I'll add a little bit to this big C-band dish install as a challenge to your home C-band install. This job showing a single 9m dish was actually to install three 9m class C-band antennas on temporary mounts with associated electronics like antenna controller, high power TWT amplifiers, wave guide and wave guide switches, LNBs, LNB controllers, a complete turn key package tested to spec including running transmit and receive antenna patterns, G/T and adjusting power levels to customer requirements.
Nothing that unusual, except from the point in time where the customer said "I'll take it" to the point it was completed was right about 30 days. This includes packing and shipping all three huge 9m antennas across the country, purchasing the huge steel I beams locally, assembling three complete 9m antennas, aligning the reflector panels with a theodolite, running all internal and external wave guide runs, building all the inside rigid wave guide, switching and filters, installing many racks of TWT amplifiers, ACUs, patch panels, cable trays, final alignment of reflector panels in the middle of the night, all customer acceptance testing, etc. That's 30 days total for three complete systems, I think this must be a record.
So how long does it take you guys to purchase, receive goods, dig a hole, assemble and align a single backyard 10ft dish and run the cables into the house?
I'm in one of these pictures installing wave guide connectors on some eliptical wave guide.
Nothing that unusual, except from the point in time where the customer said "I'll take it" to the point it was completed was right about 30 days. This includes packing and shipping all three huge 9m antennas across the country, purchasing the huge steel I beams locally, assembling three complete 9m antennas, aligning the reflector panels with a theodolite, running all internal and external wave guide runs, building all the inside rigid wave guide, switching and filters, installing many racks of TWT amplifiers, ACUs, patch panels, cable trays, final alignment of reflector panels in the middle of the night, all customer acceptance testing, etc. That's 30 days total for three complete systems, I think this must be a record.
So how long does it take you guys to purchase, receive goods, dig a hole, assemble and align a single backyard 10ft dish and run the cables into the house?
I'm in one of these pictures installing wave guide connectors on some eliptical wave guide.
I agree the dish will fall over and it will be nearly impossible to use wood unless you make a big mount out of something like old railroad ties and sandwich them between some thick plywood. Even then it will have to be large to avoid tipping and you will need a lot of weight on it.
For declination, there is no guarantee the original owner had it set right so you will probably have to experiment to get it dialed in. You can tune in a satellite at the highest point in the arc, then go to ones at the far east and west end and gently bend the dish up and down to see if there is any improvement. If so your declination will need a little tweaking. When top of arc and both ends degrade by bending the dish up or down you should be good.
Here is an above ground dish I worked on, albeit a much larger dish. Notice how far the I beams go beyond the dish diameter. There are many tons of steel laid out on this dish to keep it in place and a smaller dish should have an adequate base like this but on a smaller scale. Believe it or not, this is a 9m meter temporary dish. Everything including the huge I beam base comes apart and it goes in a sea container off to the next job.
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