I may have figured this out. Since I noticed pushing in the connector on the elevation rotator caused the readings to correct, I took the connector apart. One of the wires came unsoldered so I resoldered it and now the elevation reading is perfect and barely, if at all, moves when I tap the box. The azimuth reading does bounce up/right a little when I tap the box but it always comes back to the actual reading. I tried resoldering/heating up the pins on the connector used for the azimuth rotator but it didn't make any difference.
I still plan on removing the connectors completely, removing the disconnect and reinstalling them, so perhaps if there still is some flaky connection in the azimuth cable I will fix it in the process of doing that.
I also took Burns' advice bent the terminals that connect at the control box, too.
BTW, it took me a while to figure out how to open these connectors since I never installed them myself. They don't pull apart, they unscrew.
As of now SatPC32 is tracking sats and the rotators are moving as expected.
Thanks for all the help everyone!
73, John Brier KG4AKV
On Sat, Oct 3, 2020 at 7:58 PM John Brier johnbrier@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Jim.
So, I did that a dozen times for the azimuth side and it didn't make much of a difference. It did start reading (instead of staying at around 0), going to about 180, but never much beyond that that. And eventually it seemed to get stuck again.
However, when I started doing the same for the elevation rotator I noticed that the cable jacket was falling out of the connector. The rubber and the connector wasn't compressing the jacket so there was presumably stress on the wires. When I pushed the cable in the connector the meter started reading right.
There is a similar issue on the connector on the cable I am using for azimuth but pushing it in towards the connector or wiggling it doesn't seem to help.
I think I am going to redo these cables. They came with the rotator and there is also a disconnect a few feet from the rotator connectors. Not sure what for. The connector there is wrapped in electrical tape so I am not sure what state it is in.
One question: If the issue is in the rotator or a connection issue at the rotator, why would tapping the control box affect the issue?
The only thing I can think of is there could be another issue in the box (connection or otherwise).
73, John Brier KG4AKV
On Sat, Oct 3, 2020, 18:12 Jim Walls via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
<snip>
Sounds like the position pots in the rotor (not the controller) are dirty. That does make some sense with it not being used for several years. Step one (the easy way) is to use the manual control levers on the controller and repeatedly move the rotors from end to end while watching the needles. If you are a bit lucky, after a few passes back and forth, the needles will start responding correctly. Keep trying at least a dozen full passes back and forth before giving up on this method. The next method requires disassembly of the rotor - now you know why I suggest giving the first method lots of tries before giving up on it. If you have to resort to the second method, I will let someone who has done that more recently than I (about 20 years) give instructions.
-- 73
Jim Walls - K6CCC jim@k6ccc.org Ofc: 818-548-4804 http://members.dslextreme.com/users/k6ccc/ AMSAT Member 32537 - WSWSS Member 395
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