Motorised Dish Setup with Technisat 65/70cm square dish.

[D4ftpunk]

Firstly, thanks everyone for your help recently usual suspects; it started with re-aligning an old Sky dish to 13.0E, moved onto a multi dish setup, then to a "MULTYTENNE quad LNB mini dish" and now I've added a motorised 65cm/70cm square dish (Technisat) into the mix (largest I can fit into the constraints of my roof unfortunately.

With that, I managed to setup the dish without much drama. Started with true-south, setup the latitude alignment on the mount; made sure everything was dead on, 0 skew on LNB. No signal, then calibrated it and got a decent fix on Astra 2 (98%) then assumed everything else would be fine. On the basis of that assumption; did some scans, picked up quite a bit and was pleased... However I have a few questions before I tinker further...

- What are the East/West limits I should expect with such a setup? (for example, I cannot get 53.0E Express AM6, but at the same time didn't really expect to with such sized dish.)

- Should I expect to be able to fix on any satellite within those limits, or does it depend on their footprints?

- If I have a great fix on what I calibrated it to (Astra 2) can I assume everything else will fall in? or should I pick something and fine tune further?

- Anyone recommend some decent / interesting sats or frequencies to play with?


P.S. yes I know the L bracket I have is rubbish, but I needed something very very low profile from the wall to stop the LNB hitting the nearby panels.

 

[Analoguesat]

Itll all depend on many things - eg


the footprint downlink power at your location
the transmission parameters of any particular transponder. (DVB tends to be easier to lock than DVB-S2 & fec 1/2 is MUCH easier then 7/8)
the frequency response of the lnb
how much power is being squirted down on a tp - Single Channel Per Carrier signals have been known to be very strong in the past - much easier to lock than would be expected.

 

[Lazarus]

..... or, to put it another way, you could pan around the arc and tell us what you actually can receive! At a minimum, assuming clear line of sight, you should get the stronger birds between Hispasat at 30W and Turksat at 42E. Key amongst those would be 5W, 4E, 7E, 13E , 19E , 23E, 28E and 39E. You might get other weaker, quirkier birds, but then again, you might not

 

[a33]

If I have a great fix on what I calibrated it to (Astra 2) can I assume everything else will fall in? or should I pick something and fine tune further?

Did you set the motor angles with motor (at zero) and dish exactly in line?
And then found 28E, after using USALS to move to 28E direction, by rotating the whole setup on the mast?

Here is a fine-adjustment schematic, for further checking.

First check figures 11 and 12 (Notice the arrows of corrected solutions!). If you have done the above method properly, your south-alignment (figures 11/12) should be OK.

Then check 13 and 14, for motor elevation/dish declination finetuning.

After that, if needed, 11/12 again, and 13/14 again.

Greetz,
A33

 

[D4ftpunk]

..... or, to put it another way, you could pan around the arc and tell us what you actually can receive! At a minimum, assuming clear line of sight, you should get the stronger birds between Hispasat at 30W and Turksat at 42E. Key amongst those would be 5W, 4E, 7E, 13E , 19E , 23E, 28E and 39E. You might get other weaker, quirkier birds, but then again, you might not

Well... picked up exactly nothing on 30W so far... will see what the rest of the arc yields. May change the LNB tomorrow (its on a Technomate cheapo 0.2dB one right now, I have a 0.1dB inverto one to try.

 

[D4ftpunk]

Did you set the motor angles with motor (at zero) and dish exactly in line?
And then found 28E, after using USALS to move to 28E direction, by rotating the whole setup on the mast?

Here is a fine-adjustment schematic, for further checking.

First check figures 11 and 12 (Notice the arrows of corrected solutions!). If you have done the above method properly, your south-alignment (figures 11/12) should be OK.

Then check 13 and 14, for motor elevation/dish declination finetuning.

After that, if needed, 11/12 again, and 13/14 again.

Greetz,
A33

This is interesting, so further extremes of the Arc would have the most error if there was any issue in dis-alignment... That could be in play here. I'll move it to 0 and give it a check in the morning.

I did set everything at 0 and exactly in line when setting up. Moved dish to 28E using the receiver USALS command and then adjusted the dish on the motor mount not the pole on the wall. Angle seemed fine, it was the tilt I had to change. I think perhaps that (as per 13/14) may be the thing to tinker with tomorrow.

 

[Analoguesat]

You need to be tweaking on a weak signal not a strong signal.

 

[a33]

Here is a fine-adjustment schematic, for further checking.

I liked the drawings of the finetuning procedure so much, that I made the " A33 Short manual for setting up a motorized satellite dish.pdf " out of it.

It sums up the steps for setting up a motorized dish. Short (one page), but systematically.

Greetz,
A33

 

[Beli1910]

Yes, a fine adjustment of the antenna elevation will be necessary if the motor is facing the pure south and is correctly set as the motor angle. it's lower, but I can see that you don't have a lot of ground clearance. Check carefully if the antenna is screwed exactly in the middle of the arm as it should be. Good luck and enjoy the game.

 

[D4ftpunk]

You need to be tweaking on a weak signal not a strong signal.

Agreed, went for 28.2 purely to get any signal… but now i need to refine. Would you expect I should be getting 30.0W on this dish? That’s pretty weak/non-existent right now so a good candidate.

 

[D4ftpunk]

Also, the guide is good, but I’m not sure i quite get the images other than noticing how the ARC drifts out with the slightest variation.

 

[Lazarus]

Yes, 30W should be a doddle.

 

[D4ftpunk]

Interestingly. Looking at what its picked up last time i have NOTHING from anything West… everything is East.

 

[D4ftpunk]

Moved it to 0.8W and nothing, did some fine movement, still nothing. Gonna jump up on the roof tomorrow and try and get 0.8W aligned. 65/70cm should be good enough in London I guess for that.

 

[a33]

i have NOTHING from anything West… everything is East.

One side OK, other side not OK, would mean: incorrect south alignment. (Or non-plumb mast.)

With correct south alignment, east/west would be symmetrical. (That is why you have to start with figure 11 and 12.)

Does this help?

Greetz,
A33

 

[D4ftpunk]

it does help thanks.

from memory the mast is plumb, I got it at 0 degrees.
the true south alignment was tricky as I used a compass on my phone, I may be a couple of degrees out, but not more. I may try find a magnetic compass somewhere tomorrow and then calculate the diff to true south.

I'm going to move it to 0.0 and check True South again.
I'm then going to move it to 0.8W, check the tilt of the dish and LNB skew, see if I can lock a Thor transponder.

I'm also wondering if the building in the distance is affecting it (about 2-3 meters away and the roof line pretty much ends at the top of the photo). I sort of assumed it could not, but I don't know the throw of these dishes. Certainly at 0.8W I did not expect any interference given its barely in the peripheral.

 

[a33]

I'm going to move it to 0.0 and check True South again.

When you use USALS, true south is only relevant to have "a general direction" for the motor-zero-position, after my step 2/at the start of step 3.
Step 3 (USALS) allows you to use any satellite position as reference. Finding that satellite, makes your south-alignment OK too. That's the beauty of USALS.
But indeed, starting off with the motor mounted to a correct due south position, makes finding your reference satellite much easier.

There are several detailed motor setup guides on this forum (unlike my "short" one). Have you checked those as well?
See this sub-forum: Dish Setup Guides, Information threads and FAQs

 

[D4ftpunk]

Did a few corrections today, that diagram is very useful. Now I have it picking up western satellites, not across the whole arc but far enough, however I've lost eastern satellites after about 21.5E where I get pitiful signal. (prior to that I could get signal much further east). So looks like I'm getting there.

This time I:

- set to 0
- aligned everything to true south
- moved motor to Thor 0.8W and wiggled LNB/elevation/tilt/moved dish until the signal there was good.

Tomorrow I'll be fine tuning it further to get back the Eastern sats in accordance to figure 13/14 in the diagram. (assuming I got true south dead on).

 

[mike1]

Sounds like the motor needs the elevation dropping slightly... If cant get anything near 28e ... Try get a good signal on 1W ( You can use 5w for reference )

Also check your latitude and longitude is set correctly ... Make sure to send to 0 then select a channel on 0.8W to fine tune.

Enigma2 examples below--

 

[D4ftpunk]

Went up today, triple checked everything. Noticed that when the motor is set to 0 on the receiver, its not exactly 0... adjusted for that a little the best I could... also, I adjusted the lat/lon in the receiver ever so slightly (maybe latitude by about 25 meters)... moved the dish using the receiver to either ends of the spectrum and got signal beyond what I could before.. picking up about 65% signal on 0.8W transponders, better on others... situation has improved some what than yesterday, I can now pickup transponders across the entire horizon... although I feel still not perfect, I'm happy with it for now.

dish gets partially obstructed by solar panels (end of solar panel is in line with end of LNB.)... but I don't think raising the dish will offer much benefit given where the signal is coming from. as on dead straight ahead signals (5-13E for me) I seem ok.

I'm getting the bug for this... I may end up with a 1.3m dish or similar on a tripod at the end of my garden if I'm not careful.