A spirit level is not accurate enough.
An electronic inclinometer or a good old fashioned plumb line will get the pole vertical with 0.1 degree accuracy. Once it is absolutely straight, aligning the dish should be quick and easy, especially with USALS.
The Technisat Multytenne also needs to be mounted on an absolutely vertical mount because the skew is preset within the huge LNB. If this is done, and it is peaked on 19e using a squawker meter, it will then give the good results intended by the designer, up to the 51dBW contour of any transponder received
I suspect that most people who install the Multytenne do not realize that, resulting in an unnecessarily high BER and reduced rain fade margin.
The idea that they should only be used as far north as Birmingham is something of a throwback to the 1980s, it originally referred to the Eutelsat II F1 footprint which was actually backed off somewhat from the published footprint - it was revised a few times from the initial guestimate, 47dBW in my 1985 map then 46dBW in my 1987 map... - but not too far otherwise people might have thought they were wacko rip-off merchants. Eutelsat was a quasi multi government quango thing then
and liked to ignore the growing perception that the signal rolled off north of Birmingham. Birmingham is now on the 53dBW EIRP contour which is on the threshold for a 33cm dish but fine on the slightly larger camping dishes
Remember, in those days with noisy LNBs and primitive tuners, that 1dBW difference meant that 1m dishes were on the threshold and those poor people saving £100 by getting a 90cm dish were soon introduced to the concept of the FM threshold while using cheap receivers with no possibility of extension
Properly installed the ultra modern Multytenne should give good results north to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling on most Hotbird transponders. They are already reported to work well in Nottingham and Lincolnshire.
In fact, people who know their geography may have realized that the designers would have at the very least covered all of Germany, and that Flensburg is on a latitude with Sunderland and Newcastle Upon Tyne. All are on the 52dBW contour, so it is no surprise that it should work that far north - it was intended to!
Nantes is on the 52dBW contour for Astra 2D and since you had no problems, that proves the point. The Multytenne single and twin are an excellent solution for some people with limited space, or with non-technical friends and relatives who can be given a huge viewing choice of 13e 19e 23.5e and 28e from one small dish.
The few weaker transponders on Hotbird 6 will be strengthened next Spring when the new Hotbird 10 will replace Hotbird 6. They are not that weak anyway, they should only go off in torrential rain :-worship
Anyway, the same absolutely vertical principle applies to the motorized dish, though in the old days the big dishes were easily micro-adjustable which made life easier (they were bloody heavy though!!!).
The loss through the diseqc motor can be compensated for by finding the recommend dish size for the EIRP on the footprint map then get a dish 25% larger. This is also a good aproach for a domestic SMATV system or for mult-LNBs and diseqc switches. Monoblocks have neglible loss but a larger dish should compensate for one satellite being out of focus, hence an 80cm is usually recommended by Eutelsat.
:toke:
