Dish Alignment problem

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Swamp_Rat

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 3, 2009
192
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South Florida
Just installed my new Geosat 1.2m. I am off on the east side of the arc and not sure why. I have good quality on 79 (my south sat), 83 is good going west it stays good but some on 119 like ion is non existent and 123 is in the 70-90 range all using USALS.
If I go back to the east 72 mux is there but locks up, 61.5 (not that there is anything there) is around 50% and 58w is non existent. I have not looked further to the east.
Any thoughts?
 
Lak to the rescue! I will try that when I get home tonight. I am just curious how I can be off on the east half when I am on (or close to it and I know it still needs some love) in the west.
 
Well, when I first put up my 1.2m dish, I put it on a pole that had held an 80cm dish. Turns out the pole was not plumb enough for the tighter focus of the 1.2m dish. The pole had a "list" to the west. Even though the 80cm could get the whole arc, the 1.2m could either get the west side, or the east side, but not both.
Put in a larger, stiffer pole and solved that problem.

:)
 
Unless the electronic level I used is off I was inside of 1/10 of 1 degree after I hung it. I can also check it again but thought it was spot on. I put it on a piece of 2" schedule 40, thought that would be plenty.
 
I will check it when I get home. Wonder if it is a skew issue? AMC 9 best and 79w best transponder is 95+, all the way over on 123w best on one of the educational channels is 90+. On 119 transponder 12224 (I think) is 99% and as I said Ion is unwatchable.
 
Send the motor to Zero, then use the level to see if Dish, not Pole, is Plumb.
I had a motor that just did not want to stay Plumb to the Pole, bracket was kinda warped
 
Dish bracket to Motor Pole.
Another thing, were the Bolts from the Dish Bracket thru the Motor Pole a snug fit?
I have an SG6000 motor, and the holes thru the Motor Pole are larger than the 80cm Dish Bracket, gave me fits when setting up.

I guess what we are getting at, is that it's not uncommon to only get Half the Arc, and not the other. Just have to go back and recheck Everything.
 
It seemed to be tight enough. I want to add another u bolt (it came with two and there is room for three) to keep it from moving in strong winds.
The motor does have the 55mm tube and it seems to lay in the slot nicely.
Although there is not that much on the east side I want to get this thing pegged to eventually turn it into a mini bud!
 
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Try aligning the dish on the Arc by aiming at 3 sats only: due south, most east and west. Read similar threads here. Then scan other sats. Check for signal obstructions in all directions. Post photo of your setup here.
 
Swamp_Rat, I have a DG380 motor with a 1.2 dish, too. The motor shaft is 55mm and the dish bracket is made to fasten to a minimum of 60mm -- slight problem, but not too much trouble, actually I sort of like it, since it will allow the dish to "slip" in high wind instead of wringing something loose ;).

Anyway, what I was going to get at, the bracket had to be inverted to fit the motor (the shaft turns downward on the motor) and the dish is mounted by lifting it upward onto the motor shaft and tightening with the two bolts as you mentioned. I noticed after the first time (and only, so far) that the wind turned the dish that there is a small seam on the motor shaft where the end cap fits on the motor shaft (seals off the end of the shaft) and the dish bracket has a very small notch in it that aligns with the seam. This is VERY convenient when checking the dish to see if the wind has turned it AND to realign the dish if the wind DID turn it. The seam and the notch align if the true south is set correctly :up.

This may not be a lot of help with your set-up, but may help KEEP the alignment in check AND help somebody else that has similar problems. I believe I can get photos (later) if the explanation isn't clear enough.

Good luck and keep plugging -- it only gets better...........:D
 
It's possible that your declination and/or elevation is off, but you can get it to track either east or west (but not both) by compensating errors. For example this can happen if at the zero position the dish is not pointing exactly true south. If the dish mount on the DG-380 isn't centered, this can also cause a similar problem. Getting the dish mount exactly centered on the DG-380 shaft is the first order of business. I am assuming everything is plumb, because you've checked that.

Next you set your true south satellite for the best elevation and then choose an extreme satellite to the east, say. Drive the dish with USALS to the correct position, but don't mess with elevation. Rotate the mount on the pole for the best signal and mark the mount position on the pole. Now do the same on the west side, hopefully by roughly the same orbital offset from your true south sat. Readjust the mount so it is exactly in between the two marks. Readjust the elevation on the true south sat and adjust the declination to get the extreme sats. This should get you in the ballpark.

I have the same motor and dish as you and I'm not that excited about the precision. The DG-380 mount to the pole wasn't strong enough to get it precisely plumb without freezing the u-bolts. I got some grade 8 u-bolts that were a lot bigger and that taught it a lesson. I also experienced some slippage of the dish mount on the motor shaft during high winds. I shimmed it with some split 2" PVC schedule 40 and used heavier u-bolts for that, too. That pretty much cured the sloppy mechanical stuff.

I also discovered there was a slight bias error in my DG-380 zero position. Uncompensated this could cause the trouble you're having in tracking the arc. It wasn't immediately obvious the best way to correct this mechanically. Fortunately for me I'm using some Linux software I wrote to drive the motor, so I just applied the offset in my software before calculating the positioning command. I later bought another DG-380 as a spare and that unit's zero was pretty much dead-on.

Finally you should be aware that if you use USALS to calculate your motor angles, the algorithm apparently has increasing errors as you move farther off true south. My analysis indicated they did not take declination into account in their calculations, which is pretty sad. I wrote a thread about this a number of months ago. If you're tracking the arc but USALS puts you in the wrong position by an increasing amount off true south, this could cause problems, too. But not to the extent of what you are seeing at the moment.
 
I made a few adjustments to the dish (the pole was plumb but the motor mount was off a bit) then ran it again. It was better but as it swings east and west further out it gets worse. I think it is a problem with the Usals crossing over to the motor.
It 58w it is off almost one degree and on 123 off about .6. I finally got tired of messing with it and just changed the location of the sat in USALS. Now on the best transponders on the east and west end I'm getting 95+ quality.
Thanks for all the help guys!
 
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