Quote:
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Originally Posted by MasterChief
still no luck... I dont know what to do.  |
Chief:
Patience is the watchword of the day; the FTA
installation process can be
very frustrating, but also very rewarding. As others here will attest, I struggled with my setup for
months before everything fell into place (as it turned out, I had a bent dish which made the process
much harder).
First, do all the usual "housekeeping" things:
Make sure all connections are snug, that you're using good quality RG-6 cable (I found that some of mine wasn't designed to pass the higher frequencies used on sat receivers). I know it may seem incredibly obvious, but make sure you've connected your cables to the proper jacks on the motor and on the back of the receiver.
Recheck that your mounting pole is plumb. Use a small "torpedo" level rather than an angle-finder. I've had angle finders be off by a couple of degrees and others have reported the same thing.
Double check that what you believe to be "true south" really is--some magnetic declination maps on the web are terribly out of date; use this resource:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/geomag/jsp/Declination.jsp
to get literally "up-to-the-minute" magnetic variations. Besides the compass method, consider finding out when true local noon is. Some good resources for this task are:
http://www.netdave.com/wa0ttn/NoonCalc.asp
and,
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html
Once you know "true noon", check to see if your LNB arm points at the sun as it passes at that time. You can sight along the arm (use good eye protection to prevent retinal damage), or better yet, tie a string to LNB arm with a small weight and watch the shadow as the sun passes at true local noon. You can then set your motor to the zero reference and move the whole assembly--dish, motor, LNB to point to the estimated true south. Mark the mast and mounting bracket so you can return to this starting point.
Once you're set to what seems to be true south, you may still be off a few degrees. After you set your motor to the zero reference, if possible use USALS in your receiver to drive the motor to
IA5. If this is your "true south" satellite, the motor should only move the dish a very short distance.
Haul a small TV and your receiver out to the dish and connect it with a short length of coax cable. On your receiver's antenna setup screen, choose IA5 and pick an
active transponder (11836 V will probably be a good choice, but there are plenty of others on lyngsat.com).
Loosen the dish elevation nuts enough so you can smoothly and
s-l-o-w-l-y move the dish elevation up and down in very small increments. Watch the signal strength and quality indicators as you move the dish elevation. Even if you are still off by a few degrees, you should still see some variations in signal level (they may be slight--a percent or two); peak for maximum signal. When you're at max signal, tighten the dish elevation nuts.
Now, loosen the nuts on the motor enough so you can smoothly and
s-l-o-w-l-y move the entire motor and dish assembly from side to side in small steps. Again, watch your signal strength indicator and peak for max signal and, hopefully, quality indications.
There is interaction between all these settings and you may have to fine tune things several times to get everything solid, but barring a bad cable, faulty LNB, a sequoia in the way (or even a bent dish!), you
should be able to home in on IA5, do a satellite scan and get some channels.
Try some of these tips, and stop back and let us know what your results are. We can refine things from there.
Good luck...and remember...
patience (said by a man who was ready to throw the whole mess in the street)
.
Bob
I finally got a lock!! (UPDATE)
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