Advice Needed 45e - 53e - signal drops massively - arc or horizon \ obstruction

[Manikm909]

I meant more the pole arrangement...

yeah me too

 

[Gladstones]

Don’t want to install dish at the front of house t&k brackets was not clearing the dish to get 42e till 53e so got two L brackets and dish can move easily till 56e before it hits the front wall. I think L bracket looks neater than t&k.

 

[jeallen01]

Don’t want to install dish at the front of house t&k brackets was not clearing the dish to get 42e till 53e so got two L brackets and dish can move easily till 56e before it hits the front wall. I think L bracket looks neater than t&k.

If you could add a stabiliser from the wall to just above the motor at the top of the "mast", that would make the whole arrangement more solid - maybe use the same sort of bracket that is already fixed to the wall, but inverted and mounted so that the "upstand is very close to the mast above the motor and then clamp the two together (you'd probably have to shorten the upstand on the new bracket though)

 

[Gladstones]

Good idea will do some sort of support to make it more solid

 

[Channel Hopper]

If you could add a stabiliser from the wall to just above the motor at the top of the "mast", that would make the whole arrangement more solid - maybe use the same sort of bracket that is already fixed to the wall, but inverted and mounted so that the "upstand is very close to the mast above the motor and then clamp the two together (you'd probably have to shorten the upstand on the new bracket though)

It would remove the fun of the fine tuning.

 

[jeallen01]

It would remove the fun of the fine tuning.

The "fun" in fine tuning is not having to do any because you got right first time! - not that that's ever likely to happen in reality

 

[TJExcalibur]

The "fun" in fine tuning is not having to do any because you got right first time! - not that that's ever likely to happen in reality

The good thing about fine tuning is it keeps you git going up and down a ladder.

 

[jeallen01]

The good thing about fine tuning is it keeps you git going up and down a ladder.

"Good" if you like climbing ladders and I was OK with that a few years ago, but not so much now due to leg and back problems - and so it's "relatively Good" that the "worst" I now need to do is climb a few feet up a stepladder

 

[Gladstones]

Going up the ladder is not fun one might break his leg or arm
Or even matter of life and death

 

[Manikm909]

Going up the ladder is not fun one might break his leg or arm
Or even matter of life and death

Cheap self build scaffold towers are a better option. Glad my setup is only just above gutter line of ground floor kitchen extension - easy quick and relatively safe to tweak on nice days - it used to be above gutter line of house, that was scary and tweaking was out of the question really.

 

[Manikm909]

ok, it looks like i still have work to do !

i can NOW locate china radio on 45w, but at the sacrfice of 30w 34.5w etc....i can find it, but only by "fudging" my USALS by almost .7 of a mark on longitude....

looks like my ARC is not as sweet as i thought - very odd though, i would have thought being able to go from 53east to 53west, my arc would have been bang on....

 

[TJExcalibur]

Try a digital level to get the pole exactly upright from all angles which is almost impossible with a spirit level. I used s/s washers to pack out the brackets to within 0.1% of vertical.

 

[Manikm909]

Try a digital level to get the pole exactly upright from all angles which is almost impossible with a spirit level. I used s/s washers to pack out the brackets to within 0.1% of vertical.

thanks

ive just been up the ladder again, adjusted the motor by a fraction maybe 1-2mm - and now i can get 100% on 52e and 86% on 53e - i can get 100% on 30w, and 34.5w and 12db on 58w (some beam tp)

45w can just DO ONE - annoying that i cant get it, but it must be some kind of weird signal that just aint falling in line with my setup - or just doesnt like LAMINAS fibreglass/plastic...

 

[moonbase]

45w can just DO ONE - annoying that i cant get it, but it must be some kind of weird signal that just aint falling in line with my setup - or just doesnt like LAMINAS fibreglass/plastic...

Have you got a DVB card such as a TBS card? If you have it might be worth a quick scan of 45W with a DVB card to see if it is any better at locking China Radio?

 

[Manikm909]

Have you got a DVB card such as a TBS card? If you have it might be worth a quick scan of 45W with a DVB card to see if it is any better at locking China Radio?i ahv

i havent mate - but ive got an octagon sx88 off the other LNB feed - that doesnt pick it up either...

im not too fussed.

i just dont understand the problem, i just HAVE to be tracking the ARC with the results im getting from extreme east to west.

i dont get why i need to change my USALS to get it, when i can get 53e - 30w - 58w on target. it makes zero sense.


something else, i had to change USALS quite a bit in order to get 7db of china radio, which wiped out 30w, and 34.5w etc....this also doesnt make sense to me

 

[jeallen01]

ok, it looks like i still have work to do !

i can NOW locate china radio on 45w, but at the sacrifice of 30w 34.5w etc....i can find it, but only by "fudging" my USALS by almost .7 of a mark on longitude....

looks like my ARC is not as sweet as i thought - very odd though, i would have thought being able to go from 53east to 53west, my arc would have been bang on....

I had to slightly adjust (AKA "fudge") the arc on the Gibby by about 0.3-0.4 degrees to get a really solid lock on China Radio on 45W, as well as almost all the other sats across the arc - but those are minute amounts which, as I said earlier, would be almost impossible to eliminate by the adjusting the setting of the motor on the pole.

Don't forget that, as the dish sweeps further and further E or W from your Southern-most sat, the sats are further and further away and thus, whilst the angular difference between them doesn't alter as far as the motor is concerned, the actual "physical distance" on "your horizon" does increase a bit - and therefore so the dish needs to be pointed more precisely at the orbital position (and the signal gets weaker as well in most cases - especially when on the footprint fringes).

TBH, I don't think you'd get "much better" after a lot of long and tedious, and often counter-productive, work as the "law of diminishing returns" will come into play.

 

[ozumo]

I wouldn't use a 100% signal quality reading as confirmation the dish is perfectly aligned. On strong satellites you can get 100% even if the dish is slightly off. Use decibel level and focus on the weaker transponders

 

[Manikm909]

I wouldn't use a 100% signal quality reading as confirmation the dish is perfectly aligned. On strong satellites you can get 100% even if the dish is slightly off. Use decibel level and focus on the weaker transponders

i do, sometimes im in db mode, sometimes in snr mode.

 

[jeallen01]

I wouldn't use a 100% signal quality reading as confirmation the dish is perfectly aligned. On strong satellites you can get 100% even if the dish is slightly off. Use decibel level and focus on the weaker transponders

Exactly - do the positional tuning on the weakest transponder you can find on a sat - the possible exception being when the dish is pointing at a very closely-located group sats at the same nominal location (such as Hotbird, Astra 1, BADR & Astra 2) where "tuning up" on a very weak transponder on one of those could lose you SS/SQ on some/all of the others.

 

[Channel Hopper]

i havent mate - but ive got an octagon sx88 off the other LNB feed - that doesnt pick it up either...

im not too fussed.

i just dont understand the problem, i just HAVE to be tracking the ARC with the results im getting from extreme east to west.

i dont get why i need to change my USALS to get it, when i can get 53e - 30w - 58w on target. it makes zero sense.


something else, i had to change USALS quite a bit in order to get 7db of china radio, which wiped out 30w, and 34.5w etc....this also doesnt make sense to me

It it isn't play in the motor bearings, or gearing, then I would suspect the weight of the dish is having an effect on how vertical the pole is as it swings either side of south.

It can be dealt with by careful adjustment of the three settings, (as I found when I had to install a polarmount dish on a lamp-post a few years back - don't ask ), but is very tricky to get right.