Questions about my first motorized setup

[Jim-S]

One word of advice...........have patients

[juan23d]

[quote=FTABman0;63846]

Hi all! I will soon be purchasing my first motorized setup. My house is surrounded by large trees (White Oak and Maple) that are about 15 - 20 yards from where I would like to ground mount my dish. I'm thinking about going with the MK4 kit w/ invacom QPH-31.

--The Best Brand LNB Out There!--

Is the 39" dish overkill and could I get by with a smaller dish?

--In FTA, Bigger is always Better!--

The best I can tell from just looking, I will be shooting thru the tree tops.

---Remember, Offset Dishes See About 22 Degrees above where they are pointed too!--

--KEVIN--

Any Suggestions?

As a first-timer I went with the MK5, but I have had trouble with the motor--DG380. Still working on getting it corrected. I upgraded to the QPH-031 and it is much better than what came with the kit. Not happy yet, but no regrets.

[William Eng]

A couple of additional suggestions. Use the posts that come with the dish to setup up a temporary setup (I used a piece of plywood to screw in the stand). This way you can move around the dish and try out different sites around your house without digging a hole everywhere. Depending on your home, it may not be possible to get everything you want off Clarke Belt. Decide what FTA are important to you and make sure you can pick them up before you prepare a permanent setup. Keep in mind that trees continue to grow and you need to plan ahead, ie tree trimmer or chainsaw.

[Brent]

Well it's been awhile since I posted about my new toy, I finally got it setup today!!
I had to move locations 4 times, but I'm surrounded by large trees. I'm really happy with the setup and seem to be getting high Q readings across the board.

Thus far I'm impressed with the product and appreciate the great advise I've received from this forums members.

Thanks for pointing this newbie in the right direction!!!

Brent

[Brent]

What a fun learning expirience!

But, as I'm sure you guys have guessed I have more questions. I set my dish up off of 82 W circular polarity sat becasue of it's strong signal, and am able to scan a few sats.

I'm curious that since I'm 98% 'on' if it would be better to fine tune off of a linear sat like 97?

The reason I ask is I'm getting no signal at all off of 123 and am wondering if I could be off just enough that I'm losing it at the other end of the sweep.

As always any advise is appreciated!

Thanks!
Brent

[elgemcdlf]

See

Trouble at the ends of the arc- DG280

Run your dish out to the farthest west sat you can receive. Push up and pull down on the dish. Which way increases signal? Write it down. Now run out to the farthest east sat you can receive and do the same thing. Do you opposite readings? If so you are not centered on the arc. So if you were better pushing up in the west and pulling down in the east you need to move the entire assembly to the east. Now take it back to center and peak the sat using dish elevation. Try again. Repeat until you have peak signal all across the arc. The image in the link should help illustrate what is going on.

[Brent]

Wow, thanks so much. I'm think I'm on the right path!

I'll check it out this weekend and post back!

Brent

[semco72057]

I have trees in my area and that was one of my problems also and I moved to the present location due to that problem. After setting up the dish using the specifications it has so far been able to get 8 satellites after long hours of adjusting the dish latitude and elevation properly.

I can't tell you much about the dish you have since I am new, but I have a Fortec Star 80cm dish where I live in the rural part of Arkansas. There are plenty of trees around me and since the directv and hughes dishes works fine I figured the FTA dish would work also. When you buy a dish the first thing you need to know is where the latitude scale on the motor and where to mark is which you will use to adjust the latitude since I found that there was no information in the literature I received with the set or online and I spent too many hours and days trying to adjust the set and finally looked at the motor and wondered what one mark was and after adjusting the dish using that mark on the side got it working just fine. One thing for sure is you will be receiving many satellites and I hope you look at the Mercury II Receiver with the kit.

Sidney Mathious