Still struggling

[knighthawk2]

I think I would have more luck finding Noah's ark than the one I'm looking for right now.
I can get 28.2E at 80% quality , I get 19.2E at 72% quality and I get 13E at 40% quality.
I looked at the diagram on here showing the four pictures of declination/elevation arcs and the possible causes,.
So from my figures I think my dish is too high or too low?
What puzzles me is I can't get anything in between 28.2E-19.2E or 19.2E-13E i.e 26E,23.5E,16E, I can understand not getting below 10E (dish going above or below)or above 28.2E (dish going above or below).
I have checked the mounting bracket from both sides, back and front, and across the top, it is as vertical and straight as is humanly possible.
I have read the guides, set the motor elevation accordingly, found true south, asked questions (Great help and much appreciated) but am still stuck.
Any suggestions would be greatfully received.
Many thanks and keep up the good work, Ian

[BlackHawk]

Hi
I've had a quick scan through your posts, might have missed them, but what is your longitude and dish size and are you using USALS to move the motor please?
BH

[knighthawk2]

Hi Blackhawk
My dish is a Global Orbit 80cm fitted with an Inverto Silver Tech 0.2dB LNB.
My Latitude is 51.473 and Longitude -0.091W
I have tried USALS and diseqc 1.2, with USALS I get nothing but I do get the three I mentioned using diseqc 1.2.
I hope this is enough info, any more let me know and thanks for the help.
Ian

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi Ian.

Don't give up - you'll get there in the end. It's just a case of fine-tuning now.

I'll take your word for the fact that your mounting pole is perfectly vertical, but this is the most common problem when only part of the arc can be tracked. There are one or two other things which can cause these problems as well though, as you'll have picked up from the diagram you mention.

The same effect can be caused by a combination or tiny errors elsewhere. If your elevation, declination and due-south settings are all a little off in varying combinations, then they can all add up to an odd alignment problem.

With a half-arc problem, it's also often the due-south setup.

Did you setup on 1W? Did you get a big fat signal off BBC World? Do you get anything from Hispasat 30W?

The other thing to check is that the dish is dead central on the motor output shaft. There is normally a casting line on the shaft, or some other obvious mark for you to align on.

Now, to solve your 'in-between satellites' conundrum.

26E and 16 E do not give anywhere near as strong a signal as the Astra's and Hotbird's, and can be hard to lock. You'll find that you're well out of footprint for the vast majority of transponders on 23.5E, so check Lyngsat for the one or two that cover the UK. I think that there are only a couple of HD test channels available here, which your receiver will not decode. You should be able to find a strong signal for these though, if you receiver is tuned to the correct frequency/polarisation.

I'm sure BlackHawk can give you an extra tip or two, with the fantastic range he has achieved

HTH

STICK

[knighthawk2]

Cheers for that stick.
I actually took all of the system down, then measured and marked the centre lines for the mounting pole, motor arm, brackets, dish and lnb arm.
Then I reassembled it all so I could be sure it was all aligned correctly.
Unfortunately for me I cant check to the west as theres a bloody great tree in the way (the branches block my view from 1W to about 20W).
I was going to check on 30W tommorrow (7/12).
I will get it even if I have to chop the tree down.
The weak signal output on the others sounds good (mind at rest now).
I'll let you all know how it goes (eventually) and then pester you some more when I decide I,ve got "the bug" and go for an upgrade.
Once again cheers for the help.
Ian

[BGonaSTICK]

Good stuff.

30W would be a really good marker for you. If you can get a belting signal from 28.2E, 1W (or 2E maybe in your case) and 30 W then there is nothing drastically wrong, and only persistant minor tweaking will get every ounce of signal from everything else.

Some people comment that even when they have two well spaced satellites on the East and West nicely tuned that they can still get a slightly better signal on some other satellites by adjusting the dish up/down/East/West a fraction. This would tend to indicate that some satellites are not smack bang on the arc - which could be true, especially where there is a large cluster of satellites at one orbital location, or for older satellites that tend to 'wobble about' a bit.

Other than that, if you can't get 30W, or anything past due-south, then you should drive your motor to the middle of the arc that you can see, and set up on that satellite. That way, any slight errors that you may have in your geometry are not magnified as much.

If you could only see from 1W to 42E for example, then setting up on 19.2E as a mid-point may well be a better bet.

I take it that you originally weren't able to use 1W for setup so you probably should have used Astra 1C at 2E, but you need to drive your motor to 2E before you start (because your longitude happens to be 0, which makes things easy to work out).

Good luck m8.

[BlackHawk]

Hi knighthawk2
BG has given you all the info that I would have given.
Get rid of the tree, or better still move the dish so that you can get a better view of the arc.
BTW, -0.091W is actually 0.091 east.
Setting up is a matter of percy verance, a little nudge then wait to see if you have any improvement and then continue.
Do not forget that you are trying to find something similar to trying to spot a car headlight 40000kms away that may not necessarily be pointing directly at you. A miss is as good as a mile as the saying goes.

BG
The reason that I have such a good view of the arc is that my bungalow backs onto a recreation/playing field which is slightly east of due south. Neighbours trees, along the edge of the ground, when in full leaf block off 53* east. The dish is mounted on a scaffold pole concreted into the ground, I can just walk underneath it without knocking my bonce on it.
I have a 1.2m dish waiting to be put up, this might give me headaches if I am not carefull, hard hat area.
BH

[knighthawk2]

Cheers for all the help BG & BH
-0.091W actually being 0.091E would explain my USALS problem.(reminder to self to wake up)
As for repositioning, the back of my house points directly at 28.2E, my dish is as far over to the left as it will go, the tree is on the right hand side of the garden.
If my neighbour would let me put my dish on her wall (NO CHANCE) I could get the full arc.
2E for setting up is a useful tip, I,ll give that a try and continue with the tweaking.
Again, many thanks.
Ian