33" Offset Dish & HH990 Motor Setup

[jmanng]

Hello All:

Got myself a 33" Digiwave dish (S750WB), HH990 (SPM990) Digiwave motor and Digiwave 7000 receiver and was doing the setup on the weekend. After getting the setup mounted, I spent a few hours trying to tune my closest due south satellite but was not able to pick up AMC-5 with a linear LNBF (DGL990D - I've been assured that it is a linear lnb and some research on the net seems to agree).

I've read the instructions a number of times now and it all makes sense with the tracking arc, declination, magnetic deviation, ... but I'm not picking up any channels. I must be missing/mis-interpreting something?

Ok, first of all I have checked the mount and it is plumb (in all directions). I then set up the motor for lattitude/elevation (44 degree) on the motor mount. Then I have setup the dish elevation as 30 degrees minus my declination in the manual of 6.7 degrees = 23.3. Then I've aligned the dish arm with center of motor mount arm. I've then set the motor 0 degree reference point to take into account magnetic deviation for Toronto (10.5), so I am setting true south as 190.5 degree on compass. I've tweaked to the east a step or two (and I've tweaked to the west...) but I can't get anything channels scanned on AMC-5. I've left the LNB skew at 0 as the motor show keep it aligned with arc.

For my location lattitude is 44 & Longitude 79, look angles should be 179.4 & elevation 39 degrees, so AMC-5 should be right there. Since I'm using a motor, I've disregarded the 39 elevation setting and set according to instructions for motor (and in the end It should be 39 degrees from the horizontal plane - if I'm understanding this stuff). I've also tried searching for other sats so something that I'm taking as true must be off (I've checked and re-checked mount and settings) or equipment not functioning.

At this point, I suspect either LNBF or Dish itself and was wondering how I can measure the location of the lnb (offset) to verify the arm and lnb holder is in the correct position. Is there any test for lnb checking (other than trying another)?

If someone sees where I've made an error in calculation or understanding, I would much appreciate you pointing it out.

Thanks,
Jaime

 

[PSB]

To find your true south satellite you HAVE to enter a LIVE transponder and move the dish/motor assembly as one until you see signal quality on the TV, you will HAVE to be able to see the TV when you are pointing the dish!

May be a good idea to remove the motor and any switches and try to find and store your true south satellite first!

If you think you are close to a satellite try Blind scan if you have it.

 

[PSB]

And WELCOME to the SatelliteGuys.US FTA forum!

 

[Tron]

More often than not, its not a bad LNB or dish. Almost always, its either a misaligned dish (the alignment on Ku is VERY sensitive and critical) or something is not set right in the receiver setup menu.

Also, as Pete said, be certain that you are using a live transponder when looking at your signal meters and look for signal QUALITY only (strength means nothing).

 

[jmanng]

First of all, thanks for the welcome.

I had a brief chance yesterday to get up and try re-aiming the dish... I aimed to true south (+10.5 declination) and then tried tweaking the dish and motor assembly as a unit, around the pole to tune in the sat - nope. I also entered some other tp's obtained off of lynsat chart for amc-5 (still no go). I still can't believe I haven't been able to locate the sat.

The frustrating part is that I did recently setup my parent's with a fixed mount setup and a different satellite (they had purchased a different lnb and dish though), but still... I don't know why this is being so finicky. I wish they were closer so I could just run over and swap in my lnb just to prove it good.

The reason I was also interested in checking the arm, was that when I purchased my dish, I was just about out the door when they called me back to the desk because they had given me the wrong arm (for a 39" dish apparently)... anyhow, that crosses my mind from time-to-time (when I'm on the roof . If anyone knows of a howto on checking the focal point, I wouldn't mind verifying this (yea I know, it's my aim).

Most likely I wait for the weekend and start over and simple... remove the motor and see how that goes -hopefully that's all it will take to get on track!

thanks for your assistance,

 

[PSB]

Good idea to remove the motor! That's the way most of here started!

Remember don't trust the elevation scale on the satellite dish as it may be off a few degree's

 

[digiblur]

Do you have a circular LNB from an older E* or D* dish? If you have one, grab some tape and temporarily mount it on the dish in the LNB holder. Set the L.O./LNB freq to 11250 and enter in one of the E* TP's with an SR of 20000. Now scan the skies until you find 91, 110, 119, etc. These birds are easy to hit and help you get a feeling where the arc is in the sky. Mark some of your settings on the pole with pencil. Now swap the LNB back, don't forget to switch the LNB freq back, then go find some KU birds.

 

[jmanng]

I should have one somewhere, but one of the polarities doesn't work apparently (guess it should be too hard to try R + L freq). I'll look for 91 which is close so that my reference on the pole shouldn't be too far from it.

Out of curiosity, Is it just because you don't have to worry about any lnb skew, or is it that the signals are also submitted with a higher power transmitter (because their both KU band right?) from these main subscription services?

 

[digiblur]

I should have one somewhere, but one of the polarities doesn't work apparently (guess it should be too hard to try R + L freq). I'll look for 91 which is close so that my reference on the pole shouldn't be too far from it.

Out of curiosity, Is it just because you don't have to worry about any lnb skew, or is it that the signals are also submitted with a higher power transmitter (because their both KU band right?) from these main subscription services?

The DBS birds are working with bigger flashlights It's usually easy to find one of these birds. After finding two or three...and ding... the light bulb goes off..."I see the arc now!"

 

[PSB]

Of course you will then have to go back to a Linear LNBF and do it all again to fine tune the satellite arc!

 

[Mr Tony]

welcome to the forum

 

[jmanng]

Well, I downgraded the setup to fixed mount and swapped in a circular lnb to get some basic reference points yesterday night and still could not locate a good signal (the quality just jumps all over the place, up into the 90's for brief moments sporadically). However, because of the very noticeable angle without the motor being in place... this has lead to investigating the stamped dish elevation scale as it was quite tilted. I've been told today that the scale is off by 22.7 degrees (and also commented by one of the members to watch out for). The other FTA setup I did for my parents, the offset was already taken into account on the bracket (and the bracket adjustment was on a horizontal slide whereas this one is on a vertical axis). This has a ring of truth to it!!! I'm itching to get home and regain my manhood (oops... personhood )

 

[jmanng]

Ok, we're in business .

I was quickly able to locate 91 with the circular lnb by setting the elevation to desired value subtracting 22.7 from the stamped scale (I set a temporary reference point). I then swapped in the linear lnb and was able to lock in amc-5., tweaked for best signal and got a picture up in no time. I then used a permanent marker to set a true south reference point on the pole (it was about 10 degrees from where I was thinking it was).

I then moved onto getting the motor setup. With the reference point now setup, it didn't take long. I ran outta time so I wasn't able to tune the east/west sats (or even look for them), as it was already dark by the time I finished the motor setup and playing with a few issues that I ran into... I'll have to sort them out:

1. the clamping force of the dish bracket wasn't enough to keep the dish from moving with a little bit of applied force on the motor shaft. I ended up overtighting the bolt... backed it off a little bit so it was onto better thread section and tighten the other side. I can also see the metal bracket colapsing when tighting - so I doubt I'll ever get enough grab with this hardware.
- I'm thinking of drilling a hole through the back of the bracket and into the motor shaft (it's hollow) and using a self tapping screw to keep the two locked together.

2. The darn motor or receiver is stuck on the keeping the wrong position for amc-5. I've told the receiver/motor to re-sync a number of times after I've used receiver to get the motor back to 0... also used manual adjustments through receiver and then set function... but it always go back to the initial location it has for the satellite. Atleast I can use goto 0 function to get it back centered again. I'm not sure if it's the motor or receiver that's at fault. I'm kinda suspecting receiver as I tried blowing away the antenna setup, but that also seems to be coming back. I can also try the motor reset procedure (didn't have a small enough wire to do it, otherwise I would have done that too).

3. I was issuing motor commands and their seems to be very little synchronization/motor control between motor and receiver. Often as it was spinning off to the wrong location for amc-5, I was issuing 'stop' or 'move west' commands and it simply ignored those commands. Othertimes it seemed it queued them until it got to the target location and then reacted. A few times it also interpret them as go full west because it had queued up a few individual go west commands. Is this typical for these motors? Does the sg2100 have better synchronization? I 'm most likely stuck with this motor at this stage (and especially if I start drilling a hole into the shaft), but If the sg2100 is that much better, it'll be worth a try to see if I can swap (there was only a few dollars difference).

Any comments or other recommendations on these issues?

Thanks,

 

[jmanng]

I've got the antenna setup with Diseq 1.2 control currently... I'm not sure if the motor has USALS support(I don't recall seeing it in the spec but I'll have another look). I guess I can always try (even it it's not listed), and see if it responds. I can take some digital pictures of the screen and upload (if the problem persist).

First though, I need to address the issue of the dish bracket before actively using the setup... don't want to find I've got poor reception due to the dish being crumpled because it changed position on the motor shaft and had come in contact with the chimney Anyone have any general comments about the approach of drilling the back plate of the dish bracket to the motor shaft? Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, what was the solution employed?

Thanks,

Jaime

 

[jmanng]

I was looking at some pics of other motors, and I think I should be able to convert my dish bracket to use a similar u-bolt setup (it looks simple - and obvious).

 

[jmanng]

The u-bolt worked great. I just had to enlarge the holes on the bracket.

I reset the motor and then tuned in amc-5, g10r and IA-5. Still not happy with the way the it seems to be squirrely at times trying to adjust sat positions... maybe it's just the receiver. The guide seems to be pretty slow though and pretty much non-existing (I dunno if this is the receiver or just that the guide data isn't available on some of the sats.

Next, want to check out the sticky on what's out there and hunt done an uptodate sat tp/freq list that I can load.

Thanks again.

 

[PSB]

What channels and satellites do you get the "guide" on?

 

[jmanng]

I just confirmed the guide data was from 110 (check zap2it guide). I had picked it up during my setup (after I did a factory reset of the receiver trying to get motor and receiver in-sync). So I saw the leftovers guide bits when I was moving around on t-5 or g10r. So it was a false alarm. me bad.

 

[Mr Tony]

some of the channels on IA5 have a guide for some odd reason...of course its in some oddball language

 

[jobamon]

Ok, we're in business .

I was quickly able to locate 91 with the circular lnb by setting the elevation to desired value subtracting 22.7 from the stamped scale (I set a temporary reference point). I then swapped in the linear lnb and was able to lock in amc-5., tweaked for best signal and got a picture up in no time. I then used a permanent marker to set a true south reference point on the pole (it was about 10 degrees from where I was thinking it was).

I then moved onto getting the motor setup. With the reference point now setup, it didn't take long. I ran outta time so I wasn't able to tune the east/west sats (or even look for them), as it was already dark by the time I finished the motor setup and playing with a few issues that I ran into... I'll have to sort them out:

1. the clamping force of the dish bracket wasn't enough to keep the dish from moving with a little bit of applied force on the motor shaft. I ended up overtighting the bolt... backed it off a little bit so it was onto better thread section and tighten the other side. I can also see the metal bracket colapsing when tighting - so I doubt I'll ever get enough grab with this hardware.
- I'm thinking of drilling a hole through the back of the bracket and into the motor shaft (it's hollow) and using a self tapping screw to keep the two locked together.

2. The darn motor or receiver is stuck on the keeping the wrong position for amc-5. I've told the receiver/motor to re-sync a number of times after I've used receiver to get the motor back to 0... also used manual adjustments through receiver and then set function... but it always go back to the initial location it has for the satellite. Atleast I can use goto 0 function to get it back centered again. I'm not sure if it's the motor or receiver that's at fault. I'm kinda suspecting receiver as I tried blowing away the antenna setup, but that also seems to be coming back. I can also try the motor reset procedure (didn't have a small enough wire to do it, otherwise I would have done that too).

3. I was issuing motor commands and their seems to be very little synchronization/motor control between motor and receiver. Often as it was spinning off to the wrong location for amc-5, I was issuing 'stop' or 'move west' commands and it simply ignored those commands. Othertimes it seemed it queued them until it got to the target location and then reacted. A few times it also interpret them as go full west because it had queued up a few individual go west commands. Is this typical for these motors? Does the sg2100 have better synchronization? I 'm most likely stuck with this motor at this stage (and especially if I start drilling a hole into the shaft), but If the sg2100 is that much better, it'll be worth a try to see if I can swap (there was only a few dollars difference).

Any comments or other recommendations on these issues?

Thanks,

I purchased exactly the same dish but not motor at all and I had exactly the same problem, it was hard to get any signal o quality, to start, this dish does not have the elevation indicator therefore you have to find something from home depot that will help you finde the angle of the elevation. In my opinion these DigiWave products are BS, I also bought a DigiWave sattellite finder, the instruction is very poor and there is not support whatsoever. Good Luck my friend.