New dish

**skysurfer** · 12-08-2009 05:02 AM

Originally Posted by johnnynobody

Spent about 5 hours assembling the reflector so far. Looks like it's not going to go together perfectly. May have been poorly manufactured or distorted during shipment

Are you assembling it on a flat surface (driveway, patio) or on a uneven surface like grass?

I find cband dishes in general have a better chance of going together truer if you use a flat surface.

**johnnynobody** · 12-08-2009 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by skysurfer

Are you assembling it on a flat surface (driveway, patio) or on a uneven surface like grass?

I find cband dishes in general have a better chance of going together truer if you use a flat surface.

I'm assembling it on the patio but the dish is 2 feet bigger than the patio.

**turbosat** · 12-08-2009 07:48 PM

I always put mine together on the pole, a panel at a time (never can find any help lol). The last 12' I had was painful like that one seems to be, I found if I put everything together loosely, I could finally get the last 2 panels to meet by pulling and straining some. First time I tried to assemble it, I tighened everything as I went, but just snug, not really tight. The last 2 panels were 6" apart, haha. No way could I pull it together. Loosening everything made it finally go together. Then it could all be tightened properly.

**johnnynobody** · 12-09-2009 08:50 PM

Originally Posted by turbosat

I always put mine together on the pole, a panel at a time (never can find any help lol). The last 12' I had was painful like that one seems to be, I found if I put everything together loosely, I could finally get the last 2 panels to meet by pulling and straining some. First time I tried to assemble it, I tighened everything as I went, but just snug, not really tight. The last 2 panels were 6" apart, haha. No way could I pull it together. Loosening everything made it finally go together. Then it could all be tightened properly.

I guess it's possible to assemble it on the pole but putting in the mesh at the top would be a challenge. Anyway, I hope to finish installing the rings this weekend and flip the dish over to get the mesh installed and then get this beast up on the pole. The weather hasn't been co-operating though. Got over a foot of snow over the past couple of days and it has been very cold (-17 when I went to work this morning). It's only going to get into the low to mid 30's this weekend but I'm going to see about getting this done. I still have to run the ribbon cable and go through the alignment process. I'm going to put a dual-band feed on it and hope that the Ku performance is great. Otherwise I'll be buying a motorized 90 cm dish (and hope I'm not disappointed).