Help setting up FTA dish in Miami

[clamasl]

Hi to all,

I am a total newbie in this FTA hobby and I would like to get some help in trying to setup my system so I make the few possible mistakes, Here is my setup:

Wineguard 76" dish(DSS2076), SG2100 motor, Invacom QPH-031 C LNB and pansat 3500S receiver,
I am in Miami Latitude 25 40.164'N Longitude 80 24.510'W.

Also, I would like to know which true FTA birds I can get from my location.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[bobkat]

There are many true FTA birds available to you in Florida. Check out www.lyngsat.com and look for "FREE TV" - then select by country of origin and it will tell you what birds that channel comes off. Look at the "America" coverage chart and all the birds covering North America are listed. If that satellite covers North America then you're covered.

As for installing your equipment, read the installation section of Sadoun's website - the "Motor" and "General Tips" sections. The #1 rule is to keep the dish mast perfectly plumb.

Good luck and welcome to the hobby !!

kat

[rainman]

welcome to the forum. another thing to remember is small slow adjustments a 1/8" can loose signals.

[clamasl]

Rainman, BobKat

Thanks for the info. Let me ask you a question, you mention that 1/8" increments can make you lose your signal. I know that this could be a tedious process, but, how can you move your dish in 1/8" increments?, do you use a special tool for that, or only you hands?, If you youse your hands Ithink it would be very hard, because of the weight of the dish and motor. I am asking all these questions, because I have not received my dish yet.

[elgemcdlf]

In general theory you would mark your dish. Then move in one direction or another a half degree or so after finding signal to check if signal is better or worse. You snug mounts after move. If not correct you loosen and move again and snug and check.

[rainman]

Originally Posted by clamasl

Rainman, BobKat

Thanks for the info. Let me ask you a question, you mention that 1/8" increments can make you lose your signal. I know that this could be a tedious process, but, how can you move your dish in 1/8" increments?, do you use a special tool for that, or only you hands?, If you youse your hands Ithink it would be very hard, because of the weight of the dish and motor. I am asking all these questions, because I have not received my dish yet.

no special tools just mark your post and the motor camp that way when you move it you can see how far you have moved it.have heard of people using a seam tape glued to the pole so they could tell how far they have moved.

[lostinthewoods]

Just a little hint that might help.
When I set up my motor, I placed an additional "clamp" just below the motor mount so I could loosen up the motor clamps and rotate the assembly to get it lined up. This clamp kept the motor/dish from sliding down the mast.

This made it easy to move a little and then check my monitor for changes in signal strength. When the assembly was lined up, of course the motor clamps were tightened like they should be.

Lost

[radiobob]

Originally Posted by lostinthewoods

Just a little hint that might help.
When I set up my motor, I placed an additional "clamp" just below the motor mount so I could loosen up the motor clamps and rotate the assembly to get it lined up. This clamp kept the motor/dish from sliding down the mast.

This made it easy to move a little and then check my monitor for changes in signal strength. When the assembly was lined up, of course the motor clamps were tightened like they should be.

Lost

Darn! Wish I had thought about that one! It was especially fun trying to find the magic balance between loose enough to move side-to-side, and not loose enough to slide. Great suggestion!
-----

Clamasl:

When looking for FTA programming, don't overlook some of the "Atlantic" satellites; being in Miami you're in a great place (assuming your dish can "look" in the right direction from your house) to get a whole lot of satellites. In addition to lyngsat.com mentioned above, ftalist.com is a good resource for "what's on" and where.

When setting up your dish, I echo bobkat's advice to make sure your mast is dead-on plumb. And elgemcdlf, rainmain, and a bunch of others on this forum helped me through an especially rough installation, so I'm going to use what I learned from them to suggest that you use your receiver and TV at the dish as your primary tuning tools. You can tell more about aligning your dish from watching your signal and quality meters on the TV screen than anything else.

Good luck and happy viewing!
Bob

[ahoss2000]

I am new to FTA too, I got my dish last weekend. After installing it on temporary pole, it took me good 2-3 hours to get a signal and see some videos. All along, I was thinking I had a bad receiver. So do not be disappointed, keep trying. Also, read your receiver manual, half the battle is driving the receiver. Try to have a setup on the ground where you can sit and work for few hours. Once, you get a hang of it and find your sats, then move your dish to a fixed pole, and it will not take you long to adjust it there.

One question I want to ask the experienced folks here is that, once I set the motor elevation per Sadoun web site ( HH90 motor, motor elevation= latitude ), I never visited this adjustment again, and in all the posts I have read there is no mention of fine tuning this adjustment. With the strongest transponder on IA5, my max signal was about 73. So, I am thinking, maybe I should fine tune this adjustment. Unless when we fine tune dish elevation, then it does not matter much if motor elevation was less than a degree off. Thanks.

[rainman]

motor should be adjusted to your latitude and not moved after that.

[pmb1010]

Right, the motor elevation adjustmet should not be changed as that is based on where you are to set the arc.

Heres how to find out if you are peaked fully.
Normally, you can move the dish a little bit up or down, or side to side, by "twisting" it a little bit. Do not loosen any bolts

Be on your 75% reception signal, and just try to move the dish a couple MM up or to the side. Any improvment? If not, you are peaked on signal and adjustment of motor scale wont help.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by ahoss2000

...
One question I want to ask the experienced folks here is that, once I set the motor elevation per Sadoun web site ( HH90 motor, motor elevation= latitude ), I never visited this adjustment again, and in all the posts I have read there is no mention of fine tuning this adjustment. With the strongest transponder on IA5, my max signal was about 73. So, I am thinking, maybe I should fine tune this adjustment. Unless when we fine tune dish elevation, then it does not matter much if motor elevation was less than a degree off. Thanks.

First, relative to your "elevation=latitude" statement, I know what you're trying to say, but actually elevation = 90-latitude. I think a better way to say it is that your scale is indicated in latitude. Basically, if your scale has smaller numbers when it is aiming closer to the southern horizon, then you have an elevation. If you have smaller numbers when aimed higher in the sky, it is a latitude scale. For most accurate alignment, this latitude scale should be about 0.6 degrees greater than your latitude (0.7 deg up north, 0.5 deg down south).

"In my opinion" (I know there are opposing opinions here), if you spend a little extra time making sure that this elevation is set as accurately as possible to start, then you really should never need to touch this again. Basically, either the motor elevation or the declination (dish elevation adjustment) should be set as accurately as possible and never touched again, whichever you feel can be done most accurately. With a big dish, often the declination is easier to adjust accurately, so you'd set that, and never touch it again, but with these small dishes, the consensus is that the motor angle is most accurately set. So set that, and I recommend getting an inclinometer at the hardware store, and find a surface on your motor that is parallel to the rotation axis of the motor, and verify the scale with the inclinometer.
The combined angle of inclination and declination is set quite accurately by peaking on your southern sat, so whatever errors remain after the inclination setting will be compensated to a large degree by the declination being off a bit. Ie it will compensate perfectly for sats near south of you, and will be off a bit for sats to the extreme, but will not be off enough to matter.

Fine tuning is OK, but I really think it is best to keep your fine tuning to just one of the elevation/declination parameters, not both. Once you start changing both, things get out of control fast. If you must do fine tuning, tune your dish elevation on a sat to the south, and tune your motor's due south setting on a west sat (or east sat, but not both). But NEVER try adjusting your elevation or declination while aimed at an east or west sat. Only fine tune dish elevation while aimed south.

These small dishes have a resolution of approximately 2 degrees or even more for some of the smaller dishes. So if you are off by 1/2 degree, it's not just that you can settle for that being good enough, it's really a case that this is the best you can do, because you can't tell the difference in reception well enough for fine adjustments to be more effective. Kind of like trying to fine tune the aim of a flashlight on a wall to aim at a 1/2" circle drawn on the wall, when the flashlight has a spot of 2 or 3 inches by only measuring light intensity. Ie, what is important is not that the spot is perfectly centered in the beam of the flashlight, but as long as the circle is always within the 2" beam, that is as good as you can do, if all you have as a measuring tool is brightness on the circle.

Anyway, if you can most accurately set your motor elevation, I really would never touch that again, and if any fine tuning on southern sats is necessary, do that always with the dish elevation, just like 10 years ago, I adjusted my declination on my big dish, and I haven't touched it since. Any time my south sats get off (usually in the spring with freeze thaw cycles), I just touch up my motor elevation, which for you would be done with your dish elevation since that is the least accurately set initially.

{For more random discussion, see

http://www.megalink.net/~wejones/inst&align.html

and

http://www.megalink.net/~wejones/Small_offset_issues.html

[clamasl]

bobkat, rainman, elgemcdlf and others,

I really appreciate all the input you guys gave me, however, I am having a hard time trying to setup this motorized dish. I did what you guys recommended to do:
Have the mast or pole plumb, I setup the elevation on my motor to my lattitde which is for my zip code 33186 25.67 or 25.7, I also setup the declination angle on my dish to 30 - 4.30 = 25.7 and point my dish to my true south that I found it was 180 + 5.25 = 185.25. Now since I have a Winegard 76cm dish, I wasn't able to setup the declination angle directly, but I had to drill an additional hole in the motor mast so I could slide the dish bracket a little bit up to get the 25.7 declination angle, but nothing. Then I read somewhere that those dishes have the angle measurents in the brackets incorrectly by 10 degrees. So I am totally confused.
I have a question, since I have to setup my dish with a certain elevation, can anybody tell me how much is the elevation for my location? I use satlet.com and enter my longitude like the position of the satellite, and it gave me an elevation angle of 60.03 for the true south, can I use the inclinometer to measure this angle when my dish is pointing to the true south?, also my dish is an offset dish, am I supposed to take this into consideration when getting the elevation angle?.
Also my FTA receiver is a pansat 3500S, if i look lets say for thr Nimiq2 and select the positioner setting to usals (even though my motor does not say anything about usals, only the gotox function) what exactly do I have to press to have the satellite move to the satellite position?
I am sorry I am asking so many questions, but I am very frustrated.
Thanks in advance for your input

[ahoss2000]

I was told not to use the Nimiq2 as my south sat because it is circularly polarized. So I used AMC5 at 79W.

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Installati...stallation.htm
Once you get the motor angle set to your latitude, then follow :

• Now, adjust the dish elevation angle (Pictures 6 & 7) to peak the signal.Dish elevation angle is calculated based on the model of the HH motor you are using, as follows:

Motor ModelDish Elevation CalculationsSatcontrol SM3D12Equals = (46.5 minus declination angle)STAB Motors (HH100 & HH120)

Click here to calculate

STAB Motors (HH90)

Click here to calculate

Pansat PM900 SEquals = (46.5 minus declination angle)Moteck SG2100Equals = (30 minus declination angle)

Declination angle chart is provided HERE!

With your setup lined up to true south, select the AMC5, and the following Tp: ( from ftalist.com )

KTEL Tel Carlsbad NMSpanish11899-H 21704130 4131KTEL

After, you input your lat, and long. in your set, then choose USALS, and save setting. This will make your dish moving just a bit.

Now, play with dish elevation up or down 10 degrees. If no signal, then move your entire setup east or west 1 degree, and repeat dish elevation with 1 degree increments as above. Keep doing this for + - 10 degrees deviation from your true south while changing dish elevation. Hopefully you will find a lock. Then fine tune these two adjustments for maximum signal.

This whole setup and finding a lock takes long hours.

[portovelo]

Hello i just bought a 39 inch dish,sg2100 motor I also have a coolsat 5000 i live in Orlando fl. lat 28.5 long.81.4 what fta chanels i can get from this location .I will apreciated any help thank you

[ahoss2000]

FTA list : www.ftalist.com

I also live in Orl