Thread: Geosatpro 2.4 meter Prime Focus Review

I always wanted to test a polar mount 6 panel dish. I had the a friend from New Hampshire that ordered one from me but want me to test it first which also allowed me to shoot some pictures.
I shipped in a Geosatpro 2.4 prime focus dish from my good friends at SatelliteAV since I love the 90cm model. I put up a temporary mount seeing that I did not have a spare 3.5 inch pole to spare since my three other cband dishes were committed.

Polar Mount:
The polar mount a snap to put together and the thickness of metal was very well constructed. I used a old Vonweise tube to lock down the mount for Azel dish pointing only since I did not have any spare control wires handy and only a few days for testing
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Dish Panels:
The dish panels have outside ribbed edges, rolled edge around the top and a rolled narrow rib down the middle of each panel making it very stiff. The gauge of metal used is the thickest I have seen yet, it is very difficult to bend the outside edge with your hands. The holes to attach each panel was mated up with the correct size bolts so there was no loose play and the panels lined up perfectly. The charcoal metallic finish is difficult to scratch and looks much nicer than the plain old white and easily to hide from the public.

I put a bucket on the ground to rest the panels on the center as I put each panel together. I put 5 panels together since you cannot reach or step over the dish with out the risk of falling on it seeing it is 8 ft. I set the clips in the middle of the oval where the bolts go that attach to the panel. My 15 yr. old son and I flip up the dish and lowered it on the polar ring of the mount and the mounting clips slid nicely on the ring without any fuss. Once the 5 panels were bolted on the ring mount it was easy to slide in the 6th panel. There is no center hole cap which does not reflect any signal due to the scaler blocking any signal. I guess it would reduce wind loading as to pass the air through the hole.

Struts:
The struts are easy to attach and you have to bend the end a little to match the angle where the tabs meets the scalar ring.

Ku Adapter:
Its nice that one is included as part of the package for no extra charge. It can handle 23mm or standard 40mm throats. The Invacom SNH fits nice but the QPH will not fit due to the large head size of the lnb. The proper setup would be a flange model lnbf with a ADF-120 Ku feed horn.

Playing:
I spec’ed out the dish by measuring it up and came up with ad focal depth of 46.5 inches and a FD ratio of .46. I set in a Geosatpro duel output cband lnbf since I did not have a single in stock. Please keep in mind that I had no time to really fine tune the setup since I wanted to test many sats in both C & Ku with little time to do it, and weather permitting. I did not even string it to see if the parabola was true.

Actuator Tracking:
With a dish moter attached (18") a friend of mine is tracking Atalantic Bird 2 to G5 , a 24" mover would not make no difference.

C Band Signal:
My first CBand choice was Metro TV on AMC12 37.5w and the new Croatian mux. I set the LNBF to a 30 degree skew using a angle finder. I found that the 2.4 meter was bringing in a signal about 1.5 db less in quality than my 10 footer which dedicated on AMC12, now that is pretty darn good and probably be better with a little tweaking.

Ku Band Signal:
I replaced the cband scaler with the supplied Ku adapter with a Invacom SNH-031. I set my sights to Telstar 12. I did see a better BER ( Bit error ratio ) but the signal & SNR was not much more than what my meter was telling me over my Winegard 1 meter. That did not impress me till the next day. The transponder I was on is known to have poor signal from 1pm to 8pm for some reason. I had hooked up the 1 meter & the 2.4 meter to a diseqc which routed to my Manhattan Plaza ST450. Later the next day bad weather & the usual late afternoon poor transponder signal I switched on the Manhattan to check the 1 meter dish signal. The 1 meter Winegard showed signal of 70 and quality popping from 43-60 erratically, no chance of any picture. I switched over to the 2.4 meter and I was amazed that the signal was only 72 but the quality was cranking in at 85-93 with a great picture. Now that was impressive! I wanted to hit Atlantic Bird 1,2 or 4 but forgot to.

Pros:
Very well constructed, heavy .8 mm guage steel, gorgeous finish, very nice performance and best of all priced much lower than comparable models of the same size of imported 6 panel prime focus polar mount dishes.

Cons:
I would grab a can of flat black paint to spray the few shinny galvanized steel parts, Ku adapter (not the bolts), before assembly just for aesthetics. I only used Azel not polar but I did notice that the declination adjustment went down to about 6.50 degrees. You will have to oval out the hole a little on the declination adjustment hole. SatelliteAV assured me that the factory was working on a fix for it. I guess someone must have grabbed the wrong size drill bit or bent the declination holder just short of perfect. This is just a tiny inconvenience to fix before you mount the dish on the mount.

I have put together a extensive signal test list for for C & Ku, I could not post it here because I cannot use table cells in the text editor or the use of html. I have posted the full list elsewhere.

Jimmy R

Nice review!!

Thanks!

Good review Jimmy, Wow, that hole is huge! I wish you had tested it's performance with an actuator, to see how far it might go before the Flop facter enter's the picture?

Al

My friend at the New Hampshire set his mount to Linear East. I believe he told me he can move from AlanticBird 2 or 3 to G10 with a 24 inch mover. I will have to double check.
Hole ? if you mean the center hole of the dish, it is as big as the scaler.

Jimmy

Thanks Jimmy for the good review any chance you will do a review on the 6.0 foot C-Band Dish.

Originally Posted by DVBResource

My friend at the New Hampshire set his mount to Linear East. I believe he told me he can move from AlanticBird 2 or 3 to G10 with a 24 inch mover. I will have to double check.
Hole ? if you mean the center hole of the dish, it is as big as the scaler.

Jimmy

Thanks again Jimmy, not knowing your customer's True South (location), I'll guess that's about 45-50 degrees before the Flop. And yes, I was talking about the hole in the center. Then again, maybe that's to the end of his actuator reach?

Al

Here I can reach 148w to 37.5W with my 12 ft and a 24" mover. He is not that far away from me. Plus he has extra throw with a 24" mover on the 2.4 meter.

Jimmy

Originally Posted by DK_Sat

Thanks Jimmy for the good review any chance you will do a review on the 6.0 foot C-Band Dish.

I have a couple of models I am looking at overseas, samples should be in shortly. I am fussy on construction.

Jimmy