

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

I aim to do a proper full installation tomorrow / day after and more if needed - all satellites locked in and watchable just by using the remote - all the time
every time ( without having to go outside and fiddle with the dish ). We already have a 4 room DISH subscription service that works really well ( just too many d*mn ads arrghhhhhhhh ) and the wife ( and me ) would find it quite unacceptable to settle for anything less friendly.

A FTA system is NEVER going to be anywhere near as user friendly as a subscription system, so if that's your criteria, you aren't going to be happy. Although other people may differ, my opinion is that FTA systems are a hobby that you should expect to involve some user manipulation or hacking. (not hacking in the mis-used context used here, but hacking in the sense of finding alternative ways of using the equipment.). I don't consider these FTA systems to be set it up once and never fool with it again. For one thing, it is a constant situation of channels coming and going and moving, going scrambled, going free, changing parameters, changing format, etc, etc. If you don't treat this as being fun chasing these channels around, then you aren't going to be satisfied.

EDIT: BTW, since you have a Twinhan 1027, I wonder if you could try TSREADER to see if it works with that card, ie COOL.STF .
I use TSREADER with my Twinhan 1020a cards, but was curious whether this newer Twinhan card was supported. Tsreader doesn't play video directly, but streams to other programs like VLC or over a network.

[bill190]

For some weak satellites, very fine adjustments are needed to get right on up/down and left/right. You are aiming at a spot the size of this----> O

Your dish needs to be pointed to the center of the "O" up/down and left/right. Not on the edges of the "O".

To get this accurate of an adjustment, larger and commercial satellite dishes come with a screw adjustment for elevation.

I and others have had success by adding a turnbuckle or a screw to cheap dishes so we can make fine adjustments up/down.

Here is a picture of a dish with a screw adjustment for elevation. You can turn the nut a quarter turn which moves the dish ever so slightly...
http://www.tv4rv.com/Kit2.gif

[skTheTwo]

re bill190 ahh calibration screws and Turnbuckles - that's more like my style. I'll have to check it out - Thanks

re: wejones - Sure, I'll check out TSReader.. I found something at coolstf. At first glance only TSReaderLite is free.. Still lets see. Give me a week or so, unless its urgent.

So, I tuned to 105W as my South Satellite, got signal and quality and a channel scan with several channels found on both MT and DVBDream. I did things as per the manuals so that MT knows what the "start" position on the motor is, by assumption I suppose and it moved the dish to various spots further West and I always got fair(70) to good(90) levels and 50 to 92 quality at various satellites. It scanned many channels in at these various satellites but curiously for a satellite like 123W EchoStar 9 I repeatedly got " no channels found" at all the transponders. As per lyngstat there had better be los of channels there.. I got high level and quality at 123W so that's not it surely..

meantime, my alltime favorite free channel "hope" on 101W isn't showing any pictures.. High signal level and quality but no picture ! Could be the software I suppose.

Thanks for the advice..

-K

[skTheTwo]

Replying to my own prior reply, I rebooted and picture on the Hope Channel came on fine. The problem with "NO Channels found" on a crowded satellite like
121 W also went away. I found lots of channels there. I continued scanning the range and my lowest satellite is 87 West it seems, the highest one I looked
at just fine was 123W. I didn't bother looking for anything past that since its either uninteresting ( Hughes feeds?) or C band or circulation polarization
which my ULN1 won't pick up anyway.. Right ? Or is there some known hack for using a Universal/linear LBF to receive circular signals ?
My lowest satellite is only 87W and no lower because of where I've installed it - on the 2nd floor deck of the master bedroom, with the bedroom alcove
jutting out and hiding everything below 150 magnetic ( 160 True South) from the further corner of the deck. I needed to
install way back there or else the 3 ft tall railing would get in the way of any look westward. As it is I created a raised
platform ( solid wood, 2 " thick plank pieces, 6 of them stacked ( screwed too ) on top of each other ) for the dish, so the the railing is now
So, at a future date I'll move things out into the back yard for greater satellite visibility. Heck, I learnt carpentry and DIY
skills on the path to here, so why not some concreting too. I sure as heck am NOT going to learn steeple jack skills though.
I want to make every thing more sturdy outside by adding a few more screws to the platform but I'm really scared of
upsetting everything.. This must be a common feeling in this hobby - how do you counteract it ? In computing,
the "if it works leave it alone" principle got questioned by the speed of technological change and we use something
called "continuous integration" to let us make continual incremental fixes. I suppose I'll apply that thought pattern here too
Any other ideas ?
My next tasks after TSReader I think are:
1. get a circular polarization LNB and fit that into the setup so that more channels can be picked up.
2. Speed up the channel change. Heck, those DISH receivers with poxy 486 chips ( I think) are so fast.. My dual core
machine shouldn't been a constraint so I'll have to hack into the software. Similar things like recording, wiping out the
ad portions, xxyyzzz and so on come to mind but those are all in the s/w arena.
3. Anything cute or smart I can do in the dish/satellite hardware side of things ? A C band dish has to wait till I move
out of into the mountains.. I'd like to get over this challenge of having all those satellites hovering over Europe ( particularly
the Brit footprint - I"m ex-Brit ) but inaccessible to us. Any "hopping" / bouncing/ mirroring ideas ? Seems far fetched I know but still.
O yeah.. about the declination. I estimate that the value that worked is closer to 25 that it is to 23, so wejones you are
absolutely correct.
Also my thoughts that only a low sensitivity setting squeal is valid is incorrent. During my afternoon
peaking session, I simply couldn't get the setting below the halfway mark, so was giving up, and took out the meter that was
inline between the LNB and the motor( didn't want to leave it outside in 100 degree temperatures ). out of habit reconnected
everything and since it was reconnected thought what the heck, see what's happening on the PC.. and wouldyabelieve it
I got a great signal, level and quality and its been like that since..
Thanks for listening.
-K

[bill190]

You are doing *fine* if you can't adjust the coax attached signal meter below halfway. This means you are dead on and have done an excellent job of aligning your dish.

Good work!

Notes: My coax attached signal meter has an additional level adjustment on the back. I have never fiddled with this. I figure if the meter is peaked, I am doing pretty good on my aiming.

Also I go by the needle reading, not the sound.

Then if you are using a prime focus dish, you can make further elevation adjustments or check your elevation by moving the dish to where you just begin to get the satellite.

For example you are aiming your dish at a satellite and can get readings inside of this circle you are pointing the dish at ----> O.

So say you are in the center of the circle (left/right) and the meter is peaked and will not go below halfway. You can move your dish a few clicks left or a few clicks right and be more toward the edge of that circle.

Now you will be getting a weaker signal from the sat and can adjust the signal meter to halfway. And you can then press up on the dish with your hand (lightly) and see if you get a stronger signal. Or press down on the dish and see if you get a stronger signal. If the signal gets worse up or down, then your elevation adjustment is perfect (in center up/down).

Note that it is very tricky trying the above with an offset dish. When you press up on the dish, you may actually be making the dish move left or right instead of moving straight up or down. So it is possible you are say moving the dish closer to the center of the circle and this would give you a stronger signal. So be sure, when pressing with your hand to check the elevation, that you are in fact making the dish move upwards or downwards.

Anyway it sounds like you have done a fine job adjusting your dish. And as they say... "If it works, don't fix it!"

[skTheTwo]

Originally Posted by wejones

EDIT: BTW, since you have a Twinhan 1027, I wonder if you could try TSREADER to see if it works with that card, ie COOL.STF .
I use TSREADER with my Twinhan 1020a cards, but was curious whether this newer Twinhan card was supported. Tsreader doesn't play video directly, but streams to other programs like VLC or over a network.

OK I downloaded TSReaderLite from COOLStf, installed it, at startup I used the control key to force it to ask me what the source was. There are 9 Twinhan devices in their list - I tried all 9 of them including the 1020, 1020dss. 1030, and 8VSB and noTune ( But there was no 1027, nor a generic device like BDA ). All 9 of them gave the message:

"The source you selected failed to initialize. Either the device you selected is missing or not installed correctly."

After that I did go back to dvbdream to ensure that everything was still working and thus removed the possibilty from my mind that perhaps the message really did mean there was something wrong with the card rather than simply assuming that the problem is that none of the available drivers are compatible with the Twinhan 1027.

-K

[wejones]

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

OK I downloaded TSReaderLite from COOLStf, installed it, at startup I used the control key to force it to ask me what the source was. There are 9 Twinhan devices in their list - I tried all 9 of them including the 1020, 1020dss. 1030, and 8VSB and noTune ( But there was no 1027, nor a generic device like BDA ). All 9 of them gave the message:

"The source you selected failed to initialize. Either the device you selected is missing or not installed correctly."

After that I did go back to dvbdream to ensure that everything was still working and thus removed the possibilty from my mind that perhaps the message really did mean there was something wrong with the card rather than simply assuming that the problem is that none of the available drivers are compatible with the Twinhan 1027.

-K

Thanks. That's good to know. I think TSREADER checks the card to see if it is one it recognizes, and it didn't find one. I think that if one would have worked, that it would have been the plain 1020 one. In the past, when Twinhan went from 1020a to 102g, Rod quickly added capability for the new card, so I think there wasn't much difference between the cards, but I guess that either he hasn't gotten a chance to try this new card, or perhaps it is significantly different. The fact that those other programs recognize it though makes me think that the cards must be very similar, so hopefully he'll add this source.
Thanks.

[skTheTwo]

We had the usual late afternoon thunderstorm here today - high winds and so on and my installation stood up to the challenge ! I've obviously made it pretty steady..

I've caught the bug of the hobby it seems - I've gone and ordered a INVACOM QPH-031 ( QPH31) LNBF since I want to see whats on the circular polarization signals as well as the linear ones. Based on the manuals that came with the other gear and having checked INVACOM's website I'm not too hopeful that I'll get great documentation on how to connect up my set up - and I want to avoid any obvious pitfalls.

My configuration is going to be the QPH31 and a motor and a DISEQC switch ( I think I need one, right ?) feeding into a single Twinhan 1027 card, controlled by MyTheatre and/or dvbdream.

My reading of stuff in this forum suggests that I should connect 1 Linear and 1 circular to 2 ports on the DISEQC switch. The output( receiver end ) of the DISEQC switch should feed the motor LNBF input and the Receiver output of the motor should go into the card.. Right ?

Stated in the reverse direction, there will be 1 cable coming out of the Twinhan card - that will go into the sg2100 motor into the socket labelled receiverr. The output from the motor ( the LNBF port ) will feed the receiver input of the diseqc switch two of the ports of the DISEQC switch will feed the linear and circular ports of the QPH 31 LNBF - So it will be:

TWINHAN CARD ---->MOTOR---->DISEQC Switch===>2 ports on QPH31

Does this seem right ?

Thanks,
-K

[wejones]

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

We had the usual late afternoon thunderstorm here today - high winds and so on and my installation stood up to the challenge ! I've obviously made it pretty steady..

I've caught the bug of the hobby it seems - I've gone and ordered a INVACOM QPH-031 ( QPH31) LNBF since I want to see whats on the circular polarization signals as well as the linear ones. Based on the manuals that came with the other gear and having checked INVACOM's website I'm not too hopeful that I'll get great documentation on how to connect up my set up - and I want to avoid any obvious pitfalls.

My configuration is going to be the QPH31 and a motor and a DISEQC switch ( I think I need one, right ?) feeding into a single Twinhan 1027 card, controlled by MyTheatre and/or dvbdream.

My reading of stuff in this forum suggests that I should connect 1 Linear and 1 circular to 2 ports on the DISEQC switch. The output( receiver end ) of the DISEQC switch should feed the motor LNBF input and the Receiver output of the motor should go into the card.. Right ?

Stated in the reverse direction, there will be 1 cable coming out of the Twinhan card - that will go into the sg2100 motor into the socket labelled receiverr. The output from the motor ( the LNBF port ) will feed the receiver input of the diseqc switch two of the ports of the DISEQC switch will feed the linear and circular ports of the QPH 31 LNBF - So it will be:

TWINHAN CARD ---->MOTOR---->DISEQC Switch===>2 ports on QPH31

Does this seem right ?

Thanks,
-K

Yes, that should do it.

[bill190]

Originally Posted by skTheTwo

...TWINHAN CARD ---->MOTOR---->DISEQC Switch===>2 ports on QPH31...

Correct. And then the diseqc switch would have LNB 1, LNB 2, LNB 3, and LNB 4. On my receiver (not Twinhan) to use LNB 1, I set it to Diseqc 1.0/LNB 1.

Then when I am first setting up a system for the first time. I make a direct connection to the LNB to be sure everything is working OK, then after initial testing, I install the switch.

Doing one thing at a time makes troubleshooting easier.

[skTheTwo]

While I wait for the QPH LNB to arrive, I've put the DISEQC switch inline and tested things. I connected it to Port #1. Both DVBDream and MYTheatre worked fine. MyTheatre contined to control the motor fine, DVBDream also continued to be able to control the motor. I had to follow the instructions for Mytheatre that are in their forums carefully to make it work; with DVBDream it didn't matter whether I said NO DISEQC switch or yes DISEQC Switch with satellites on Port 1.

I then tried the ULN1 on Port #2. MyTheatre continued to work just fine so long as I followed the instructions carefully in setting it up wioth 1 quirk. DVBDream fails whatever I try, including incorporating raw DISEQC commands in the satellite definitions.

The one quirk is that after the PC has been turned off overnight - about 6 hours - things don't work( NO signal). What makes it work seems to be to go to the DISEQC switch, disconnect the cable from Port #2, wait a few seconds, connect it up again and when I check on the PC things are fine. I won't speculate why this is happening, but two days in a row is a pattern .

Short reboots of the PC do NOT cause this problem. I've restarted my machine many times, over 20 times and that hasn't caused this quirk.

This is two days in a row. Lets see if it conitnues to happen or having both Ports filled up solves things.

-K

[bill190]

Note that diseqc devices like a diseqc positioner and a diseqc switch are actually small computers which take time to power up.

So you may need to do something to send a signal to the positioner. Then the positioner is active and should be sending power to the diseqc switch.

Note that a diseqc positioner takes a lot of power to operate and may remove power from devices down the line like diseqc switches and LNB's while it is moving.

After moving positioner, may want to try sending a signal to the diseqc switch to switch it. Then switch it back again.

Also this is software stuff controlling the diseqc stuff. There can be bugs which do not control the diseqc things like they should.

Here is the actual diseqc specifications for various devices. This may help you to understand what is going on...
(Scroll down page 1/4 way to "DiSEqC Specifications"...)
http://www.tech-faq.com/diseqc.shtml

[skTheTwo]

re bill190 - Thanks for that link to the spec for DISEQC 1.2 ( and 2.0 ) commands - I now do know more of what's going on in the comms between the PC+card and the devices down the line. I'm do now give the units more time to initialize and so on and haven't been unplugging the DISEQC switch every morning after the first two days.

Meantime, the QPH031 arrived - it didn't have "which way is up" or which way is 0 degree skew, marking on it, unlike the ULN01, which did have such markings to help me set up things for skew ( for ME, there is a satellite dead south of me, at 105 so the reference skew is 0 degree skew. Its easy to guess "heavy end down" but I hate guessing. So I used the meter, which suggested sideways was best - but I could not believe somebody would design something like that - it didn't make sense.. so I installed it with heavy end down as 0 skew.
Skew matters much more for linear polarization satellites I'm told - when it came to giving the LOF values to the software, again no numbers on the QPH021 or in the 1 page guide- the ULN1 has something nicely labelled LOF 9.75/10.6 Ghz.

Most people in the forums suggest 10750000 as LOF1 for standard linear - that didn't work for me - what did work was LOF1= 9750000, and LOF2=10750000 - Strange but there it goes.. I had read up on the mapping process that goes on with these LOF1 and the QPH031 has its range given as 1075/11.25ghz.

The circular polarity LOF setting of 11250000 worked just fine.
The MyTheatre software controls the motor just fine and also the DISEQC switch to switch to different polarity inputs from the QPH031.
DVBDream is still unable to control the motor or the switch - but setting ti to no switch lets me watch anyth