hairybadger
Bricoleur
- My Satellite Setup
- see sig
- My Location
- near Geneva, Haute-Savoie, France
About 9 months ago I replaced my SG-2100A which I was never totally happy with with a PowerTech DG-380.
Up until yesterday I never managed to get good tracking from the DG-380 - pole is plumb (measured with calibrated digital level) and I'd get a booming signal on 7°E (my closest satellite to due south) but performance rapidly dropped off away from 7°E. It was already noticable poorer at 19.2°E and by 28.2°E I was getting nothing. Periodically I used to go out and fiddle with it (less so over the winter months, and anyway I have other toys to play with
). I had convinced myself that I didn't have the motor pointing due south on the pole and so was compensating by twisting the dish on the motor support.
So - yesterday evening I went to fiddling again and noticed something interesting. I am at 46.1°N, give or take, so I need to set the latitude setting accordingly (it's clearly marked "latitude" on both sides of the motor). I was doing this by setting the needle to the big tick mark at 45 and then going one *up* to the next small tick mark
This as you have by no doubt realised was incorrectly setting my latitude to 44°N. I didn't twig that the elevation on the dish didn't quite match up with what was expected according to the elevation table that came with the motor.
9 months of wondering why the motor didn't track properly! In mitigation if I were at 45°N it wouldn't have mattered, and if I were at 47°N I'd more likely have noticed the problem Anyway - latitude now set correctly and I'm getting much better performance, although it still needs a bit of tweak
Up until yesterday I never managed to get good tracking from the DG-380 - pole is plumb (measured with calibrated digital level) and I'd get a booming signal on 7°E (my closest satellite to due south) but performance rapidly dropped off away from 7°E. It was already noticable poorer at 19.2°E and by 28.2°E I was getting nothing. Periodically I used to go out and fiddle with it (less so over the winter months, and anyway I have other toys to play with
). I had convinced myself that I didn't have the motor pointing due south on the pole and so was compensating by twisting the dish on the motor support. So - yesterday evening I went to fiddling again and noticed something interesting. I am at 46.1°N, give or take, so I need to set the latitude setting accordingly (it's clearly marked "latitude" on both sides of the motor). I was doing this by setting the needle to the big tick mark at 45 and then going one *up* to the next small tick mark
This as you have by no doubt realised was incorrectly setting my latitude to 44°N. I didn't twig that the elevation on the dish didn't quite match up with what was expected according to the elevation table that came with the motor. 9 months of wondering why the motor didn't track properly! In mitigation if I were at 45°N it wouldn't have mattered, and if I were at 47°N I'd more likely have noticed the problem
Anyway - latitude now set correctly and I'm getting much better performance, although it still needs a bit of tweak 
