A couple Fortec Lifetime / USALS questions???

[wejones]

I've been fooling around with this SG2100/90cm combo for a few days now, and a couple things are confusing me.
I've hooked the thing up to my old Fortec Lifetime.

(1) On my Lifetime, in the USALS setup, there is a "STORE" button. It was my understanding that in USALS, that nothing is actually "saved" on the motor. Is this the case? Ie is the "STORE" only saving my lat/lon on the receiver? \

(2) In the Lifetime Antenna Setup menu, there is a list of satellites. It "looks" to me like just scrolling through this list might be causing my motor to move. I haven't verified this, but if I watch the signal meter as I scroll, if I stop on a sat, it looks like the signal meter continues to change for a while after I stop on that sat. I can't think of a reason for the signal meter to be changing if the dish isn't moving, however I can't beleive that the receiver would be telling the motor to move just by scrolling through the sat list, without even clicking on one of the sats. Can someone verify just when the Lifetime actually is supposed to tell the motor to move? Ie it seems like in the Setup menu, it shouldn't actually move to a sat unless I actually select the sat.

(3) Often, when I use the "SAT" menu, and select a satellite and then a channel, the receiver will give what appears to be an error message. It says something like "Positoner Setting!!!" Sometimes this error message never goes away, even if I change channels, although sometimes it eventually stops blinking. Usually, if it locks on a channel, this doesn't happen. To get it to stop blinking like this, I usually have to go into the Setup / USALS menu and tell it to go to that sat, and/or sometimes I go to reference and back to the sat. Any idea what this Positioner Setting message is trying to tell me???

(4) Everything was working somewhat as expected, until once I decided to try to attempt to tweak a satellite using the Diseqc "nudge" function. I nudged several times east and west, then I hit the go to zero function, and used the USALS to return to the original sat position. After doing this, I've had nothing but trouble getting this thing to return to previously found satellite positions. Is there any chance that by playing with the Diseqc commands, that I somehow changed the settings that USALS would be using??? Would re-setting the motor and/or wiping the receiver back to factory defaults have any effect on this at this point? Ie again, it was my understanding that USALS didn't store anything on the motor, and just went a pre-defined amount from the zero position, so what I"m observing doesn't make any sense.
I may just reset all these things and start over anyway, because it all worked nicely the first time I did it.

(5) In the DiseqC 1.2 commands there is a resync command. If I issue this command, does it have any effect on the function of USALS, or does it only have meaning when in 1.2 mode???

(6) Also, again, more of a Lifetime question.... most of my stored satellites have not yet been set up for USALS, but instead have the positioner turned OFF, and many of them actually have zero entered for the sat longitude. Can I assume that the positioner will just sit at whatever position it was last on, when I attempt to tune one of these sats? Again, it seemed like my signal bar was doing strange things when it shouldn't, and I was afraid that maybe the motor was trying to go back to it's zero position or something.

I can probably answer all of the above questions by taking my receiver and TV back out to the dish again, but I was hoping to avoid this if possible.

Finally, is anyone out there, who has both USALS AND DiseqC 1.2 capability actually using 1.2 ? Is anyone who uses USALS using some of the 1.2 features ? It seems to me that while USALS is more user friendly, that DiseqC 1.2 seems to be more capable. Also, it seems like some of the features like the "nudge" would be handy to use, even if using USALS, but after it seemed to mess me up, I'm afraid to try it again. Anyway, I'm tempted to forget about using this USALS thing, and just use 1.2, however I have a question about that. Ie if I use USALS to locate a satellite, can I then switch to 1.2 and STORE that position, or do I have to goto the satellite using 1.2 for it to know where it is???

Thanks.

[reho33]

I bought an SG2100 motor. My first attempt out of the box .....it worked! Can't get the whole arc as it is n a temporary location but I use DiseqC 1.2 I actally prefer it to USALS. With Diseqc you can "nudge" the setting and then save it . With USALS if you are off by just a hair, you don't work. I tried both and Diseqc is much better. I have a Lifetime Classic NA. I set the elevation on the motor to match my elevation 41. Then the dish angle is 30-declination - 23.6 for me. Pointed to SBS6 11741 6616 , moved the entire assy to peak. The motor finds everything in the arc. I hear stories of so many that just can't get a motorized setup going for anything but between you guys and lots of reading I was able to pull it off the first time THANKS!!!

[pmb1010]

you can "nudge" in USALS by putting in a value for the sat above or below the true number.
Example

97.0W

put in 96.9W, 96.8W and so on to nudge east
put in 97.1W, 97.2W and so on to nudge west

I have never been sucessful with mix of USALS and 1.2 on same setup. Things got "confused" as you have noted. I use the above trick. I have used both, and prefer USALS.

on your #2, yep mine does that too. VERY annoying.

[elgemcdlf]

I prefer USALS. I have found a minor adjustment to the dish will get me dead on the sat with higher signal than trying to "nudge". While i can get it "nudging", the dish adjustment solves it all.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by reho33

...... but I use DiseqC 1.2 I actally prefer it to USALS. With Diseqc you can "nudge" the setting and then save it . With USALS if you are off by just a hair, you don't work. I tried both and Diseqc is much better. ......

THanks. I'm starting to lean toward the 1.2 too.

Originally Posted by pmb1010

you can "nudge" in USALS by putting in a value for the sat above or below the true number.
Example

97.0W

put in 96.9W, 96.8W and so on to nudge east
put in 97.1W, 97.2W and so on to nudge west

I tried doing this once, but for some reason it wouldn't take my entries, but perhaps I had the receiver locked up for some other reason.
But this seems to be OK once you know how far off you are, but doesn't seem quite as handy as just being able to nudge it little by little while searching.

Originally Posted by pmb1010

......

on your #2, yep mine does that too. VERY annoying.

Weird. I wonder why they do that?
Probably wouldn't be quite so bad if I had my sats in order of longitude. I get the feeling that when I was scrolling through the sats that dish must have been going back and forth like a windshield wiper.
I'm half tempted to just temporarily activate either USALS or 1.2 whenever I want to go to a sat, then disable it after I'm done. I'm probably just going to leave this sitting on AMC3 for PBS most of the time anyway.


Thanks.

[pmb1010]

Originally Posted by wejones

been going back and forth like a windshield wiper.

This gave me the laugh of the day... how true though.

[satnutwillb]

So,wejones, does that seem to be harder to settup than a big dish? I'm just thinking that once analog goes away,I might be less likely to fine tune on mine,because if I get it off the arc any,with no analog left,it would probably be just as hard to find where you're at than it is to just gun for the old Doc or another known analog ch.to find out where you are.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by satnutwillb

So,wejones, does that seem to be harder to settup than a big dish? I'm just thinking that once analog goes away,I might be less likely to fine tune on mine,because if I get it off the arc any,with no analog left,it would probably be just as hard to find where you're at than it is to just gun for the old Doc or another known analog ch.to find out where you are.

I know I've gone back and forth re whether big dish is easier or little dish is easier. I think that you have to be more precise with the big dish since you're dealing with tenths of a degree rather than whole degrees or half degrees, but since there are all sorts of nice surfaces to put an inclinometer on, plus the fact that the mounts are much higher quality, and can be adjusted by turning bolts, etc rather than by lifting the whole assembly, etc... I think I do find it easier to align my big dish.
It's really exactly the same principle, and the manufacturers COULD have made it easier by providing better mounts. It's pretty hard to move these things by small amounts. I've been trying to think of a way to provide some kind of screw adjustment for this little mount, but I don't see any easy way to do it.
I'm not terribly worried about analog going away, because the actual alignment can be done with a hand held signal meter. Finding the sats along the arc is the main challenge, and that isn't too hard as long as you have a known transponder to look for.
I've been able to find a lot of sats without even looking for a signal, just by making a spreadsheet that calculates the required counts to go to a specific longitude, then run the dish till I get to the right number of actuator counts. Works pretty well. Sort of like USALS for the big dish.

But yeah, I know what you mean about the "Old Doc" thing. Isn't he dead now, and yet still useful for alignment.

[rainman]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

This gave me the laugh of the day... how true though.

yeah I agree this is a very annoying thing with the ultra.

[wejones]

Just as an update, I finally got fed up with USALS, except as a way to get close. Mainly I'm fed up with the way the Fortec Lifetime does USALS.

I think I mentioned above, that USALS wasn't reproducable, ie I'd go to a sat once, go to another one, then when I went back to the first it would be off. I tried using the DiseqC 1.2 "NUDGE" thing, but that was a disaster, because most of my sats were created by "re-naming" un-used sat, which meant that their DiseqC 1.2 settings were way off, or they were created as "new" sats, meaning that they were set at zero. Both of these things meant that when I went to "Nudge" the dish, as soon as I'd go into DiseqC 1.2, the Lifetime would take the dish somewhere else, typically over the atlantic to the dish limits or back to zero. Of course, at first I didn't realize it was doing this.

Anyway, I decided to switch to DiseqC 1.2 . However that meant that I had to find all the sats manually, and as mentioned in another thread, I was having problems with that because my LNBF was off frequency. Finally, I decided that the best way to do it was to "find" the sat with USALS on my Lifetime, then switch the cable over to my Twinhan, and use either TSREADER and/or THMOVER to fine tune and then save the current position via DiseqC 1.2 into my 2100 motor.

Still a slow process, but it seems to work. And so far I've VERY happy with the way DiseqC 1.2 works. I've been going back and forth between sats previously saved today, and it's been hitting them every time, unlike the results I had been getting with USALS. I guess it's possible that since I was jumping back and forth between USALS and DiseqC 1.2, that I was confusing USALS, and it's also possible that it was just the weird way that the Fortec Lifetime impliments USALS, but I like 1.2 better, so far.

[rainman]

1.2 is a lot like setting the old c band analog receivers.slow but accurate.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by rainman

1.2 is a lot like setting the old c band analog receivers.slow but accurate.

I was thinking the same thing.

[rainman]

I had to set amc 3 to get the pbs stations by using disqec 1.2 the rest is usuals on my ultra untill i find the time to fine tune my dish.