Ok guys I'm experimenting with Usals on an Openbox. In the two years I've been into FTA I've never bothered with Usals. I put my Lat as 39.21 and Long as 84.14 and have the dish and SG2100 on 85W..closest to true south. It doesn't seem to track properly. I might get 87W or 85W but I can't get anything above that. I've tried playing with the latitude setting and adjusting it a little one way or the other...still no improvement. It always tracks fine using 1.2 but not Usals. Over the years I've read where everyone likes Usals because its easier? What am I doing wrong? I'm missing something simple for sure...Thanks Blind
BlindOwl,
Please be patient with me if some of the stuff I say here is redundant for you. I apologize for that, but I must get myself in gear to explain certain things. Bare with me, ok?
Obviously, I bring out the dead horse to beat on it again... Is your mast perfectly plumb and is it sturdy? Be very critical of this, don't fudge!
If your latitude is 39.21°N and your longitude is 84.14°W, use those coordinates for your USALS entries. I don't know how far the Openbox fields go out past the decimal point but most receivers allow only one decimal position so you should probably enter 39.2°N and 84.1°W.
If you can manage it with the dish installed, slap an inclinometer on the belly of the motor (you must be on the flat surface of the motor's underbelly). Read the angle. This should be 50.79° (90° - 39.21°). Set your motor latitude adjustment so that the incliometer reads 50.79° elevation. Well. as close to 50.8° as you can get.
Command the motor to go to reference or go to zero. Set your dish elevation according to the manual's instructions or determine the elevation angle with an on-line calculator. I say go to zero or the home poition so that your motor tube is straight. This makes adjusting the dish elevation better because gravity is pulling straight down on the dish assembly so there is little chance of your dish mounting bracket twisting on you while the bolts are loosened. That can introduce an unwanted error to your alignment that is hard to detect, but really throws you off the arc. Tighten the bolts up (just not overtight), don't be the gorilla.
Very important thing to check at this point, is your dish bracket centered on your motor tube? The vertical axis of your dish pan must be perfectly in line with the vertical axis of the motor tube when the motor is at zero degrees. Just a smidgeon of error here will throw your arc off. Same as with a twist in your dish mounting bracket assembly.
Go into your menus and set up satellite AMC 16 to be at 85.0°W and select USALS. In your manual or TP menu, select this sat and TP 12183 MHz 3978 symbol rate, Horizontal. Your TP frequency might be a little off from mine, but you will know it as the Echostar Satellite Access Ctr TP.
Now drive the motor with your receiver to AMC 16 and monitor your signal quality while you grasp the dish pan and give it a gentle pull up, down, to the right and to the left. Can you improve the signal quality? If you can, adjust the motor azimuth on the pole or the dish elevation to peak the signal as best you can.
Now, using USALS, how far can you go and still pick up a sat properly? What is the furthest sat east and west that you can make it to before the signal starts to degrade on you?
Stop there and grasp your dish and try to improve the signal. Which way do you have to move it to make the most improvement. If it is east or west, adjust your motor azimuth on the mast but DO NOT move anything else. If it is up and down, adjust your dish elevation, but DO NOT adjust the azimuth. Now go to the other side of the arc to the furthest sat that you can still get a signal from and adjust the other angle (if you adjusted azimuth before, now adjust the dish elevation or vice versa). Go back and forth from one side of the arc to the other and adjust either your dish elevation or your motor azimuth but remember to adjust only one thing on each side and stick with that method through the entire procedure.
If your dish bracket is a bit flimsy, drive it back to ZERO before making the elevation adjustment otherwise the bracket may flex on you and introduce a new error and you will really be fighting ghosts and phantoms!
This is the calibration procedure and you must do it for both DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS if you want your dish and motor to be set right. It is just a lot easier with USALS because some of the work is being done for you by the USALS calculations.
I honestly swear to you that once you get accustomed to this practice, you will look back and have a V-8 moment (if you remember those commercials). If you get it down pat this way, you will be setting up dishes on the fly in 15 minutes! And, they will be on the arc!
RADAR
