Question for the "car tyre" mounting bods...

[alcina]

So...when the wind blows a gale, or some local four-legged critter decides to use your dish as a back scratcher, how do you go about re-aligning your dish? :? Once the amalgamating tape is in place and the receiver is tucked neatly into the TV stack in the living room...what's the best way of dealing with dish re-alignment?

Currently I 'm having to switch off the receiver, trot outside with a sharp knife to remove the tape, wire in the satellite meter, trot back in to switch the receiver back on, trot outside to wiggle the dish until the meter wails (anything up to 15 minutes!)...then trot sharply back in to find out which satellite I've hit. Repeat until I've hit Astra 2 (my currently preferred satellite...though for a while Hotbird was looking good...or maybe I just couldn't be bothered to wiggle the dish any more!). Then switch everything off, remove the satellite meter, apply more amalgamating tape, trot indoors, switch everything on, only to discover that whilst wrapping the tape round the LNB connector I'd managed to move the dish out of alignment again! And it starts all over again...

Please say it is something you :quote: just get better at the more you do!:quote: Finding that scaffold pole and some mighty firm bolts is becoming a number one priority!

Alcina <- getting fitter though with all the running in and out!

[Jimdefruit]

I've got mine well and truly fixed out of the way of critters, except possibly vultures or big blackbirds.

I would guess the best bet would probably be to make a mark across or down the garden aligning with the satellite most south from your position and make up a rig that you can look along to that mark whilst your receiver is set to that satellite.

Unless the elevation gets disturbed you should be ok. If the elevation gets 'mucked up' well you need the excercise don't you.

[BGonaSTICK]

LOL - that will never do!

... and please keep the car-tyre thing quiet, as:

1) It makes us look like a bunch of amateurs
2) The search engines will pick up on it, and we'll have loads of mechanics joining the forum!!!

I see Jim's typing faster than me again today, but here's what I was going to say anyhow

Talking in a hushed voice...

What I did, was once I'd found a satellite on 'the tyre mount', I used some Tippex to mark the exact position of the dish on the tyre. Now, as long as the tyre doesn't move on the ground (and mine never did - it's a tyre for goodness sake - it's SUPPOSED to stick to the ground!) you can easily re-align. You can mark more than one sat if you label your marks.

If you can get it somewhere near using ISTTMS (International Satellite Tippex Tyre Marking System) - well enough to get a signal, then you can always use the internal meter on your Technomate to fine tune. Ah! This tip alone will save you hundreds of pounds in self-amalgamating tape! :clap:

Now stop wiggling, and get Tippexing!

STICK

[Jimdefruit]

At least my answer allowed for the tyre movement as well.

[BGonaSTICK]

Your tyres must be bald... :roflmao:

[alcina]

Hmm....I rather like the idea of multiple ISTTMS marks! , though mine would have to be ISCTMS (International Satellite Chalk Tyre Marking System) as I still don't actually have the..um...thing that mustn't be mentioned, and I've now abandoned the Wickes Mortar Mix and it's now wedged into a peice of wooden decking on the patio! (Sigh...even Bodge It And Runn...are turning in their graves at my handiwork!).

I think Jim has hit the nail though...I think it's the elevation I'm having the most problems with At the moment the dish's vertical alignment is somewhat delicately balanced. If I were to make the vertical alignment more sturdy, does the elevation stay the same for all the satellites from a fixed base?

Let me try to describe the setup....I have a small square piece of decking, which has slats. The bottom of the rim of the dish is wedged between two of the slats so the dish itself doesn't twist side to side, and instead to find the satellites I have to move the decking. The dish is currently held vertical by having its old wall mounting bits delicately balanced on a brick and another bit of rubbley stuff to get it to the correct alignment (the brick also being on the piece of decking) - it's this part that is rather dodgy. ops: So an ascii sidewards view of the system would looks something like: _/_ where the _ _ represents the piece of decking and the / represents the dish. Thus you have a "fixed" dish on a piece of moveable decking. By simply rotating the decking around its central axis would the elevation be correct for all the satellites? Then all I'd have to do is apply the coded ISCTMS marks to the four corners of the decking on the patio et voilà (see watching the French channels is paying off!) instant human-motorised DiSEqC-by-coloured-chalks system!

Is it time to pinch the neighbour's kid's coloured chalks! :spite: or is this a pipe dream?

Alcina

[BGonaSTICK]

ROFLMAO!!!

You are surely worse than me Alcina.

Yes, Jim is right of course, if you can find a good visual reference point in your garden (or create one), it helps a lot. I know exactly where 1W, 13E and 28.2E are relative to my neighbours TV aerials.

Unfortunately, the underlying principle which you are about to attach the meaning of life, the universe and everything is flawed. Satellites are at different heights

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...hp?topic=403.0

They are higher in the sky to your south, and increasingly lower the further your move east or west, thus transcribing an arc in the sky.

With a car tyre though, you can mark the front and rear edge of the dish face on both sides, and the elevation is taken care of too. You just have to make some kind of support. Duct tape is your best friend right about now.

You don't say how big your decking is, but I sure hope it's not 10 foot square!

[alcina]

Originally Posted by BGonaSTICK

Satellites are at different heights

The swines! :'(

Still...this has got the old Heath Robinson juices flowing....fixing the dish *securely* ops: to the piece of decking (it's about two foot square!) and marking the corners on the patio would make it easy peasy to find Astra 1 again...and the requirement to be able to do that easily was the instigator of this post. However...to do so I would have to be effectively making my own fixed mount and whilst I'm making a fixed mount I could nearly as easily be making one that offers a variable calibrated elevation! :spite: Thus combining the ISCTMS marks on the patio with the ISCPMS (International Satellite Clothes Prop Marking System) marks on the vertical mount - having spent a few happy hours playing...um... :quote: calibrating :quote: with the sat meter and receiver to make all the marks: le voilà, any of the satellites, any time, by matching up the marks!

A quick check on the elevations from London reveals that out at the extreme East (Turksat 42E) and West (Panamsat 45W) they're around 18/19 degrees, whilst Thor, pretty much in the middle, is at 31.22 degrees. (And Astra 1, where the dish is pointing now, is at 28.54 degrees), so it needs to be adjustable over about 13 degrees....but some of them will be very close together!

Hmm...different sized (and coloured to match the ISCTMS marks!) pieces of wood underneath a "fixed length" hinged prop.... pin holes deckchair style...pencil marks on an extendible prop...pretty sure I saw an extendible prop somewhere on this site being used to hold up a dish... ooooh....time to take a few days off work methinks!

Ah...the world is held together with duct tape and perl scripts!

Alcina

[BGonaSTICK]

Originally Posted by alcina

...pretty sure I saw an extendible prop somewhere on this site being used to hold up a dish...

Doh!

Now we'll have the Robert Dyas crew joining up too!

[Jimdefruit]

Full marks for the most entertaining posts of the week, if not month, they have left me in pain holding my sides.

Why do you want a picture alcina? With all that fiddly foodling you wont have time to watch it anyway.