How to dither ka/ku with a birdog usb plus?

[jrbuzzbait]

Can anyone tell me how to dither with the usb plus? Upgraded from an accutrac cause the battery will not charge anymore....not sure how to use birdog for this.

[TigersFanJJ]

1. Rough peak the dish and lock down the collar.
2. Turn elevation adjustment counter-clockwise for a couple of full turns.
3. Write down your readings on a piece of paper.
4. Set dial to 0 (You can spin the dial by hand without the adjustment bolt turning).
5. Turn adjustment clockwise through peak until you get the same reading on your meter on the other side of peak. Make sure you keep track of how exactly many turns it took on the dial.
6. Divide the number of turns by two and turn the dial counter-clockwise however much your answer is.
7. Repeat for azimuth.
8. Tighten all of your lock down bolts.

[Mertzen]

It's hard to do with the birdog. I don't even use the birdog to fine tune the ka/ku.
I'd say do a rough align with the birdog and work with the accutrac afterwards. Does it still work on IRD power ?

[ironwood]

aligned few thousand of those with birdog never had a repeat service call on alignment

[BattleZone]

It's hard to do with the birdog.

It's actually quite easy to do with the Birdog, but obviously if you have an Accutrak III that can read the Ka signals directly, I can understand why you'd want to use that. Unfortunately, the Accutrak's can't ID individual sats, so by itself, you could end up aiming the dish at the wrong birds, which is why the Birdog is so nice.

Now, if we all made good enough money at this, we could afford Super Sat Buddies, which read Ka directly and ID the sats. But those bad boys are almost $700.

[dothdewman]

currently the super buddy does not show the ird signal strength on the ka birds it only shows dbm values and cannot lock onto them, as far a the birdog goes when you dither a ka ku you need to change the settings from linear to ber the signal strength will not show as high, but that is the instructions we have at our office.

[RobertE]

For those that have access you should take a look at the October Training video concerning dithering.

Basically, DirecTv engineering feels that no meter in existence has the precision necessary to be within .1 degrees of the Ka sats. Thats why they still want you to use their dither method.

True or bogus, I don't know, but the demo seemed pretty convincing to me.

[satjoe]

Can anyone tell me how to dither with the usb plus? Upgraded from an accutrac cause the battery will not charge anymore....not sure how to use birdog for this.


I have been using my Accutrac 3 for two weeks now. I Love it, way better then the bird dog. Can sight right in on the 99 and 103. No need for dithering, crank it to peak and done. Levels have all been 95 to 98 percent on the 99 and 100 on the 103. Meter is only 200 bucks wholesale. I would recommend it to anyone. Works perfectfor the SWM 3 or SWM 5 automatically.

Good Luck

[peano]

Agreed. No dithering required with the Acutrac III. Very easy to use. Just make sure you actually have 101 when you start.

[satjoe]

Agreed. No dithering required with the Acutrac III. Very easy to use. Just make sure you actually have 101 when you start.

Thats why I dont even look for the 101. No KA band next to the 101 to get confused

[TigersFanJJ]

For those that have access you should take a look at the October Training video concerning dithering.

Basically, DirecTv engineering feels that no meter in existence has the precision necessary to be within .1 degrees of the Ka sats. Thats why they still want you to use their dither method.

True or bogus, I don't know, but the demo seemed pretty convincing to me.

I saw it and also noticed they were using a Birdog in the video. While I agree that dithering is necessary on a meter that doesn't pick up the Ka birds, the 95-100% signal strength I get every time without dithering (using the accutrac III) is good enough.