Re: [amsat-bb] Poor man's AO-40 Portable Rotor

["Bill Acito W1PA" <w1pa@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Should I point the axis of the rotor at the North Star, or should I key off
the max elevation of the pass (tilt the base of the rotor to max elevation)?
My latitude is 42.3 deg., but Nova says I get a 54 deg. elevation.

Or is it both? Rotor axis towards the North Star, but while pointed due
south, rotate the cross bar up slightly to the 54 deg point? How will that
look at the E-W horizons? The crossing points on the E-W horizon for my
location are at 85 deg and 275 deg.

I remembered you had done this before Bob, but couldn't find the link. And I
should have said "goes into retrograde and drops down out of the common
plane at about MA 35 and MA 235" in my original note.

Interesting view to go into Nova "radar" view, and tell it you want to see
AO-40, about 30 or 40 satellite paths.

Thanks.

I'll post pictures if I implement it. I have a 70cm prime focus dish that
should be a relatively good trade-off of gain versus pointing sensitivity.

Bill
W1PA


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Bruninga" <bruninga@usna.edu>
To: "Bill Acito W1PA" <w1pa@hotmail.com>
Cc: <amsat-bb@AMSAT.Org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Poor man's AO-40 Portable Rotor


> On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Bill Acito W1PA wrote:
>
> > Has anyone tried anything like this?
> > http://webpages.charter.net/acito/tripod_rotor.jpg
> >
> > Mounting a cheap TV rotor in the plane of a AO-40 pass...  based on a
quick
> > look at the "radar" view in Nova, this should be usable from MA 35 to
235
> > (before AO-40 appears to retrograde).
>
> Yes, just tilt the rotator pipe to point to the North Star and you got
> it.  This is the low budget way to follow AO-40 with one motor just like
> any Satellite TV dish since AO-40's track across the sky is always within
> about 10 deg of the geostationary satellite arc and only changes very
> slowly... see
>
> http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/ao40ant.html
>
> de WB4APR@amsat.org, Bob
>
>
----
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