Motor setup not using "true south."

[swingbozo]

To setup a motor you only need three numbers, your longitude, your latitude and the motor angle. The rest you have to adjust for so just ignore all that nonsense from dishpointer. These numbers also depend on the type of dish you have, and every dish manufacturer seems to want to scale them differently.

1) Read the motor's docs, and set the motor angle to whatever it says it should be for your location. Tighten it up so it doesn't move.
2) Mount the motor on your plumb pole, tighten it enough to not to fall off but loose enough to rotate.
3) Tighten the main dish mount onto the motor spindle so it doesn't move. There should be a through bolt of some variety that mounts the dish square to the motor spindle. In other words, with the motor at zero the dish should be exactly perpendicular to the plane of the motor spindle and the plumb pole.

At this point you have three degrees of rotation. You have the motor able to swing the dish back and forth as it functions normally, the motor mounted onto a pole that you can nudge the entire motor/dish assembly back and forth, and the regular dish up and down rotation.

4) Wire up your motor and LNB.
5) Set your long/lat in your STB.
6) Send a USALS command to the motor to rotate to your favorite pointing sat. Pick a nice loud one you can find easily.
7) The motor will rotate to a particular location and stop there.

Now you have to do the dish dance. If you've setup dishes before then this should be a snap. If you haven't setup a dish before then you should setup a non-motor dish to become familiar with where this thing should really be pointing.

8) Up and down the dish on the dishes normal up down rotaty thingy, and back and forth the entire dish/motor assembly to max the signal for the bird you are pointing at.
9) Tighten everything up.
10) Send more usals commands to the motor to get it to rotate to various birds and see what the signal looks like.
11) Tweak as appropriate, but only adjust the dishes up and down thingy or rotate the entire dish/motor assembly on your plumb pole. If you are able, tweak the dish using linear birds. They are considerably pickier than circular ones.

Even though the dish should theoretically work perfectly using USALS if it's set up correctly, you may find that switching to diseqc and tweaking it a bit then setting a standard diseqc stop will give you better signal. If you can get linear birds then also use these to align your dish. Linear birds require a much more accurately aimed dish. On some STB's you can use USALS to position the dish but tweak the satellite location until you get the best signal.

At each position the motor "remembers" the locations you select so you have to specifically "save" them before scanning regardless if you are using USALS or diseqc.

So when scanning channels, USALS the motor to your location, switch to diseqc and bump the motor back and forth one step at a time to max out signal, save, scan.

This is WAY easier and more accurate than the "true south" method.

[purriocity]

I like this method also.As I stated in my post trying to figure those numbers out and having to do this and that is just a waste of time.Think linear and get to the point.Lol

[swingbozo]

You need one number (the motor angle) and you use the box itself to set things up correctly. There simply isn't a better way to set up a motor. You magically get "true south" setup correctly as a by-product of setting up your dish this way.

I researched setting up motors quite a bit and was dreading doing it until I found this method. I don't know why anyone wastes there time with the "true south" method.

[Terryl]

Because you need to find DUE South first, how does someone know what way to point the dish/motor in the first place, pop it up there and swing it wildly around and get lucky?

Most people don't even know what direction is what, and I find very few that even know there are longitude and latitude lines let alone what direction South is.

Remember you have done this before (as some others) but someone that has never set a dish up in his/her life could be out there for weeks (yes I have seen it happen) trying to locate a satellite that is many degrees the other direction from where the dish they just threw up there is pointing.

[StanW]

Doesn't matter which way is south - as long as the motor is in 0 position ( and the dish setup as per the declination table), long/lat are entered in Usals and a sat is selected the motor will move to where it thinks the sat is located - the dish doesn't even have to be mounted on a pole to do this , holding it in your hands will do the job .lol

All that remains to be done is for the dish/motor assembly to be mounted on a plumb mast and locked onto the selected satellite .

[Terryl]

However Stan USALS is not all that accurate in my opinion, it only allows you to enter 1 decimal place, (XXX.1 by YY.1) this is not accurate enough in some places to get a lock on a satellite that is at the ends of the motors travel, every .1 degree is equal to 6 miles, this big an error can put you quite a bit off at the ends of the arc.

It would be nice to see a bigger entry window, XXX.1234 by YY.1234 would be a good start, you wouldn’t have to bump the motor around to find the birds at the ends, it would be right dead on at all locations.

Over my 45+ years as an RF engineer I have setup almost every type and size of dish known to man, in many differant locations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, I have seen many ways by many different engineers on setting up a dish, but it all came back to finding True South or True North (or straight up on the Equator) at that location. (Radio telescopes and radar dishes are the only exception)

[onesat]

Very good post swingbozo. Of course you need to know where is south. That is how it is done.

[ftastudent2]

Terry is one hundred percent right. I do not have his experience( i have only been doing this for 40 years) but I have setup all my dishes this way lately because in the beginning I used advice such as yours and found I had do electronically tweaks all the time from the stb. l discovered the true south method and all those problems dissipated. Now I just need to find a receiver as good as my failed SV8K's to easily find the sats for true FTA as well as that other fta stuff and yes USALS are not accurate with any motors I have used.