Karl:
kkolbus said:
But, let's say you went to dump and returned to the same spot. Yes, you'd have to realign but the original settings should be very close to correct. I too level the mount before doing any other adjustments. Also, I've noticed that the highest receive signal strength is not always the best thing to have when adjusting the skew. Sometimes I'll have to adjust the elevation slightly to get a pass. Anyone else run into that?
In the early days we mounted the house roof mast and dish on a 2x4' piece of plywood on the ground and got it close to level with shims - then fine tuned with two separated nuts on each mast bolt. Fine tuning when we first started using tripods was done the same way (before the CofG offsets were introduced vs. just a plate on top of the pod). I found myself fine tuning the elevation (after peaking the azimuth) by tweaking the elevation up or down - which in turn moved it to a different elevation than called for from the zip code.
However, this only told me that I wasn't right on with a vertical mast. If the mast is close to perfectly vertical, the readings from the zipcode (or Lat/Long) will work every time. And that follows through with cross pol. The reason I have enjoyed the roof mount that Ron and Terry also use (other than convenience) is the ability to level the mast quickly and very accruately. Since using this roof mount, I have "never" had to adjust skew to pass cross pol. Actually, in the 3 plus years that I have been using the Direcway dish - I have never adjusted the skew to pass cross pol. I attribute that to finding ways to make that mast as close to vertical as possible.
My rig doesn't have auto levelers - and I only make it level enough to make my frig door not swing either way when open. So each time I set up, I use the 4 cranks plus leveling bubbles on the dish mount to do that final level. Takes from 5 to 10 seconds max. If I go the dump, or move the rig to and from the same spot for whatever reason, I just lower the dish (leaving the elevation and skew as is) and readjust the azimuth and frig door on my return. It then quickly passes cross pol again.