Newbie has success

[pvcrr]

Newbie has success
I thought that I was going to have a hard time but I finally figured it out.
The first problem I had was that no matter what I did I could not get my quality meter to go above zero percent until I figured out that while I was sitting outside trying to align the dish with a really long cable(75') that it will not work so I substituted a shorter cable, went to IA5 and BOOM my quality went up to 90%.
The second problem I had to solve was that my dish was not tracking all the satellites along the arc. I thought that I had not found my true south marker correctly so I kept playing around with that until I put a bubble level on top of the pole I was using to supoort the dish to see if it was perfectly level which it was not. Not bad but not right on so when I made it perfectly level according to the level on the pole now my dish can track almost perfectly with all my meters at least 80-90%.
Two lessons learned the hard way
1. Do not use a long cable it will not work use as short a cable as practical
2. Make sure that whatever you are using for support is perfectly level not only from the sides but on top as well

Just thought I would pass on these lessons learned the hard way =D> =D>

[pmb1010]

Thats great to hear.

But, I think there must be a problem with your 75 foot cable.
I have 100 feet of (good quality) RG-6 and it works great.

If you have the thinner RG-59 TV cable, or poor quality RG-6, it might not be rated for the high frequencies needed and of course cause all kinds of difficulty. Also a bad install of connector even on the best of cable will cause what you experienced.

[bobkat]

I must agree with pmb1010. There was a problem with your 75 foot cable; probably a bad connector. You are 100% correct about the level mast. This is crucial to getting signal. Anyway, congrats on getting everything up and running. =D>

kat

[pvcrr]

Hi
I tested the cable for continuity on the center conductor as well as on the shield and my results were as follows.
The continuity test on the center conductor yielded a result that displayed no signal being able to go down the cable.
When I tested the connection between the shield and center conductor I got a dead short which tells me that I had a bad connector that was installed at the factory as this was a install kit(RCA) that I bought off of Ebay.
I will install a good connector and let you know what happens but I think that you were correct in telling me about the bad connector.
Thanks again for helping a newbie out.

[Salukian]

I'm here to tell ya... the mast MUST BE PLUMB!

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