As David already mentioned, you may create drainage problems by mounting your elevation rotor horizontally... if you want to block the existing hole, and drill a new one in the new "bottom" of the rotor, you may be okay, but "you pays your nickel, you takes your chances".
As far as "setting" the antenna position, the controller doesn't care how the rotor itself is mounted: when the rotor is at the zero degree limit of its travel, you mount your antennas pointing at the horizon, and you have established the zero degree position. Everything is relative from there.
George, KA3HSW
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Wolthuis" wolthui3@msu.edu To: "AMSAT-BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 4:48 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Mounting Elevation part of g-5500
Quick question on mounting a g-5500 elevation router. Does it matter which way you mount it or can you set the controller to know where it is? This is a little hard to explain, but I want to mount it so the mass of the controller is horizontal to the ground, not vertical like when the az/el are package together. If I do this, will I be able to set the antennas somehow so the controller knows where they are or does it determine that on its own?
If I mount it wrong and the controller can not be told where it is (ie. calibrated) then all of my degrees would be off by 90 because I am mounting the elevation portion horizontal instead of vertical.
I hope this question makes sense, but I don't want to assemble it all up high and then findout it doesn't work as planned.
Thanks for any input!
Mike kb8zgl