I think that you better look at what the coordinate system is for the satellites that you are looking at. There`s the celestial coordinate system where 90deg. (+N,-S) is looking along the polar axis and the RA (in h:m:s:) is referenced to a particular point in the sky. Often in coordinate systems, Due North is 0deg. Az. and zenith is 0deg. Alt.
The problem that you are going to have (and you have probably already met this) is that you need to know what the angle is to the sat. from your exact location as moving a few hundred feet one way or the other can make the position far enough off that you won`t see the sat. You are looking at something that can be only 150 miles away and is travelling at about 18,000mph.
BTW, if you are updating the position of the sat. every second, you will be having severe problems seeing most sats. as they move a significant distance in that period of time. You need to be verifying the position of the scope at least that often and verifying that that position is correct and correcting the motion of the scope if it`s off, giving it a new vector to drive in if it`s off.
All in all, the job can be rather interesting.