Over the weekend I spent some time between rain showers re-tweaking my 10' Orbitron. When I set it up back in January I did a temporary install and thought everything was pretty close as I had from 91°W (95°W being my true south) all the way to 135°W with good signal. I didn't need anything past 135 so I did not bother with them. East of 91 there were some trees and most of what I wanted was over on the western side anyway so I did not bother with anything on the east side either.
Earlier this summer I cleared some trees in the area east of the dish with the intent of getting the eastern part of the arc. With trees cleared I drove the dish over to 87, signal was so-so and I could not get anything past 87. No trees in the way there so I knew there was work to do.
Spent Sat. afternoon/evening re-adjusting my elev. and decl. angle. It is much easier to be patient with it when it's not below freezing out! So I found that the declination angle was out quite a bit. So from there I tweaked and turned until I got my due south and the eastern arc pretty well........back to the west........signal, but not terrific signal. Fought with it until it got dark that night and left it.
Tried a few more things Sunday afternoon, adjusted skew as I am using LNBF as opposed to feedhorn with polarotor and being as how to adjust declination on an Orbitron you have to spin the dish thus throwing the skew out of whack. Still not as good as it needed to be.
After supper I spent some time thinking about everything and got it all straight in my head.........
back to basics !!!
Out with the level and found that the pole was out by more than I thought. Leveled it all up, tweaked it on my due South and scanned the arc again.
Now it's 72 to 139 all with terrific signal strength and quality on all birds, no exceptions.
If you don't read my rant above my point is GO BACK TO BASICS. You can fight with a dish all you want and you will not have satisfactory results if you do not observe the basics. I already knew this but I had to remind myself of this the hard way so I figured it would not hurt to point it out just in case anyone else is in the same situation.
Earlier this summer I cleared some trees in the area east of the dish with the intent of getting the eastern part of the arc. With trees cleared I drove the dish over to 87, signal was so-so and I could not get anything past 87. No trees in the way there so I knew there was work to do.
Spent Sat. afternoon/evening re-adjusting my elev. and decl. angle. It is much easier to be patient with it when it's not below freezing out! So I found that the declination angle was out quite a bit. So from there I tweaked and turned until I got my due south and the eastern arc pretty well........back to the west........signal, but not terrific signal. Fought with it until it got dark that night and left it.
Tried a few more things Sunday afternoon, adjusted skew as I am using LNBF as opposed to feedhorn with polarotor and being as how to adjust declination on an Orbitron you have to spin the dish thus throwing the skew out of whack. Still not as good as it needed to be.
After supper I spent some time thinking about everything and got it all straight in my head.........
back to basics !!!Out with the level and found that the pole was out by more than I thought. Leveled it all up, tweaked it on my due South and scanned the arc again.
Now it's 72 to 139 all with terrific signal strength and quality on all birds, no exceptions.
If you don't read my rant above my point is GO BACK TO BASICS. You can fight with a dish all you want and you will not have satisfactory results if you do not observe the basics. I already knew this but I had to remind myself of this the hard way so I figured it would not hurt to point it out just in case anyone else is in the same situation.
