Where SHOULD my motor be?

[glen4cindy]

At one time, I had a website that would tell you the value your motor went to for each satellite you move to.

It helps you to know that your dish is actually moving to the right place when you tell it to go to a particular satellite.

I need to check my dish and want to make sure that it is actually motoring to the correct degrees.

Does anyone know of a website or downloadable program that will tell you what this calculation is?

Thanks!

 

[Anole]

find my bird !

You just want the aiming angle for each bird in the sky... from your location?

TheList has a calculator

Sadoun has a calculator

SatelliteAV has a calculator

I won't bother using any calculators unless they include the local magnetic variation.
I believe all the ones above do so.

There are more. I use a Java-based stand alone program in addition to the above.
To each his own.

edit: but having said all that, consider this:
Your dish looks "up" about 22º, so if you are aimed south, and compare to a compass, you'll find the dish aimed correctly.
When the dish is significantly east or west, then it's tilted over and in addition to looking up, it's sorta looking sideways.
There's about no way in the world you will be able to stand behind it with a compass and confirm the aim angle!
Best is to adjust your tracking (the sadoun site/link above shows how) to get on the arc.
You confirm by matching your reception to the listed birds.

 

[qwert1515]

Anole might have answered your question, but I am reading your question in a different way.

I think you are asking for a calculator that gives you the motor's rotation angle, I have seen a site that had that information before but I can't find it right now, If I do find it I will post it.

(Otherwise I will try to figure it out and add it to TheList, time to play with Trig )

 

[Anole]

QWERT -
You are right, on first read of this, I thought the same:

At one time, I had a website that would tell you the value your motor went to for each satellite you move to.

Then I read it again, and based my answer on this:

I need to check my dish and want to make sure that it is actually motoring to the correct degrees.

It'll be interesting to find out which one the OP wanted.

And the angle one sounds good, regardless. - :up
So do post if ya find it. I'm sure we can make some use of the info.
As for adding it to TheList... I like to think you're done with that nice project.
Time to retire and live off the residuals.

 

[glen4cindy]

There is a scale on the rod coming out of the motor. It has like +60 to -60 (I think it's 60)

When I tell my dish I want to watch G10R, from where I am, the motor turns about 38 or so degrees west of 0 on the motor's scale.

There used to be a website that would tell you what this value is.

I was having lots of problems getting my dish installed for the first time, and used this site to figure out where the motor was supposed to turn for IA5. I manually moved the motor to this setting using the scale on the motor. I then adjusted left and right for the best signal, then peaked up and down on the dish. Then, I went using USALS to another satellite, and peaked and I was right on. I did all of this with the dish "test mounted".

When I finally mounted my dish, I started with my south satellite, then went far east and far west and got everything lined up. When I went back to IA5, the value on the motor was the same as the website that I had found.

I am wanting to make sure my motor is moving the the correct place to find satellites because over the winter, my dish has somehow moved out of alignment and this is just a check to make sure my dish is moving right.

Hope I am explaining myself the right way.

Thanks.

 

[brentb636]

It's my experience that when my dish moves out of alignment, it's always been an azimuth problem, meaning that a gust of wind, or several gusts, have moved the mount on the vertical pole. This winter it has happened to me again. Not by too much , though.
I've had to change my USALS longitude location by 0.3 degrees to the West, to bring everything back into alignment. The same thing happened last year in winter storms, I had to adjust my USALS location to "fudge" the alignment until I could get out in the spring and ZERO it in again.
My technique is simply to go into the motor setup screen, and change the USALS longitude by 0.1 degree at a time, and allow the system to adjust. Whatever value gives my my best quality reading is the value that I keep in there. At that point, ALL the satellites are aligned correctly again. Try this technique, see if it works for you. I suspect that 90% of the alignment problems are "wind caused" azimuth errors and can be compensated for this way.



Brent

 

[glen4cindy]

That would make sense. When I was working with the dish, I had my wife watching the quality and signal and it only went down when I moved the dish up and down by hand.

My motor has slop in the arm. I can physically move the dish up and down at least 3 to 4 degrees but, none of this movement produced any better results, only worse. I am going to try and tighten the allen nut on the motor arm to see if that removes the slop.

Would trying to bump the motor using 1.2 produce the same results as adjusting my latitude? This way I could try it with one satellite instead of messing with all of them at once.

Thanks

 

[glen4cindy]

Okay, I found my answer in another thread.

The website is:

MOTORIZE YOUR WORLD = = PRODUCTS = =

You put in your lat/long and what satellite you want to look at, and it gives you motor angle.

So, if you want that for The List, there it is!

 

[brentb636]

You could certainly use Diseqc 1.2 mode to tune in any particular bird. USALS adjustments, though, should correct for all the satellites at once, if it is simply a problem like mine ( wind turning the dish on the pole ). It is also easier to put the correct LONGITUDE back in again to get back to the original starting place. I find USALS adjustments to be much quicker, but you might prefer the Diseqc 1.2 mode, just to "get a feel" for how many "bumps" you have to provide to optimize your tuning again.



Brent

 

[qwert1515]

Okay, I found my answer in another thread.

The website is:

MOTORIZE YOUR WORLD = = PRODUCTS = =

You put in your lat/long and what satellite you want to look at, and it gives you motor angle.

So, if you want that for The List, there it is!

I can't use that for TheList (I can use it to check my program with) I had some free time so I created some formulas, they seem to work for the locations I have tested by hand, time to make a program to do the hard work, then we can decide if we want it on TheList.

 

[glen4cindy]

It's my experience that when my dish moves out of alignment, it's always been an azimuth problem, meaning that a gust of wind, or several gusts, have moved the mount on the vertical pole. This winter it has happened to me again. Not by too much , though.
I've had to change my USALS longitude location by 0.3 degrees to the West, to bring everything back into alignment. The same thing happened last year in winter storms, I had to adjust my USALS location to "fudge" the alignment until I could get out in the spring and ZERO it in again.
My technique is simply to go into the motor setup screen, and change the USALS longitude by 0.1 degree at a time, and allow the system to adjust. Whatever value gives my my best quality reading is the value that I keep in there. At that point, ALL the satellites are aligned correctly again. Try this technique, see if it works for you. I suspect that 90% of the alignment problems are "wind caused" azimuth errors and can be compensated for this way.



Brent

I tried this. When I use USALS to change by like .3, .5., 1.0 nothing happens at all to the quality. When I use 1.2 to give the dish a "bump" west, my quality jumps into the upper 70's to 90's depending upon which satellite I am viewing. It's working out to be 1 "bump" west for every satellite.

I tried the same going EAST and the quality did go down to 0, so I am not sure what is going on, but, now I know that my azimuth is off. Thanks, Brent