Motorised dish alignment problems

[smithey93]

Hi everyone,

Hope all is good.

I've finally got round to setting up my motorised dish, however I'm having problems aligning it correctly. I've got a clear line of site to the satellites after attacking the trees, so I know that isn't the issue.

As it stands I can pickup astra 1 (19.2E) but to do this I turned the dish to 23.5E, if i turn too 28.2E I pickup 23.5E. I've sent the motor left and right (for hours) and them are the only two satellites I can pickup. I think the problem lies within the vertical alignment of the dish itself - I've got this set to 22.5 degrees.

I seen some pretty good diagrams of the "arc" of satellites, and the common problems (too high/low etc) but I can't for the life of me find them.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated :).

Cheers,

Smithey

[DaMacFunkin]

Could you not align it to 0 and use usals?

[goosegog]

Hi smithey,have a search for fruitballs motorised set up.i followed it a couple of months ago to set up my first install.easy to follow,all round good tutorial.if i remember,you send motor to 0 then fine adjust at thor first[emoji106]


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[smithey93]

That's what I did, using both a compass and a handy app on my phone (effectively a digital compass). Used gotox to send the dish to 0.8W, nothing. My receiver had an option to "search east/west" and it found signal but at the wrong places.

Unless I've got the wrong idea :P

[lju]

Set the dish to 25 degrees and work from there.

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[TK4|2|1]

What are your long and lat? I assume you've entered them correctly in your receiver. Depending on your longitude will depend on which sat you use as reference. ie 2deg west for me I use 0.8west (Thor).
On your dish motor bracket you will have a latitude scale, set this to yours and tighten it. Choose a channel off of your reference satellite and bring up signal strength. All you need to do now is physically move the motor on the pole and adjust the dish azimuth to get max signal. Tighten it all up and try other satellites.

[Conaxthewarrior]

My motor came with a map of europe. I googled my east & west location in degrees then looked this up along the grid lines of the map. To the right was a number which was the angle I should point the dish (from the vertical). Luckily, I had a Triax dish which has a degree scale on it so one adjustment and all was well. I'd say though , check your vertical angle on the mounting, (what you've attached the dish to). It must be exactly 90 degrees to the vertical and 90 to the horizontal otherwise you will get signal loss at best, loss of satellite / transponder at worst. My dish is on a metal pole which I have to realign at least 3 times a year as I suddenly get "pixelation or spotted tv" when it goes out of line and when this happens, its a matter of 1 degree and less on other satellites, ive found. To get the 90 degrees alignment as correct as possible, I use a digital protractor (40 quid) or you could download an app on you smart phone which does the job (mine is a little cube with a magnet on the back so I attach it to the pole & see the angle as I adjust the dish). The protractor is accurate to 0.1 degrees and it gets it spot on. Another way of looking at it is as the dish moves from satellite to satellite, it runs along a bananna shape and if the dish is out of alignment a bit, you would likely recieve some eastern satellites - miss the middle ones and recieve some of the far western ones and even then partially. When the dish is in line, it hits each satellite perfectly (thanks to the USALS system Universal Satellites Automatic Location System).