See no East, Hear no East, Speak no East

[kymics]

This summer, I put up my dish with a motor. During that time everything went pretty smooth although I'm not particularly pleased with the design of my dish mount. But I made it work and I was able to get my TSS (G25) pretty well. I moved West and tried G10R and that worked well and then went all the way over to 148W and that came in very strong. So far so good. Then I came back to my center and started heading East. G3C, G26, G28 and G11 were all fine. Then I tried AMC3 and I got nothing. I assumed it was because the PBS stuff didn't always blindscan so I kept going.

What I found though, is that every satellite East of G11 picks up nothing for me. I know that many of these satellites are mostly feeds but I was working on a Sunday so I expected something to be up there. Nimiq1 transponders show strong (80s and 90s) but Nimiq2 and Echo3 are all zero which I found odd being typically strong and forgiving.

I have a pretty unfettered view of the sky. There are some tall trees but they are a whole street and a half over and I'm pretty confident I'm shooting right over them. AMC3 is not even pointing close to those trees. So basically I'm thinking I've got an installation issue. I'm familiar with how the arc can easily be off with a motor but I'm just a bit surprised that it tracks all the way West but hardly East.

I got up there again on the weekend trying to give it another fine tuning before winter but nothing really changed. This time I had a magnetic inclinometer to check my plumb. It's showing that the pipe is off by 1 degree in two directions but as I indicated before it seems to be a shortcoming in the mount or perhaps the pole is not straight so I can't seem to get it plumb (I even tried a couple whacks with a hammer).

I'm planning to work on it more although that may not be until Spring. I thought I'd check your opinions on whether you feel it's just a tracking issue with my arc. Seems odd how it drops off so instantly between two satellites.

 

[qwert1515]

It's definitely a tracking issue, before you said that you checked if your mast was leveled I was thinking about a time I had a similar problem and I fixed it by changing the height of one leg of the tripod holding my dish.

 

[kymics]

I was thinking to try something like that by sticking a big washer or a shim on one side of the supporting tripods to shift the pipe.

 

[qwert1515]

US coins work well too if you don't have any washers around

 

[turbosat]

qwert has the right idea lol, though you might have to use Canadian coins. I was thinking of shimming inside the mount where the pipe inserts, rather than elsewhere, but whatever gets your dishmount (and dish) plumb.
Did something like that on a c=band pole a few years ago, top of pipe was not exactly flush, and therefore not level, which was throwing off my ku-bird tracking. Took off dish/mount, and being too lazy to grind off the pipe with a grinder, glued a couple of US nickels on low spots on the top of the pipe, eh , checked with my level seven ways to Sunday, and put it back together. Works great.

 

[kymics]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I didn't realize that DIY is sometimes a requirement for getting the installation perfected. Maybe I'll go and raid my wife's coin purse after work.