someone said it was easy!!

[virgin-sat-viewer]

Ok, as my handle suggests, I'm a complete virgin at this satellite stuff (but I am an electronics engineer, and earn my living at setting up computer networks, local and wide etc, so capable of following diagrams technical instructions and so on )
What I've got so far -
Technomate 1600 2cl receiver, 1m dish with single universal .6Db lnb. dish will be mounted on a superjack dg-120+
a 100m of good quality cable and a bag of gold plated F connectors
oh, and a signal strength meter.

on the face of it, and according to some bloke at Technomate, I just sling it all together point the dish due south and away we go !!

NOT.!

first off, the superjack seems to have a problem. when connected the receiver keeps cycling on and off, and i can feel a tingle when i touch the dish!! I feel confident in assuming that it is knackered, as i've tried a different cable, and the receiver starts up ok when connected direct to the lnb. bugger!

next, I'm supposed to set the dish (when mounted onto the superjack in the central position) due south.....is that magnetic or true??
if its 'true' how do i calculate it?

and most confusing of all, elevation!! hells bells! there are about 10 different methods in the instructions i have, all conflicting!! there are scales on the dish and on the superjack! (and they call computer networking a black art!!)

and as for the meter I've got......its crap, shuld've taken advice on that b4 i got one, no instructions, just a Db adjustment, and a needle and scale help??

by waving the dish around in the general direction os south i can get a response from the meter...but so far with the best signal strength showing (i assume) the technomate is not showing much on the signal/quality bars, and reportd 'bad or no signal' or 'no satellite' not sure whether I have to set the 1600 up to a particular satellite, then set the dish up to the co-ordinates of that particular satellite, it doesn't want to do it automatically for some reason


I'm having a really bad weekend here....someone bail me out......please

 

[rolfw]

The due South required is true South, what most people do is use a satellite as a due South reference. For a lot of the UK, Thor at 1 West is a good choice, but depending on whereabouts you are in Norfolk, you wll need to slightly offset the motor to allow for your longitude.

Sounds like the motor either has a short, or is drawing too much power (or receiver power output is faulty) from the behaviour you describe.

The superjack looks like a Moteck clone, so should have a lattitude setting on the side and is easy to set. There will be a calculation in the motor handbook for setting the declination (the figure you set on the dish scale) this should then give you enough to work with and by using your sat finder, move the whole assembly in the horizontal on the mast and the dish elevation only, until the meter needle goes full scale, when it does, adjust the meter so that the needle goes to the middle of the scale and keep doing so until you can get no higher reading.

Nip up the bolts and then check using your receiver to see if you have found Thor.

 

[stealthpirate]

I did the same setup without a meter in about an hour!, what is your location (post code) get your lat from here: _http://www.phoenixsat.com/usals.php
Make sure your pole is vertical, set lat' on motor (one side has lat and the other side summat else!), make sure the motor is the right way up (our senior engineer at work knows all about this!) mount dish to motor at zero degrees (so both are inline at 0 degrees) put motor/dish on pole facing the south (best effort on a compass), connect to reciever and go into setup menu choose thor at 1w , now move dish up and down until you get a signal (if you don't get a signal move the motor a little left or right (the whole mount!!!!, still keeping it a 0 degrees) then up and down a little, you should see the signal strength rise and fall as you hit a sat......
The key starting point is vertical pole, lat' set on motor mount, point south, adj dish angle, get signal, when you recieving thor 1w everything else should fall into place (minor adj may be ness').
Anyway, I'm glad your struggling..... this network/server crap is doing my box in ;)

 

[Rob]

One way of checking your latitude, longitude, and dish elevation is try
www.usals.info as they will supply them if you tell them what town, country etc you are in. Be warned it may take a few days to get the answer !

Look at the pictures below, the second you should enter the latitude which for me is 51.5 north.
The first you should enter your dish elevation which for me is 22.6. I just hope that your dish markings are better than mine as it has the elevation markings on one side, but nothing to match it up to on the other side.!

Best of luck
Rob

PS:- You can see that I live in a nice area, I have to chain the bloody motor and dish to the wall.
Have already had my Sky system nicked off the wall !

 

[virgin-sat-viewer]

OK! thanks guys, enough to get me going tomorrow morning.....I'll keep you posted........I bet you just can't wait to hear about it ....yawn...

 

[Jeff_19341]

Go to uk.multimap.com put in your postcode.
you will get a map of your immediate area/road. From that you should be able to work out where south is. also you will find your lat and long further down the page.
We do like to know how members are progressing with their installations, keep posting m8.