Can only find two birds, sg2100+winegard 30''

[zcorez]

Hi buddy,
I'm living on the top floor in an apartment with a balcony facing north. So I set up a 10 foot long pole vertically in the balcony in order to get a clear view of the sky. On the of the pole, a winegard 30'' dish and sg2100 are hooked up. Currently I can only find the following two birds:

79.0°W AMC 5
95.0°W Galaxy 3C

My location: 40.42 N, 80.05 W
I'm using AMC5 to calibrate true south. The track definitely goes off the right arc, but I'm not sure where to look at in this case. I have no access to the roof, plus it's dangerous to sitting on the edge of the roof to do all the adjustment, I have to put down the pole and everything else together, do the tunning "offline" in the balcony... sigh.... What else alignment can be done? And here are more questions:
1. What's the correct offset value for this winegard 30'' dish?
(Manufacture says 24 degree, and one of the online review says 21.5 degree, which one is accurate??)..

2. I'm using computer with a Twinhan 1020 dvb card as my receiver, and running the latestProgDVB. DeseqU seems working, but SOMETIMES it didn't seem responding when I tried to move dish by using "goto degree". Did anyone experience the same?

Thanks a lot for your valuble insight..

[dtsexpert]

1, Contac manufacture for the offset value. Dish offset degree only help you to get close to correct elevation. You still need to tune the dish to get lock on true south. In other words, you can set up h-h mount without knowing the dish offset value. Set the h-h mount elevetion at your latitude degree, then tune the dish to get lock on truesouth. If elevation needs to be adjusted, only adjust the DISH elevation, don't touch the h-h mount elevation.
2. Setting up a h-h mount with a DVB card is way much more difficult. In fact I never recommend anyone doing so. If you have a receiver, use it to tune the h-h mount. If you don't have any other receiver, try to borrow one from friend. If you have to use DVB card to set up h-h mount, I will say good luck...:-(
Michael

Originally Posted by zcorez

Hi buddy,
I'm living on the top floor in an apartment with a balcony facing north. So I set up a 10 foot long pole vertically in the balcony in order to get a clear view of the sky. On the of the pole, a winegard 30'' dish and sg2100 are hooked up. Currently I can only find the following two birds:

79.0°W AMC 5
95.0°W Galaxy 3C

My location: 40.42 N, 80.05 W
I'm using AMC5 to calibrate true south. The track definitely goes off the right arc, but I'm not sure where to look at in this case. I have no access to the roof, plus it's dangerous to sitting on the edge of the roof to do all the adjustment, I have to put down the pole and everything else together, do the tunning "offline" in the balcony... sigh.... What else alignment can be done? And here are more questions:
1. What's the correct offset value for this winegard 30'' dish?
(Manufacture says 24 degree, and one of the online review says 21.5 degree, which one is accurate??)..

2. I'm using computer with a Twinhan 1020 dvb card as my receiver, and running the latestProgDVB. DeseqU seems working, but SOMETIMES it didn't seem responding when I tried to move dish by using "goto degree". Did anyone experience the same?

Thanks a lot for your valuble insight..

[zcorez]

Thanks for your reply and you are very right.
The software "progdvb" I'm using can't lock weak signal fast enough. When the dish pointing to a sat with 20% quality, progdvb doesn't always lock it up and shows up correct quality. My workaroud is too reselect the transponder from the list in the "scan transponder" screen everytime when the dish is instructed to move a certain amount of steps.. This helped me a lot and picked up more birds last night. Esp in my case, there is a tower nearby, signal from satellite is buried in the backgroud noises, it's hard to tell if the dish is pointing to the right place by looking at the peak of the signal strength.

After a bird found, tweak a little bit to get the best quality then store current position into the HH motor. This is more accurate than using "goto degree".

[zcorez]

As dtsexpert pointed out, all those values on the dish manual are not dependable, so is the marked degrees on the back. This makes things more complicated.. It's better to get an angle finder and tweak the dish on site. I have no way to reach the dish, which is mounted high above the roof on the top of a long pole....

[zcorez]

some useful info..

http://www.satsig.net/polmount.htm

[zcorez]

my pole is not perfectly plumb, 1 degree makes a dfference, without any other adjustment, dish can track the arc perfectly now..