Thread: Pleasent Surprise!

Well, since I've developed this "killer" chest cold over night and didn't feel like working on the race motor or the tow truck, I decided to sit down and map out the rest of the "back East" sat locations with my Vbox X and my SAMI dish.

Say, did you ever go looking for a satellite, find what you thought you were looking for until you did a blind scan on it and NONE of the numbers correlated to the Sat you were actually looking for? And then after doing some checking you realize that you weren't actually on the Sat you were trying to scan.

Fired up the old Pansat 3500 SD and went satellite hunting this afternoon. Went back to 58W, scanned it, confirmed it and then stepped back Eastward to what I though was 40.5 West only to find that NONE of the TPs matched anything on 40 W?? So went hunting for those TPs and SRs and low and behold I'm all the way back to 37.4 at NSS10!!!! And BTW, I can get to 139 with that dish too.

So even though I feel like crap and have had too many "beverages" to kill the symptoms, I did have somewhat of a productive evening in spite of it all! See, sometimes good things happen by accident!!

What I do is count how many steps or counts it is between known satellites for example between G16 and Amc4, let's say it's 13 counts for example. Now you know if you go toward the east an stop on amazons 61 w...go 13 counts or how ever many counts your actuator needs east and use lyngsat to see your next viewable satellite

"Say, did you ever go looking for a satellite, find what you thought you were looking for until you did a blind scan on it and NONE of the numbers correlated to the Sat you were actually looking for? And then after doing some checking you realize that you weren't actually on the Sat you were trying to scan."

I wouldn't want to count... Replaced a reed sensor last spring and had lots of trouble setting it up... ended up on the wrong satellite several times until I re-positioned the sensor closer to the magnet wheel. I get about 10 counts per degree so usually count 20 between satellites. One count or 1/10 of a degree can make quite a difference on a weak Ku transponder with the big dish. I ended up re-setting the old Uniden receiver and starting from scratch at 137degrees back to 51 degrees so far. Will have to try for those most eastern satellites but the Von Wiess really strains when bringing the dish back again, especially in the cold. Always good to find some new sats!
-C.

Yes I have scanned before and was on a different satellite than I was aiming for. That sounds good...20 pulses between sats...true that big dishes are narrow beam antennas on ku and a little nudge can go from nothing to full signal. My 10' Sami dish is 1/2 degree on ku!!

Problem with the count thingie is that when you get way out on actuator travel that count goes way down. Out at the end of stroke on my SAMI I'm only 2.4 counts per degree. I guess I should go ahead and put one my 60 count per inch conversion Von Weise arms on there but probably won't as long as it keeps working as well as it does now with that SuperJack on there.

And on another note. This chest cold is kicking my arse big time! I'm still in the bed!!

Originally Posted by Lone Gunman

I guess I should go ahead and put one my 60 count per inch conversion Von Weise arms on there but probably won't as long as it keeps working as well as it does now with that SuperJack on there.

More magnets? It's crossed my mind to add another four by super gluing them between the four that are on my jack. It's one of those "One of these days...." projects.

Originally Posted by cracklincrotch

More magnets? It's crossed my mind to add another four by super gluing them between the four that are on my jack. It's one of those "One of these days...." projects.

I made two new hifax magnet wheels that were a little larger in diameter and put two additional magnets in each one, which made 10 each wheel. The screw in those actuators is 3/4x6 threads per inch so 10 counts for 6 turns gives 60 counts per inch and I have tested both on my Vbox X and they do indeed give 60 counts per inch of travel. That modification is fairly easy to do and besides the new wheel, only requires that the reed switch be moved out about 1/4 inch.

The SuperJack that's on there now is like only 36 counts per inch and I can't see an easy way to modify it. It seems to be in pretty good shape though so I'll use it for a while until it finally lays down on me.

do you notice more accuracy with more magnets? I got more accuracy by moving my mount out to its longest stroke and using a 36" actuator. the actuator arm has to move longer distance to move the dish a shorter distance.