Dish Fine Tunning Question

[gopoc]

Hello everybody,

As I stated previously I am now able to track the Clark belt visible to my area. I can get birds starting at 30 degrees to 129 degress with Q signals between 25 to 100. On every bird no matter the location if I use USALS to point the dish I have to move the dish EAST maybe 1-2 degrees to get maximum Q signal. Why and how do I adjust this? Will this be fixed if I move the dish eastward 1-2 degrees on the motor's shaft only? Thank you in advance.

[rainman]

it would be easier to change the sat locations in your receiver by 1to 2 degrees for example set IA5 to 95 degrees instead of 97 degrees.

[elgemcdlf]

I would start by moving the entire assembly east 1 degree on the mast. Then repeak my south sat. At that point go to the furthest western sat you can see and gently push up on the dish, then pull down. Did signal change? If so note which way increased signal. Now go all the way out east and do the same thing. Did you receive opposite results? If so move the entire assembly on the mast in the direction of pushing up increased signal. Repeak south sat and check again. Repeat this process until pushing up and pulling down cause a decrease in signal. This means your dish is centered on your south sat.

At this point you now need to check all your sats for signal levels. Adjust only dish and motor elevation at this point to achieve optimum signal. In basic concept dish elevation shapes your arc. Broad/flat or high center. Motor elevation sets where in the sky you are looking. If you are tracking that broad of an arc at this point you are not far off so small movements.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by rainman

it would be easier to change the sat locations in your receiver by 1to 2 degrees for example set IA5 to 95 degrees instead of 97 degrees.

Rather than changing all the sats, I think I would try changing your home longitude. This will have the same effect as changing the sat locations, but will do it all in one step, rather than having to change 50 satellites..

Originally Posted by elgemcdlf

I would start by moving the entire assembly east 1 degree on the mast. Then repeak my south sat. At that point go to the furthest western sat you can see and gently push up on the dish, then pull down. Did signal change? ..... etc, etc...

THis is almost certainly not necessary, and a probably a waste of time. If you are tracking from 30 to 129, and every satellite is off in the same direction, and can be corrected by running the motor a few clicks, then you are NOT out of alignment, and making changes to the alignment will not help, and may make things worse. What is described here is a case of just being out of sync, ie the alignment of the mount is OK, and the dish is following the arc, but the motor is just mixed up with respect to where it is along the arc.
In theory, USALS shouldn't get out of sync, however the motor itself can be out of sync. Ie if it doesn't know where it's zero position is, then when you tell it to go to zero, it will be at the wrong point in the arc, and when you tell it to go to any point in the arc, it will be off. My motor is off by about 2 degrees, when you tell it to go to zero.
I would really recommend just changing the home longitude setting in the receiver as mentioned above, and then seeing if USALS will take the dish to the sats reliably. If it does, then I'd leave it at that. It is also possible, that you can check to see if the goto-zero command takes the dish to it's zero position (go out to dish and see if it is centered). If not, manually move the dish to it's zero position, and do a hard reset to the motor. This might (I haven't tried this, because I have already stored all my sat positions in the diseqC 1.2 system, and use that, so I'm not positive that this will work) function like a resync command.
If one of the above still doesn't solve the problem, then yes, you might go through all the fine tuning steps, if it is even possible from your location, although my tendency would just be to start over and do the 2 step alignment right in the first place rather than the 30 step alignment.
But really, if you are tracking from 30 to 129, your dish is aligned OK, and I really wouldn't mess with it, unless you enjoy tinkering.
But that's just my opinion.

[rainman]

thank's Bill that would make alot more sense to adjust the longitude.

[elgemcdlf]

Originally Posted by wejones

Rather than changing all the sats, I think I would try changing your home longitude. This will have the same effect as changing the sat locations, but will do it all in one step, rather than having to change 50 satellites..



THis is almost certainly not necessary, and a probably a waste of time. If you are tracking from 30 to 129, and every satellite is off in the same direction, and can be corrected by running the motor a few clicks, then you are NOT out of alignment, and making changes to the alignment will not help, and may make things worse. What is described here is a case of just being out of sync, ie the alignment of the mount is OK, and the dish is following the arc, but the motor is just mixed up with respect to where it is along the arc.
In theory, USALS shouldn't get out of sync, however the motor itself can be out of sync. Ie if it doesn't know where it's zero position is, then when you tell it to go to zero, it will be at the wrong point in the arc, and when you tell it to go to any point in the arc, it will be off. My motor is off by about 2 degrees, when you tell it to go to zero.
I would really recommend just changing the home longitude setting in the receiver as mentioned above, and then seeing if USALS will take the dish to the sats reliably. If it does, then I'd leave it at that. It is also possible, that you can check to see if the goto-zero command takes the dish to it's zero position (go out to dish and see if it is centered). If not, manually move the dish to it's zero position, and do a hard reset to the motor. This might (I haven't tried this, because I have already stored all my sat positions in the diseqC 1.2 system, and use that, so I'm not positive that this will work) function like a resync command.
If one of the above still doesn't solve the problem, then yes, you might go through all the fine tuning steps, if it is even possible from your location, although my tendency would just be to start over and do the 2 step alignment right in the first place rather than the 30 step alignment.
But really, if you are tracking from 30 to 129, your dish is aligned OK, and I really wouldn't mess with it, unless you enjoy tinkering.
But that's just my opinion.

And once again we disagree. My logic is simple. As you move either east or west the dish not only points in that direction it also climbs in either a positive or negative value along with skew of the lnbf. This is not a big dish So as your dish needs to be actually pointing either lower or higher and to the left of where it is stopping but skew is correct where you stopped optimum signal would be achieved following the path I layed out.

There really is no reason to "Kentucky Windage" the settings. Another potential problem that had not occured to me previously is the mast being tilted 2 degrees or so to the west. That would be where I would look first.

[pmb1010]

I admit I use the "kentucky windage" method more than I should.
It got very windy here, and something is out of whack.

Rather than drag the TV, box, remote, extension power cord up to the slippery snow covered roof -- I adjust my Long a degree or 2 up or down. If it hits I move to 72 and 107 and see how things are. Usually, I'm back up and running. It'll stay like that until spring when it's more condusive to not freezing my butt off to do some work to the alignment.

[rainman]

Kentucky windage now that is something i know a little about.LOL

[wejones]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

I admit I use the "kentucky windage" method more than I should.
It got very windy here, and something is out of whack.

Rather than drag the TV, box, remote, extension power cord up to the slippery snow covered roof -- I adjust my Long a degree or 2 up or down. If it hits I move to 72 and 107 and see how things are. Usually, I'm back up and running.....

If you can get "back up and running" that way, then you're not in bad shape. However one part of this that I haven't figured out yet, is that there is a DiseqC 1.2 command to do a "re-sync", which is supposed to work just like the resync command found on most big dish IRDs. Ie if you were using DiseqC 1.2, it should be relatively quick to get back in sync. However there doesn't seem to be a similar command on the USALS side of these FTA receivers, and the way most of these receivers work, there isn't any way to use the DiseqC 1.2 resync command with USALS, because at least my receiver tries to send the dish to where DiseqC thinks the sat is, whenever I switch from USALS to DiseqC, so I can't use the resync command with USALS.

I thought I had figured out a way to fool the receiver once, by switching the COAX between two receivers, one set on USALS, and one set on DiseqC 1.2, and sending the dish to a sat via USALS with one receiver, then used the 2nd receiver to peak the sat, and do a resync, then switch back to the USALS receiver...... however I think I did something wrong, and it didn't work. Anyway, it seems like perhaps the "re-sync" command only affects the DiseqC 1.2 stored positions, and the only way to re-sync USALS is by a full hardware reset (with the dish manually set at zero), but I haven't tried that yet, because I didn't want to lose my stored DiseqC 1.2 positions.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

Rather than drag the TV, box, remote, extension power cord up to the slippery snow covered roof -- ..

Makes me unhappy, because we haven't gotten much snow this year. :-( We had snow on our roof for a while, but it has mostly melted, and no sign of additional snow in the forecasts. My poor snowmobiles are just sitting there waiting for snow. :-(
However, the reason for this reply, is that the idea of going up on a roof with snow on it reminded me that most years, we get enough snow, that it slides off the metal roof of our garage, and piles up about 7' deep where it gets so deep that no more snow can slide off the roof. A couple years ago, I actually drove one of my snowmobiles up on the roof of the garage. I wasn't brave enough to go up to the top though. But this post made me think about using a snowmobile to get to a sat dish, if I'd install one on the roof. I'd never do it, but it would make an interesting picture.

[rainman]

Originally Posted by wejones

Makes me unhappy, because we haven't gotten much snow this year. :-( We had snow on our roof for a while, but it has mostly melted, and no sign of additional snow in the forecasts. My poor snowmobiles are just sitting there waiting for snow. :-(
However, the reason for this reply, is that the idea of going up on a roof with snow on it reminded me that most years, we get enough snow, that it slides off the metal roof of our garage, and piles up about 7' deep where it gets so deep that no more snow can slide off the roof. A couple years ago, I actually drove one of my snowmobiles up on the roof of the garage. I wasn't brave enough to go up to the top though. But this post made me think about using a snowmobile to get to a sat dish, if I'd install one on the roof. I'd never do it, but it would make an interesting picture.

that would be a interesting way to clean the snow from your dish Bill.LOL

[gopoc]

The mast is not tilted West or East as I used 3 different tools to ensure that it is plumb. The motor goes to ZERO when told to do so therefore I believe that it is not out of sync. It seems that I have the wrong Longitude value for my location as I am getting different values depending on which source I use. I checked my Longitude value again using different sources - maps, GPS, online - and in the end I changed the USALS Longitude value from the initial 73.1W to 73.4W applying the correction to all satellites from one location in the system. Now I get maximum signal on all birds from 30W to 129W without having to adjust East. I guess it was not 1-2 degrees as I initially estimated but rather a minor 0.3 degree adjustment. Thank you again for your help.

[rainman]

great to here glad you got it up and going.