First installation this weekend

[piagio2000]

Going to try and use USALS to locate my due South, fine tune then tighten everything up and take it from there.
So my question is this.
I am at 4.49 deg West. So I would think my due South bird would be the one at 5W. But I see on the site that the favoured set up satellite seems to be Thor 5 at 0.8W.
So which would be the best for me to point at to get started?

On top of that....from reading all the tutorials on this site it seems that I need to know true South (maybe not completely necessary if using USALS to install?). For the life of me I can't work out how to calculate that...Google is not my friend in this case!
Can anyone give me a pointer to find out what my due South actually is?

[Robbo]

Your due south is 4.49W, i.e your longitude. You pick the satellite closest to that as your reference, in your case 5W. You send the dish to 5W using USALS, and adjust for best signal on a known good 5W transponder.Check lyngsat.


Thor is favoured only because for most of us, that is the closest to south for us.

[piagio2000]

Thanks for the advice!

One more thing...I'm not up on the technicalities and am hoping to point at it and see something!

What are the various transponders? Do you sellect one over another? Any idea of a FTA channel I could hope to pick up for fine tunning?

[southpaw]

list of channels for 5w

lyngsat.com/ab3.html

[Robbo]

Pick any one of the transponders with a fta channel on it, then you can watch it to check you found the right sat.

[piagio2000]

Originally Posted by Robbo

Pick any one of the transponders with a fta channel on it, then you can watch it to check you found the right sat.

So I cemented in the pole on Friday and attempted the install of the dish today.
I believe I have the angles on the motor and dish as they should be. Lat 56 on the motor and 26 on the dish (it's an orbital with. a different range on each side of teh plastic bracket. I assumed the one "68-100" meant that as I have a 100cm dish that is the one I should use) It's 30 deg less as it's a tecnomate 2600 which states I should subtract 30 deg from my lat for the dish.

So lined it all up and pointed it south hoping to use USALS to install.

I have a protek unix 500 as supplied by Southern Satellite.
So here is the thing...till now I have not managed to find one sat. Not one. The instructions that came with the box were foreign, so I have been making do with the dreambox 500 manual Ian sent me and also some stuff I have picked up on forums as to how to use USALS to find your first satellite.

First tried 5w as my due south then tried 0.8W to use the BBC. Cant get anything on that either.
Can someone tell me a transponder ref I could try? For a complete newbie like myself being told just to find a FTA transponder is pretty meaningless. For instance...I see on the linked page at Lingsat that BBC World is in 4025R. Is that the transponder? Because my box doesn't list that as an option. Or is there somewhere else to find that info?
http://www.lyngsat.com/1west.html

Is it possible given the angles i have in that I have completely missed the satellite? Or am I just not able to use the receiver?

Any help would be appreciated. I'd be gutted if I have to get someone in to do it as I feel I have don 90% of it myself.

But I'm stuck

[Robbo]

Hi,

Setting the angle on the dish scale according to equations etc mostly doesn't work, as in practise it is only a rough guide.

The dish needs to be set by adjusting to get a good signal on a transponder on your due south.

Your setup is ku band not C band, so it has to be a Ku band one. On 5W you will get a good signal on 11591V, check the details on Lyngsat.

Since you are so close to 5W, you could send your motor to zero, then swivel the motor around the pole, and adjust the dish to align your motorised system.


I have never had much luck getting USALS working on DM500S clones, so I can't give advice on that, but Diseqc 1.2 should work OK.

[southernsatellite]

USALS will work on the Protek, tried it myself and worked a treat.

[piagio2000]

Thanks for the advice Robbo.
I'll have another go.

And sorry for my meandering and/or tone last night.....I had had one or two refreshments!

[piagio2000]

Originally Posted by southernsatellite

USALS will work on the Protek, tried it myself and worked a treat.

Easy when you know how eh?