"Shift" "Goto X" etc on DG-380

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Hello All:

I'm going bald from pulling my hair out...you might remember me from my C band list in another thread. Well, I decided to see why everything in the west disappeared, and I found that I had the dish misadjusted somehow. Finding the one transponder at 123W and peaking it made all sorts of things appear on the western end of the arc. The problem is that now the eastern end is totally missing. Now- I know about this kind of thing from setting up the 90cm dish w/the 280 motor, which has been working flawlessly for over a year now. But with this setup, no matter what I do, I'm not able to get both ends anywhere even close. It's as if the USALS is off...Everything is set up basically the same as the smaller dish, and yet it won't track correctly. I chose to peak the signal at AMC3, since I'm at 81.8 W (the true south sat would be Nimiq 2 but it doesn't have any C band tps). It just ends up so far off...Anik F1 ends up being off so far by USALS that you have to run it back west with Disec 1.2 a lot, not just a little.

The manuals for these motors always mention a "shift" command; I take it there is no such thing in a Fortec Merc II? And the "Goto X" command is the same thing as a USALS command to go to a given sat? And "Go to 0" just parks the dish dead center so you know where you're starting from, if you're using Diseq 1.2?

CN

[Sadoun]

It seems you are mixing your steps in setting up the motor/dish angles. You should only use USALS OR DiSeqC 1.2. Don't use both at the same time to setup the dish alignment.

I would suggest you use USALS only.

• Make sure the mast is Plumb
• Adjust Motor latitude angle and keep that fixed.
• Adjust dish elevation angle
• Put dish on motor and aim all at TRUE SOUTH.
• Go to menu and select on of the satellites
• Use USALS menu to enter your latitude and longitude.
• Dish will move
• Adjust not TRUE South angle slowly (+/-5 degrees in 1 degree increments)
• If not quality, adjust dish elevation angle +/- 1 degree increments
• Adjust not TRUE South angle slowly again (+/-5 degrees in 1 degree increments).
• Repeat, if not quality, adjust dish elevation angle +/- 1 degree increments

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Okay. I was messing around with the motor elevation, but I've subsequently read over and over to leave that fixed and adjust the other parameters (that's what happens when you forget the basics). I'll start fresh tomorrow.

CN

[pmb1010]

*Normally* it is right to set the motor angle and leave it alone.

But if both ends of the arc are off, adjusting the motor angle can help you fix this issue.

There is a post I made thats from one of the motor manuals. It shows how to adjust for an arc where the ends are off a bit, either higher or lower and how to move the motor angle up or down.

I'll look for it and put a link in next message.

Here you go:
Page 10 of this link
http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/S...20_english.pdf

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Hello:

Sure enough, just starting fresh and doing as Mr. Sadoun said got it spot on. You can imagine my delight going straight from Intel 9 to Galaxy 10, all the way across the sky and having it land dead smack on target using USALS.

I think part of the problem was that I started with the wrong declination angle- I just set it at 35 degrees, forgetting that you have to subtract from that angle for your latitude, so I should have been at 29- a considerable amount off. Second, having not done this for a long time now, I forgot how sensitive rotating the whole assembly on the mast is. When you do that, there's a fairly wide band where you can get a decent signal, so the temptation is to just go to where there's no signal at all and back it up somewhat, and think "that's it". It took about half an hour to get it perfect, a far cry from the entire day I spent thursday working on it.

As far as what can be seen in the west, the C band list on the global-cm.com site is dead on, there's no point in repeating it. I will make this statement, now that the system is set up correctly: the sheer number of tps and channels is pretty much equal to Ku band. It's especially good if you speak spanish, or french! (Anik F1 is full of french canadian material.)

CN

[Jim-S]

Congratulations

[Sadoun]

I am glad to be of help. Thanks for letting us know the results.