The dish moves!

So the  counterweight idea didn't work so well. What we ended up doing was putting an actuator on each side of the dish. We also attached garage door springs to each side to try and take some of the weight off of the actuators when it was to either side of the pivot point. This worked VERY well.

Next will be building a weatherproof box for the electronics and then setting up the automated tracker. Until then here are some new pictures.

This is the left side of the dish. The dish is centered so the spring doesn't have any tension on it.

Right side of the dish. Again, no tension.

Here you can see how close both actuators are to touching. The wiring looks like a mess, but when it's all in the weatherproof case it will look nice and neat.

The dish is pointed to the left here. You can see the right spring is extended. This will make pulling the dish back around much easier on the actuators.

This is a bit of a mess. We'll probably get a smaller chain and attach it closer to the bracket at some point.

Here is the dish partially to the right. It's starting to put tension on the spring.