On Aug 13, 10:27*am, John Ferrell wrote:
I would like to see the picture. If no one else is interested you can
email the picture. My email is in the clear.

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:33:16 -0700 (PDT), "Sal M. Onella"





wrote:
There's a lot of sports programming available in the clear, both
analog and digital. *On a far west C-band satellite (135-degrees West,
I think) I could still get the Alaska network digital feeds until
recently in San Diego. ( I took down my 10-foot C-band dish a few
years ago, so my knowledge is getting stale.)

Much info is available on skyvision.com and satelliteguys.us . *Also
see lyngsat.com and sadoun.com . *The science of cataloging what's
available is not perfected, as the programmers don't care that we know
what's on -- unless we're paying customers. *:-(

The fun is building the gear, especially antennas and mounts. * I hand-
built a geometrically-correct polar mount out of the pipe from a
DirecTV wall mount and an ordinary TV antenna rotor. *It tracked the
arc perfectly for a small Ku dish. *I still have it and I'll post a
picture if anybody wants to see it.

I hope this helps.

"Sal"

John Ferrell W8CCW

OK. I dug it out and I'll snap some pix later.

Questions: Do you understand the geometry involved in a polar mount?
How about the concept of declination, whereby you compensate for the
fact that you are not on the Equator? When I bought my 10-foot dish
(1986) it came with instructions that included a table of declination
vs. latitude and a corresponding adjustment scale on the mount
itself. With a do-it-yourself dish, you have to "do it yourself." hi
hi.

I ask because the web has a number of tutorials on the subject of
backyard dishes. If you don't already have the knowledge, you may
wish to search now. Not a big deal, but if you fail to apply the
correction, you can't track the arc faithfully.

On the side: We are discussing herein a polar mount, whose operation
adjusts azimuth and elevation simultaneously. There is also an AZ-EL
mount that permits you to manually aim at each satellite, based on
pointing info derived for your location. Simpler, but not much fun
to build.

"Sal"
KD6VKW
(Vicious Killer Weasel)