Orbitron Spin O Something

[JAS]

My question is related to the Orbitron Spincliometer, Spinomatic, Spindoctor or whatever it's called.

I have a Orbitron 12' dish which I quit using 2 or three years ago because the programming I wanted was no longer offered as ala cart.

I have decided to go FTA because, Lion County, NV County Commissioners have decided they cannot afford to upgrade their TV retransmission towers to HD. Unless something changes soon, the area I live in will not have any over the air TV transmissions.

I have realigned my 12' Orbitron dish but it's still not just right. I think it's related to declination. All the markings for setting declination are gone.

The question I have is after I set declination to the lowest degree and looking from the back of the dish to the feed horn (western part of the country) do I spin it towards the east or to the west.


Thanks

JAS

 

[Inno]

I think there's a Orbitron manual in the manuals section. I just set up my 10' Orbitron over the weekend and I know what you mean about the markings disappearing. I basically spun the dish 'till I reached the highest point (bottom of dish farthest away from the mounting post) and picked one way........not sure if it's the right way. I'm only really looking at satellites that are west of my due south sat. (93° W) for the time being so I don't know if it's right.

Here's the link http://www.satelliteguys.us/fta-manuals/146371-orbitron-bud-installation-guide.html

 

[Gray1]

All my marking were off my Orbitron also.. I used a punch to mark the declanation so I wouldnt loose it

 

[JAS]

Thanks. I'll try and find the manual. I was looking for the easy answer.

With the declination set to the lowest point. I think that is -8 degrees. The dish can be spun left or right to get the -6 degrees I need. I think that if the location of the dish is in the west it has to be spun one way and the other if the location of dish is east.

I could go out and try both ways but I'm not as adventurous as you. Meaning, I have read some of your other posts about working in the cold and snow. I try to avoid both.

JAS

 

[skysurfer]

if your orbitrons are anything like my 8.5' orbitron, you could use a digital inclinometer to make angle measurements and figure out the declination.

this has been a good topic - I should go see if my spinclination marking is rubbed off or not (and if not, make a permanent mark so it's there if I need it someday). I installed mine new and followed the manual so I can't answer off the top of my head which way it should be spun or how much, etc.

 

[Inno]

Thanks. I'll try and find the manual. I was looking for the easy answer.

JAS

I put a link to the manual in my first post of this thread. I'd say that's probably the easiest answer.

 

[cbandjerk]

Sounds like some interesting stuff. Did a quick net search and only came up with some sat tracking software.
Tell me more.

 

[JAS]

Well I finally got the manual (dial up sucks). Only thing I found is keep the mark between the 9 and 3 clock positions, the upper part of the polar tube. And use only the part of the scale above the actuator arm. This is fine but I have no mark, no scale and no actuator arm. I have a H to H mount.


As stated before, I know where the dish points the lowest and it's -8 degrees. The problem is if turned one way (I forget which is which now) the feed horn will point slightly east of center. Turned the other way the feed horn points slightly west of center. I guess (when it gets warmer) I'll go out and rotate it one way to -6 degrees. Then the other way to -6 degrees and see which direction follows the arc the best.

 

[Inno]

I think (and I may be wrong) that when the dish is spun to it's highest location (no declination) then the 0° should be right where the mark on the dish should be. So put a mark there ............oh, you have no scale...........
And I just had another thought about when you spin the dish either way, when you are pointing at your true south satellite (highest point on the arc) you are going to be pointing a little east or a little west like you said so that'll screw up your true south setting.

I'll do a little research and see what I can come up with because it looks like I will have to make some adjustments too..........but it's been -30 to -40°F here the past few days. Hopefully it'll warm up a bit on the weekend and I can perhaps tune mine a bit more.
I hooked up my old Uniden Supra last night to move the dish and I can get good signal on all my western satellites, the ones south and east aren't there............
I'll keep you posted here on what I find and how I set mine up.........when it warms up a bit.

 

[JAS]

And I just had another thought about when you spin the dish either way, when you are pointing at your true south satellite (highest point on the arc) you are going to be pointing a little east or a little west like you said so that'll screw up your true south setting.

In the manual it's set the declination first by using the mark and scale. Then elevation then true south sat. The manual also gives instructions for the buttonhook for the feed horn. I don't have that either. My dish has four tubes equally spaced and bolted on around the outside of the dish and meet in the center where the feed horn is attached to them. This could be because it's a 12' dish.

I'll keep looking around too and let you know if I find anything.

 

[Inno]

Sounds good.......the manual does make a small mention of the 4 post mounting method but yeah, it mostly talks about the buttonhook feed which is what I have.
If anything I'd say the 4 post unit would be easier with less adjustment necessary.
It's supposed to warm up a bit here this weekend so maybe I'll get a chance to go out and play.

I'm going to read up on correctly tracking the arc in the meantime. I'll post any good links I find in that regard.

 

[Inno]

K, so I spent a few hours on mine today and I have it tracking pretty well.
So the zero setting is when you spin the dish to it's highest point (zero declination). Being as how my mark was missing from the dish I put a scratch mark on it at the zero position. I spun my dish counter clockwise (facing the front of the dish) until the mark was at 48 which is my latitude. Now if you don't have that sticker on the dish I can make some measurements of mine and let you know what the degree markings measure.
After that I set the actuator until the dish was at it's highest point (right in the middle) and proceeded to find my due south satellite. It was 93°W for me. Once I found it and did some tweaking I started finding the satellites to the West of it. With a little bit of tweaking of the elevation and skew I had it tracking pretty well.
The biggest problem I had was not really understanding the declination setting. I was second guessing some of the things I was doing so I quit for supper and I did some reading and worked it all out in my head so that I understood it a little better. The "spinclination" on the Orbitron is really simple but I was trying to make it more complicated than it really was.

As I said I can measure the latitude marking strip on mine if you don't have it on yours.
The other way you could do it would be to measure the current angle of the dish with an inclinometer then measure the angle of the mount and adjust the declination to the proper number of degrees for your location. I did measure mine after setting it by the marks on the dish just to confirm that it was correct.......it was.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more info.

 

[B.J.]

I read through this thread a bit quickly, and didn't completely understand everything I read, so I'm sorry if I repeat something already mentioned. However unless I'm not understanding, I think there may be some confusion, relative to the highest point and the zero declination, etc.

I have a 10' Orbitron on a spinclination mount, and mine didn't have any markings on it either, so I got one of those stick on rulers, and wrapped it around the hub, although that was a dozen years ago, and it's long since fallen off.

But the thing is, like said above, when the dish is at it's LOWEST aim point, it is -8 degrees declination, however at the highest point it is +8 degrees. The zero point is half way in between, when the dish is tilted kind of left or right. I basically wrapped the stick on ruler so that the zero corresponded to horizontal, and then divided the markings by 8, so that I could measure degrees.

Now one thing that's important if you don't have markings or manual (I've never seen the manual, mine came without a manual too), is that for me, it was important whether I rotated the dish clockwise or counter clockwise from the down (-8) point. Ie from the down position, rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise 45 degrees will give you a 4 deg declination, however when I first did this, I went the wrong way. Wrong, because I found that if I rotated counter clockwise (from the front of the dish), that I couldn't reach my western horizon, which to me was more important than my eastern horizon. Ie the big semi-circular gear on my H-H has roughly 180 deg swing, but if you rotate the dish counter clockwise, you're taking away several degrees of range to the west. I't possible that the big gear is offset so that you have to rotate clockwise, I'm not sure, but I found that I lost my western sats unless I rotated clockwise, which aime the dish a bit toward the west. Now it wouldn't matter, because my trees have grown, and I no longer can see anywhere near the western horizon anymore. This might not be an issue if you have an actuator instead of a H-H, but I'm not sure if they used spinclination on actuator mounts, because I'm not sure what the actuator would attach to if the dish were spinning, unless there is an extension out from the hub for it to connect to.

The other issue about the spinclination is that when you adjust the declination, it changes your polarity. So you should set the declination first, then never touch it again. The good thing about spinclination is that it is the most accurate method of setting declination that I have seen, other than perhaps those Gourmet Entertainment 3 bubble things.

 

[Inno]

Thanks for that!
My orbitron is set up for use with an actuator which has an extension plate which can be moved right or set straight back depending on your longitude (mine is straight back as I'm roughly centered in north america) so getting the full arc shouldn't be a problem.
With the way I set it the declination seems to be correct for my location as verified by inclinomter and I'm tracking from 93°W all the way to 135°W with very good signal. I haven't gone farther East than that yet because there's not much over there I want and I mis-judged some trees which are coming down in the spring anyway to clean up the yard a bit.
I'll have to go and double check that what I was seeing was in fact correct, it was almost 9:30 last night when I finished so it was dark for a few hours as I worked.
But thanks for chiming in, your information should be very valuable.

Edit: in thinking about what you said about the dish having -8 declination and +8 I guess it would be inclination but where in the world would you ever need +8 degrees?
At the equator you'd be at 0° Declination and the farther north you go the higher the declination number or lower the dish would be. When I measured the dish at the highest setting it seemed that the declination angle and the dish angle were the same, the dish was not 8° higher than the mount.

 

[JAS]

[ quote=B.J.;1668216]Wrong, because I found that if I rotated counter clockwise (from the front of the dish), that I couldn't reach my western horizon, which to me was more important than my eastern horizon. Ie the big semi-circular gear on my H-H has roughly 180 deg swing, but if you rotate the dish counter clockwise, you're taking away several degrees of range to the west. I't possible that the big gear is offset so that you have to rotate clockwise, I'm not sure, but I found that I lost my western sats unless I rotated clockwise, which aime the dish a bit toward the west.[/quote]

BJ are you in the eastern, mid or western part of the country? I'm in the western part. I'm tracking the arc fairly well but lose satellites from AMC3 eastward. I get C band on AMC 3 but no KU. I think that the direction the dish is spun (with an H to H mount) depends on where you are, east or west.

I still have not gone out and tried going the other way.
Although, the weather has warmed up, I'm dealing with septic tank problems right now

 

[B.J.]

Edit: in thinking about what you said about the dish having -8 declination and +8 I guess it would be inclination but where in the world would you ever need +8 degrees?
At the equator you'd be at 0° Declination and the farther north you go the higher the declination number or lower the dish would be. When I measured the dish at the highest setting it seemed that the declination angle and the dish angle were the same, the dish was not 8° higher than the mount.

You're right that you'd never need anything positive, even south of the equator, but maybe your mount is different from mine. The only way I can see that it can be zero declination when the dish is rotated to the highest point is if the mount part of the hub is tilted down, but I'm pretty sure that mine is square, not tilted. But I must admit that I've never checked it with a square. I did check the final adjustment with an inclinometer though. You have got me thinking that I should double check mine though, but it will have to wait till spring.

 

[B.J.]

BJ are you in the eastern, mid or western part of the country? I'm in the western part. I'm tracking the arc fairly well but lose satellites from AMC3 eastward. I get C band on AMC 3 but no KU. I think that the direction the dish is spun (with an H to H mount) depends on where you are, east or west.

I'm in Maine. I had assumed that what you said is true about rotating CW if in the east, and rotate CCW if in the west, but I was confused as to why I couldn't get to the horizon when I rotated the wrong way. It wouldn't seem like losing 3 or so degrees the dish would be swung to the east would matter that much, but it sure seemed to... but maybe either the big gear doesn't do a full 180. But with it rotated one way, I couldn't get the thing to motor to the sats close to the horizon, but rotated an equal amount in the other direction, I got to the horizon easy (well at least down to about 7 or 8 deg above the horizon ). Anyway, you're probably right.
Re losing Ku, my dish originally got Ku and C-band across the arc, but over the years, my dish has gotten pretty badly dented and warped from banging and sweeping snow and ice off in the winter (it's filling up with snow as I type), so I've pretty much lost a lot of my Ku reception in the last couple years. I had trouble with AMC3 too, even though it's pretty high in the sky here in Maine. I can still get Ku from AMC 6 through G27, but only on strong transponders, as my dented dish has less gain than my 3' dishes now.

 

[Inno]

Well mine has an actuator and not a H-H mount so that's one main difference. I was setting in satellites this morning and I have all the way from 89° W to 135°W, I couldn't lock 87° West but I think I have trees in the way there. But being as how I have 89 and 91 locked in with good quality and all the way over to 135, I'm pretty sure it's all set up correctly.
Not sure what you're going to do about the H-H mount.......I don't imagine it'll make too much of a difference if you spin the dish clockwise to get to the declination you need as long as you adjust your feedhorn accordingly.

Edit: I haven't tried Ku on this dish but I may do that over the spring/summer. I have a Chaparral Co-rotor 2 with C and Ku feeds on it but I kind of like using the LNBF I have now as I don't have to run another set of wires for the polarity servo.

 

[tvropro]

My question is related to the Orbitron Spincliometer, Spinomatic, Spindoctor or whatever it's called.

Spinclination

 

[JAS]

Sent my wife to get some more pipe for the septic system. While she was gone I snuck over to the dish and spun it to where it was 6 degrees the other way and the feed horn pointing slightly to the East. Checked elevation realigned my southern satellite. That did the trick. I'm now tracking from 72 W to 139 W. Both C and KU. I think I could go further East & West but have not tried. Had to get back to work on the other thing before wifey got back.

Thanks to all for the help suggestions and etc..

JAS