Well, generally, an Az/El mount doesn't have the ability to be a polar mount, as there is generally no way for it to move if you attach an actuator. But you are right, that if you somehow lock a polar mount at the top of it's rotation axis, then you could use the latitude / inclination adjustment as elevation , and rotate the whole mount on the pole for azimuth. It would function as an Az/El this way, but it's still a polar mount. A real Az/El mount will never be a polar mount, however. It needs to have a rotation axis nearly parallel to the earth's axis to be a polar mount, and Az/El mounts are on a vertical pole.... no way to rotate around a polar axis.

Correct.

I think your 6.7 vs 6.0 declination question was answered, but I'm confused about the 11 deg declination comment above. There will NEVER be a need for 11 degrees of declination. Even if you were at the north pole, the declination would only be about 8.6, and you can't even see any geostationary sats from there anyway, so even that declination isn't something that would be needed. Declination is a term that is only applicable if your dish rotates around an axis parallel (or nearly parallel as is the case for the modified declination method) to the earth's axis. You aren't doing that, so you aren't using declination by any stretch of the definition I can think of. You just have an elevation that is some strange combination of the mount inclination and the position you happened to lock the polar axis into.

yeah I know BJ, it is just that since I assembled the Dish I have not played with the declination offset adjustment mostly because the fixed plate will not allow me to adjust it properly. I did not have an inclinometer either. I have not tried to adjust it and I even thought that I assembled the Dish somehow the wrong way the first day but I wanted to wait untill the day that I had to install an actuator. I will have to take pictures so you guys can tell me if it was wrongly assembled.

The point is that , the fixed plate , the way it is installed now (grabs the dish closer to the center) forces this declination to be 11 degrees. Like you said since my dish is stationary for now (no actuator), I do not need this declination , I just adjust the total elevation to the proper value, mount inclination + 11 in this case. before the inclinometer, it was me standing to the side of the dish and drawing a 90 degrees angle and dividing it by half untill necessary in the air , lol, the so called cuban inclinometer lol, forget the poor's man soda version that you guys posted here, that one it is still too expensive , lol.

I am glad you have replied to my posts and that I decided to talk about polar mounts since it forced me to search more about it and together with your valuable input now I have a better understanding of it. I will try this weekend to set the mount to true south and set the declination properly to my 6.7 value but I am afraid that I will have to change the length of the fixed plate for that. Like I said, on this FS 6 footer , the fixed plate that comes with the polar mount forces the Dish to be grabbed in 3 positions only (there are 3 holes on the horizontal bar only). BTW , this dish will only allow someone to do a West ARM installation since there are no holes on the horizontal bar to the left of the dish. It is ok for me since I live east of the Mississippi. And because the plate is fixed in length, that results in a fixed declination offset angle. You guys with actuators can lock the declination offset first and then move the actuator clamp accordingly probably. Besides if I remove the fixed plate alone , the Dish will "fall" rotating over the polar axis. I need that plate for now to lock the dish in place.

Now that I think about it I will have to revisit the whole assembly of the Dish carefully again, just in case. I am about to pull the trigger on motorizing my Dish so that revision is coming anyways.

Once again thanks for your valuable comments.