[amsat-bb] Rotor/Antenna orientation

["Freeman P. Pascal IV" <pascal@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm hoping to be able to put up my rotor and yagis this weekend and I
was wondering which direction I should center the azimuth rotor to -
north or south?

In a recent phone discussion with Dave, N4XCE, he said I should center
the az rotor pointing south.  I also noticed there is a web site that
provides an alternate meter faces for several rotor models that are
south centered instead of north centered.

Why is south centered preferred over north centered?

I would expect that it wouldn't matter with polar orbit birds, since
they will be seen coming from either direction fifty percent of the
time.  With non-polar satellites, I would expect we would want a north
centered rotor to take advantage of high latitude passes over the
northern hemisphere.

Another question I have is how tracking software handles passes that are
directly over head of an observer?  All the elevation rotors I have seen
have the capability to flip past the 90 deg mark (straight up).  I would
expect this would be required to keep up with satellites in LEO since
the closer a satellite pass is to being directly over head the less time
a rotor control system has to rotate the az rotor 180 deg.  How do most
rotor control systems handle this?

BTW, if these questions or other questions I have asked in the past are
best answered somewhere else (a book, or online resource) please let me
know.  I would rather not burden everyone on the list with newbie
questions.  I do try to look them up online before asking them here on
the list.


-Freeman, N5FPP

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