New Diseqc Motor - different dish bracket angle problem

[realdannys]

If it receives ok when its raining leave it alone.

Won't be long before I can test it in the rain!

[realdannys]

One further question - if I wanted to just adjust the entire disk 1 or 2 fine notches West, is there a way I could do this with the USALs data rather than moving the entire dish that direction?

[abu baniaz]

Adjust the co-ordinates slightly.

[realdannys]

Which ones though Abu? Which co-ordinate would make it go two fine ticks West? How far is a West a fine movement west on a VU+ box? Should I be adjusting the latitude? Which way? etc...

My current USALS is Longitude: 003.062
Latitude 052.967

If I wanted to tweak that to two fine tune movements west, what would it be?

[abu baniaz]

Longitude defines east/west. Positive is East. Negative is West.
Latitude defines north/south. Positive is North. Negative is South.

If you are having to move your dish west a bit, you need to move your co-ordinates west a bit too.

[Joe_90]

I'll butt in here (apologies). If you need the motor to "nudge" a little West, then you need to move your location a little East in longitude (reason is that the box calculates the angular difference between the set location and (say) 30 West and tells the motor to move x degrees West). So, if you set your location eg 0.4 degrees East, then the box will tell the motor to move x + 0.4 degrees West.

edit - location longitude looks wrong. +3.062 puts you in the North Sea. -3.062 would locate you in North Wales. Assuming that to be the case, then ensure the box setting says 3.062 West or has the value as -3.062. The "tweak" would then be to set 2.662 West in order to nudge the dish a little further West.

[abu baniaz]

Thanks for the correction.

[Joe_90]

No problem abu - see my edit also as the longitude may be wrong.

[realdannys]

I'll butt in here (apologies). If you need the motor to "nudge" a little West, then you need to move your location a little East in longitude (reason is that the box calculates the angular difference between the set location and (say) 30 West and tells the motor to move x degrees West). So, if you set your location eg 0.4 degrees East, then the box will tell the motor to move x + 0.4 degrees West.

edit - location longitude looks wrong. +3.062 puts you in the North Sea. -3.062 would locate you in North Wales. Assuming that to be the case, then ensure the box setting says 3.062 West or has the value as -3.062. The "tweak" would then be to set 2.662 West in order to nudge the dish a little further West.

Ah you're right yes -3.062, it is set to West on the box though. So it'd be -3.062 to -2.662? - are we saying each "fine nudge" in the VU+ settings are a single degree?

[Joe_90]

Ah you're right yes -3.062, it is set to West on the box though. So it'd be -3.062 to -2.662? - are we saying each "fine nudge" in the VU+ settings are a single degree?

The "nudges" potentially are 0.3 degrees by default (though you can specify 0.1) which is how much the motor moves when you are running the option to optimise the motor position. I've found 0.3 to be about optimal on a smaller (< 1m) dish as the focus is not that critical. You could try various values of longitude to see the effect. You do need to change the channel(transponder) on the satellite for any change to take effect as the tuning process will re-calculate the motor angle. Most motors will only move 0.1 degree as the smallest increment in any case. My latitude and longitude settings in the box are only to the nearest 0.1 degree in any case - so 6.1 W for me.

[Blackeye]

'Nudging' might improve reception at the centre (highest point) of the arc, but it will be increasingly inaccurate at the extremes. If you're located at 3°W, I'd suggest you line up the dish, centered on zero, LNB without any skew and without any stored nudges, on ABS 3A (TV Uno, Odeon 24) for peak signal before trying anything else. If you're at 3°E, there is a bird called Eutelsat 3B (AIC) there for the lineup.

And a tip from experience: once you're happy with reception right across the arc, paint a 3mm bright yellow dash across the join of any parts that can move out of alignment, and on top of that paint a 1mm red stripe. Then after the first Autumn storm, you can quickly get things back to where they're supposed to be.

[Joe_90]

@Blackeye - Are you sure ABS3A is receivable in the UK on the Ku band? GB users normally try to set up on Thor at 0.8W. As you say, it's probably better to get your initial satellite line-up done correctly on the top of the arc with your actual lat and long configured in the box.