HELP! Motor acting up!

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Well, I went outside again, and if I try to adjust both elevation and or azimuth I loose signal. I can only peak it to 20 or so on 11805 G10. So again, this is weird!
 
I know you've probably checked all these things at least twice, but I'll throw them out there just in case. Is the lnbf tight in its holder, are the screws snugged up? Is it all the way ahead or back in the holder, depending on which model you have?Is the skew set to zero?
Is the lnbf arm solid to the dish? Is the lnbf centered in the dish?
And last, have you noticed any ufos at your location that could be deflecting the signal away from your dish?
Seriously, I know how aggravating it can get, hope you are able to sort it all out.
 
I appreciate all the thoughts! I is real easy to overlook things. I have tried 2 different lnbs, all is tight, and all set as should be. I now can get from 58w to 113w with full strength, USALS all dead on. I now can get the strong TP on G10 at 20-33% but nothing else on G10. Even after trying to make adjustments. So, I am going to leave it alone for now, and maybe this summer or when it get warmer out I might mess with it. I have a Primestar set up for G10 that I can strap an lnb on for IA7 and I have AMC4 and IA5 on the motorized so that is almost everything.

Sometime with nice weather and time, I might try to start from scratch again. This all started after I reset the motor, so I can only think it must have messed something up. Thanks all for the help! I appreciate it!
 
Larry, I was going back and reading thread a bit more and something occurred to me and I'm just going to mention it to keep the brainstorming going.

Your TS is about 92long. You are having a hard time seeing past 116 and 72 (I know you recently got 58 back), but is it possible something with your skew settings in the receiver got messed up or something? I know the motorized setup takes care of it physically, but I know in my Pansat 3500, I can mess withe skew settings a bit on the LNB setup in the receiver. I don't know what you can do with a Fortec Lifetime. It seem the more you move from TS and the more skew you need is where you start having problems.
 
I am unaware of any skew settings on the receiver. The only skew adjustments I have are at the lnb. The lnb is set to zero skew. I do appreciate all the input! THANKS!
 
'Skew' in the receiver settings on a Pansat is to fine-tune the skew on a BUD polarotor (the 2700, 3500 and possibly others have terminals to control a polarotor). This has no effect on the manual skew of a LNBF.

Larry, the more I read this thread, the more I'm thinking its an electronic problem with the motor...
 
Tron, Ah, ok, I was always wondering what it actually did. Since I don't have a Bud setup I didn't know what it did. Thanks for the info.
 
Sounds like you are having similar problems to what I had a while ago. Only real suggesstion I have is tweak, tweak, and then tweak some more til you get everything. I spent almost two full days on a three day weekend several months back going out and tweaking the dish... I finally figured out that my problem was tied to the pole slipping just a fraction out of plumb so ended up using some copper wire and screws to tighten the pole to the roof with support wires. Your problem sounds more like elevation may be off just a fraction of an inch or millimeter or two?

When teaking, I usually tweak True South first, then jump over the g10 and tweak there to get good strong signals on the weaker tps, then jump around the arc and test out 31w, and everything from 31w to 148...

When teaking, when I get on the arc, but off just a fraction of an inch g10 signals that usually run 99 percent are running 45-60ish and weaker signals don't show up at all. Final tweaks to get that extra little bump usually requre manually moving the lnb without adjusting any bolts... just barely bump the lnb, wait for the thing to stop bouncing if it is, and see what signal is... slowly move left, right up down, etc. If you find you are too low, redo elevation bolt and redo all the hand stuff over, and over til it's just right. Once I do all of that, it's good to go, but wind still can kick me off a few degrees. If I know I'm on the arc but wind's messed things up, I just tweak in the receiver Usals setting... for instance right now I know that I'm roughly 3.5 degrees off, so 123w is actually pointed at 120.5 degrees west in usals... and I have all satellites on the arc doing that sort of thing. Pain to manually change those few degrees, but I know the signals strong enough and just right on the arc that it's easier to do that than go out and fiddle with hand tweaking more at the moment.
 
The weird thing is, I have tried tweaking on G10 and the 20% is the highest it will go. Any movement and I lose signal. I think when it gets nicer out and I have some time, I will motor over to G10 and hook the lnb up to the receiver and bypass the motor and see if I can get anything that way. This problem started before I moved anything. The only thing I had done was zero'd/reset the motor. From that point on nothing would come in on the ends. It was only after I lost the sats that I realigned everything. The motor is the only thing I have not by passed yet. So, I will try that next. I appreciate your inpu!!
 
I am wondering too. I am going to motor over to G10 and bypass the motor and hook the lnb straight into the receiver and see what happens. The only thing I can see with the motor is that the connecors on them are "loose". By loose I mean when I tighten the coax onto the motor, the Female F's on the motor both "wiggle" while I am tighting them. Also, if I "jiggle" one coax at the connection to the motor, both move. I wonder if this might be a problem? And I wonder if that would explain why I some birds come and go? Anyway, first chance of nice weather and I will by pass the motor. Thanks for the idea!


'Skew' in the receiver settings on a Pansat is to fine-tune the skew on a BUD polarotor (the 2700, 3500 and possibly others have terminals to control a polarotor). This has no effect on the manual skew of a LNBF.

Larry, the more I read this thread, the more I'm thinking its an electronic problem with the motor...
 
Larry, I think you are on the right track. Bypass the motor and see if you can tweak the SQ back up to normal. If the F connectors are loose electrically then low SQ and bad tracking would go hand in hand.
Bob
 
I am anxious to try this. Of course today it is sunny out, rain/snow mix the next few days! Not sure if I can get to it tonight, but I am anxious!
 
Well i haven't been out to my motor today but i know one of my connectors is also loose. i've never been able to track the whole arc ... chauked it up to being slightly off arc but i know everything is plumb so i thought i would redo the whole thing when it warmed up. when i first set it up it would track from 79-105 a month or two later it would track 72-103 ..... makes me think it could be a related problem withthe loose connector....
 
One of my connectors was lose too.. it actually came out (by accident) and I had to put it back in. Seems to work okay after I tightend it up. I thought maybe it was busted (after seeing it come all the way out) because I tried my signal strength meter that I got with the dish/motor/reciever combo and I got no signal strength. Ended up that my new signal meter had a cold solder joint that needed reflowed - then everything looked good.

So you can probably tighten those connectors up on your motor. Mine (on an sg2100) were just barrel connectors with a nut on one side to tighten against the motor housing to prevent them from unscrewing accidentally.
 
I am anxious to by pass the motor and see wht happens. On a side note, I "won" a new motor from Sadoun's cheap aucton. A SatCon Sd something antoher (can't remember the model/name). So, I will have another motor incase!
 
I don't know if this applies to your current problem "Iafirebuff" but maybe it will.

I had a similar problem where the dish would only track the center of the arc. How I resolved the problem was go to the two extreme outboard satellite that I could receive and then remove the LNB and manually locate where the LNB is at max signal with a cheap signal meter. Note if the max signal is up or down, left or right of where the LNB holder has it.

What I found was that the LNB was not centered on the dish (No support arms) and when the dish went +30 or -30 of center the LNB was either high or low of where it should have been.
 
Thanks for the input! I tried to adjust the dish and the 20-30% I was getting was the max I could get. That is why I am really wondering about the motor at this point. So I am going to try tongiht to bypass the motor and also tighten up the connectors. Thanks again everyone!
 
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