Can HH90 point to my extreme West or East satellites?

[yuzhanin]

Part 2, imponderable.

I am still wondering why my elevation is so much off. This is the reason why I had so much trouble with the alignment. The whole idea is to:
1) Set motor latitude and dish elevation to a calculated, known value. Then...
2) The only variable you have to adjust is the true south orientation (the general direction of which is known with a compass).

With the elevation being so much off, you have an almost infinite number of small increments to try to hit the right elevation/TS spot.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by yuzhanin

..... Would skewing the LNB help? I know it shouldn't be skewed manually, but something IS off somewhere.
....

A motorized system should have zero skew when looking at your south sat. It will then automatically have the proper skew for all sats except AMC1.

[yuzhanin]

Originally Posted by wejones

A motorized system should have zero skew when looking at your south sat. It will then automatically have the proper skew for all sats except AMC1.

Yes, I know, but I am trying to figure out what else could be off since the elevation scale reading is so high.

BTW, what's up with AMC 1? I think I am getting a signal from it at 103W. I will double check tonight. What should the skew be? Any other odd birds out there?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by yuzhanin

Yes, I know, but I am trying to figure out what else could be off since the elevation scale reading is so high.

BTW, what's up with AMC 1? I think I am getting a signal from it at 103W. I will double check tonight. What should the skew be? Any other odd birds out there?

Skew wouldn't have any effect on the dish elevation scale reading.

AMC1 has it's Ku transponders skewed 26 deg CCW. There used to be one other sat, nearby to AMC1, which was also skewed, but that no longer seems to be the case. I think AMC1 is the only one.

[yuzhanin]

Mystery solved! As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I ventured out to take a second set of pictures to compare them to the first set (posted here in an earlier post). It turns out that I used a wrong mark to read the dish elevation this time.

As you can see from the second picture in the original set, the dish used to have a red mark to go by when setting the elevation. It is gone now (I guess it rained enough this summer down here). So, I erroneously used the center of the bolt to read the elevation in my second attempt. So, using the (now imaginary) red mark, the dish elevation is at 44.5. It is 3 degrees off, but certainly not at 52 as I had thought it was.

Thank you again, everyone, for your help (and especially wejones). I guess I am ready to move up to a 100 cm dish now.

[yuzhanin]

Not sure if I should start a new thread in Installation Support. I guess, I can move it there if you guys suggest it. Hope you are not all tired of me here yet.

I am trying to tweak my dish (what else is new). I was getting all birds from 58W to 129W. Unfortunately, there are no Ku signals east of 58W all the way to 43.1W (where I was picking up a single very faint transponder). Similarly, there is no Ku signals west of 129W to check. But the signal on 11964H tp of Galaxy 27 (White Springs TV) was already very weak, although Echo 5's transponders are at 50%.

I tried an east-west azimuth adjustment (without changing the dish elevation or motor lattitude) on the my TS 79W satellite. I got the 12182H (I think) transponder on it to 70%, but lost most other satellites. I then returned to the previous azimuth (with a drop in the 79W's quality to 50-60%) and am tracking OK in the 58W-129W range.

So, I am not picking up the extreme satellites. The more centrally located birds are all found easily via USALS. What do I need to tweak to improve my tracking? Is it the dish elevation or the motor lattitude?

[yuzhanin]

That's it!!! I tried to tweak the dish yesterday, and finally pulled in the 30W satellite. I was getting a 30+ quality at first and thought it was good enough considering how low on the horizon it is in my suburban jungle. However, it came at a cost of lower quality on the TS satellite and my west satellites.

Then, I modified my longitude by 1.2 degrees, and I now have a HUGE improvement all across the arc, with the highest signal and quality readings and all transponders I have had in the last (almost) three months. I am getting at leat 50+ quality on all linear TPs, with many in the 70s and even 80s.

I know that te 1.2 degree adjustment means my alignment is not ideal, but I cannot imagine being able to do any better. Considering I have only an 80cm dish, 50% quality reading on the weak transponders is very-very good.