Usals 20 degrees off on every sat

[Trust]

Yes, only after I posted, I realized that it was a new(?) motor, not mounted yet. But I didn't bother to get up in the night and correct myself...



Ah, good thinking, @Trust !

(though you mean 17E instead of 17W, typo I

Yes typo


merely meant, that the motor rotated to angular position 50, not to satellite position 50W...?

(So my test with the Goto 17E command would indeed also go to angular postion zero, I guess.)

Greetz,
A33

 

[TJExcalibur]

Reading through the posts in on this subject made me wonder if it was the man from Mars trying to align a baked bean can to receive Eastenders on Mars.

 

[greencajun]

The old motor and dish are down. The new motor has been mounted on the dish, and I'm just waiting for someone to get home and help me lift it up to the mount on the side of the house. In the meantime, any tips on how to ensure that the dish is pointing exactly south? I know where the dish points for Astra 1 at 19E, so I was thinking of pointing it a bit to the right of that spot to set it at 17E.

 

[jeallen01]

Reading through the posts in on this subject made me wonder if it was the man from Mars trying to align a baked bean can to receive Eastenders on Mars.

 

[Mickha]

The old motor and dish are down. The new motor has been mounted on the dish, and I'm just waiting for someone to get home and help me lift it up to the mount on the side of the house. In the meantime, any tips on how to ensure that the dish is pointing exactly south? I know where the dish points for Astra 1 at 19E, so I was thinking of pointing it a bit to the right of that spot to set it at 17E.

If using USALS you don't need to do any of that. Set everything to 0, motor, dish and LNB, enter your correct Latitude, and Longitude, into your receiver.
Use your receiver to send the motor/dish to a suitable satellite, like 19.2E, or 16E, or 13E, then physically align your dish, to that satellite, at which point 0, on your motor, should be pointing to your longitude.

 

[greencajun]

If using USALS you don't need to do any of that. Set everything to 0, motor, dish and LNB, enter your correct Latitude, and Longitude, into your receiver.
Use your receiver to send the motor/dish to a suitable satellite, like 19.2E, or 16E, or 13E, then physically align your dish, to that satellite, at which point 0, on your motor, should be pointing to your longitude.

That makes sense, thanks.

 

[Terryl]

The old motor and dish are down. The new motor has been mounted on the dish, and I'm just waiting for someone to get home and help me lift it up to the mount on the side of the house. In the meantime, any tips on how to ensure that the dish is pointing exactly south? I know where the dish points for Astra 1 at 19E, so I was thinking of pointing it a bit to the right of that spot to set it at 17E.

Dish, Motor and LNB need to be mechanically or manually aligned to DUE South (180 degrees) from your location FIRST. Then you can tweak it by moving it internally with the receiver to correctly align to your DUE South satellite,(whatever satellite is directly DUE South from your location) this will be the goto 0 or #0 satellite where the motor will return to if asked for, all other satellites (East or West of the due South satellite) will be based off this starting point.

I find that using USALS sometimes is tricky at some locations, that's why I never use it, but locate all the satellites the customer wants by doing a manual search and store, this way you can tweak them in for the best quality on the signals.

To help locate Due South you can use a program from dishpointer dot com, it has an app for most cell phones that can be usefull out at the dish when first aligning it.

 

[greencajun]

The good news: the new motor went up easily and was aligned with no difficulties.

The bad news: it seems the problem was not the old motor after all. As described in my prior thread, Dish will not turn west, help please - SatsUK, the problem was that the motor would not turn west, except with the Go to Reference command. The consensus was that the motor was bad, so I bought a new one. The new one worked yesterday during the ground testing, and it worked today on the mast when I was getting it aligned. But after about 30 minutes, the exact same problem surfaced -- the motor will not turn west with the West command on the receiver, with USALS, or with the manual West button on the motor. This motor has 2 LEDs that flash continuously, Red for east and Green for west. The green LED now does not come on at all. But just like the old motor, this motor does turn west if the Go to Reference command is sent.

So, it seems the issue is with the receiver, not the motor. Since the new motor did turn west for 30 minutes or so, my big fear is that the receiver was somehow sending too much current up the line and it burned out the west relay or micro-switch in both motors. I'll try a factory reset of the box but I'm not optimistic that will solve the problem. If I could just borrow another receiver, I could test whether it drives the motor west as it should.

Any thoughts?