Newbie struggling with Motor setup/ tracking arc correctly

[dick b]

if you do have to do a re-install get a length of scaffold pole and tighten the motorbracket up well a pole that distorts is useless, the loose brackets that the nuts tighten on should bend slightly for best grip do a bit one side then the other.
dont get bogged down by too much information.if your mounting pole is 100% plumb and your dish 100% central on the motor spigot you will track the arc no problem.

[ebmitie]

yes the reasons you are having problems is the pole but it has helped you to gain a lot more knowledge. If you keep on messing with that dodgy pole you will have loads of hassle. If you want to finish quickly get a proper pole and make everything dead straight. Thing of dish as a gun, it has to be aimed straight at the satellite this means all of the rig has to be in a dead straight line, often called the 3 dots, there is a video on u tube that shows this exactly. its at 5min 14sec in, pause it and have a good look.

That technomate has a great tuner so that is half the battle, then use good cable and most of all a good lnb, I use the inverto black ultra. Getting 7west is good and you had dish correct at that point.

hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k_yhxmGlEA

good luck

ps use usals forget about dsieq1.2 until your expert!! as sometimes you can tweak a sat better with diseq than usals and vice versa but that pole???????

[apple22]

Thanks again all for the help and advice. Dismantled setup and inspected it. Pole was minutely squished but not as bad a I thought and everso slightly maybe not plumb. Leveled it abit and also realised there was a tiny amount of flex with the weight of the motor and dish and took this into account whilst truing the whole assembly. After about 3 hours of adjustment finally got it really quite good. Even getting 7W along with 8W but these were maybe the hardest to get it seemed along with 26E. I often would seem to get 8W and lose 7W or the other way round were I would hit 7W and lose 8W. Managed to justabout balance it were I can now get both but only 56% and maybe not all channels. As digicon said I fine tuned on 8W, 26E (and 7W). Found just the turning of a bolt a fraction would affect things. Nervous to do it up too tight again but at the sametime got to have it tight enough on windy days etc. I may adjust it a few mm at a time gradually so I do not throw anything out. Incredible really that a few mm on a thread can even affect the signal.
Whew - hopefully can leave it alone now after about 1 week of messing around!

Thanks again for all the tips and help.

[apple22]

yes the reasons you are having problems is the pole but it has helped you to gain a lot more knowledge. If you keep on messing with that dodgy pole you will have loads of hassle.....

Yes, I was starting to curse this homemade pole and beginning to think it was causing alot of the problems, what with it slightly squishing and being home made anyway with my arc welder and only leveled very basically with a rough level and by eye. Probably been quite lucky to have finally got it so good so will quit whilst I am ahead. Yes, think a scaffold pole would have been much better, hopefully though have got away with it luckily.

[dick b]

some sats are always going to be more problematic than others and will depend on location and dish size as to exactly what you can get unless your desperate to get 7W,8W,&26E I wouldnt worry too much if all the other sats are ok Where I am on a 1 Meter dish the only reliable TP is 10.719 V 22000 for 7W and for 26E 11.958 H 27500 and 12,265 H 27500.
heres a pic of an 85cm dish with the motor mounted on a short piece of scaffold tube and a pair of T&K brackets.

[apple22]

Yes, that looks much better those T& K brackets, exactly what I should have used. May get a set as a standby if the pole I am using has any issues.

Yes, 7W and 8W are certainly not such good reception, 7W seems to have disappeared again even though I got it last night and 8W is not such good reception also but as you say maybe I shouldn't worry about those anyway. Cannot get anything further east than 28.2E but think this is because of a large tree and neighbours house rather than setup. Maybe when a few more leaves fall off the tree some signal may get through better. Get about 76% signal on 30W and about 88% on 28.2E and lots of the others are 92-98%. Picture quality seems really good.

Setting up experience for the 1st time, kind of 'was and wasn't' so difficult it seemed, if that makes sense, at least I finally did it albeit taking ages.

[apple22]

Just wondering, is a 'blind scan' more likely to find more channels than an 'auto scan'? Been using auto scan to date but starting to look around the menu's and what this old Technomate (tm5400 super) can actually do and how things work on it.
Seems like a good basis/ platform to generally learn this sat stuff from, nothing too complicated as the more modern stuff may well be.

[dick b]

a blind scan will put a lot of stuff you dont want in better to check your TPs against "flysat","kingofsat" or one of the other satellite sites you can add any you might think useful and delete any that are not.

[Nutsandbolts]

hi blind scan is the best as you dont need to know any TP's . It will update your receiver with all the available TP's assuming that your dish is correctly aligned. Before doing a blind scan delete all the current TP's from a satellite this way you will delete all the out of date TP's and scan in all the new ones etc. When blind scan completes you can then edit the channels in anyway you want. I have never trusted Kingofsat or Lyngsat etc as they are not always up to date.. a blind scan should always be accurate as it is a guide on how your dish is setup .. thats why its called a blind scan.
Regards

[mdt]

the blind scan feature has its merits but its mainly used for feedhunting temp broadcasts were the details are not published and even if they are by enthusiasts on sites like satilliweb and solofeeds by the time you put the data in 90% of them have been switched off. blind scans can and do miss low symbol rate scpc broadcasts. for normal mcpc and scpc dth or headheand/turnaround/dtt retransmission broadcasts sites like @lyngsat/@flysat/@kingofsat are 98% accurate. my advise would be save up for something like a technomate f3/5 hd and get yourself a good set of t+k brackets, small length of scaff pole and a inverto black ultra lnb. probably only about ?140 all in. lastly a t,k,scaff pole install can take your dish higher so your arc could be improved by clearing the troublesome tree. have a play about and get used to how a motorised system works. regards mdt