Here is a dish for free for ya!!

olliec420

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jun 4, 2007
759
187
Pensacola, FL
A user on my satellite subreddit posted this, that his university was wanting to get rid of! Boy would it be cool to get hands on this sucker!!! For anyone interested here is the link to the post:



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When I lived on a mountain top, there was a similar dish on the plot I leased to a tower company. It was separately fenced along with a ~50 ft. microwave tower, and whenever a service truck showed up for it, it was accompanied by a car with US government plates and a couple of guys in suits.
 
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Simulsat reflectors were quite popular for CATV/MATV installations for the multi-satellite and multi-band band reception off of a single fixed dish. The feeds are quite expensive as they are specific for the track mounting and band. The C-band gain and performance for each satellite position in the arc range is approximate to using a standard reflector diameter that is equal to the height of the Simulsat model. KU performance was usually reduced and not provide the performance of a similar sized single satellite reflector.

Several models are available to provide different ranges of degrees and gain. They are a monster to assemble / dissasemble and transport. Most used Simulsat reflectors usually end up being scrapped, but the feeds and rail mounts fetch a good price on the used market..
 
I used a couple of those in the 90's. Great dishes for multiple C-Band reception. Not so great for Ku indeed. The LNBs would mount on special feedhorns that could slide on rails in the enclosure at the focal area, which made them quite easy to fine tune. I think one of those dishes is used by the SatSignature site.
 
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That is TORUS antenna, costs thousands if you buy it new. I think this is 7m version. I wold not mind to have such a beauty, but too far to go to pick it up. Please, somebody, take it, do not let it to be scrapped.
 
Before you waste too many tears... If you have a head end and need to simultaneously receive multiple satellites, the Simusat system is a great space saver. That is about the best thing that can be said. You will have superior performance with almost any model polar mount dish that isn't warped or deformed.

If you can afford a 3 or 4 workers to dissasemble / reassemble, the concrete piers / pads, a few days of crane work and a semi to transport... free might be a fair price.

Personally, I would just say NO! LOL!!!

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Remember my post from many years ago? Trip down memory lane...
www.satelliteguys.us/xen/posts/1595309/
 
Getting the antenna for free still means you can spend thousands of dollars to reinstall and put into service. Back around 1990, when I still lived in southern California, I was involved in moving one of these from the Commerce Casino east of Los Angeles, to U.C.L.A., on the west end of the city. It took two of us a better part of a day to get the existing antenna disassembled enough for a crane removal onto a trailer the next morning. It was a scary project.

At least 15 yards of cement went into the pedestal mount at UCLA, and I would estimate it was over a month before they decided to actually hire a crane to mount the antenna. I would have to say that these antennas should probably only be installed one time, and never attempted to be reassembled in another location. You are dealing with a lot of antenna mass, the removal and reinstallation of a lot of fasteners, and in simple terms, it's a bitch to get everything perfect. If it's not perfect, you have even more fun getting all of the feedhorns optimized for each individual satellite, in the feed support box, which could be compared to a railroad track in terms of how much play you have to work with. During the early 1980s in Alaska, I built my own 16 to 20 foot spherical antennas by hand, using angle iron, redwood strips, lots of adjusters, and thousands of staples to fasten the typical 1/8 inch aluminum mesh. That was a cake walk, especially in the alignment process of the feeds. Each feed on a home brew antenna was typically over 20 feet or more away from the reflector (which had a 1.25 f/d ratio), and could be independently adjusted on its own tripod assembly.

During the first decade of the 2000s, I saw several cable headends in Wisconsin simply tear down their multifeed antennas. They were becoming dinosaurs even 10 and 15 years ago, and now that everything is delivered to multiple locations by fibered high speed internet, you might first think about which C-band satellites have enough steady traffic worth monitoring to justify an individual feed for each satellite. Now that Chaparral is out of business, feedhorns are going to become scarce and may increase in price with the few remaining suppliers. If anyone needs two port C-band feedhorns, I have a number of them in gently used condition at a reasonable price. Drop me a line at globalcm@mhtc.net

Mike Kohl
Global Communications
Montfort, Wisconsin
 
I was actually offered one of these dishes in the early 90’s. But to get it I needed to have it taken down and reassembled.

The cable company also wanted a million dollar insurance policy for whoever was doing the work.

If I had the room and money I would have done it. But i didn’t.


Sent from my iPhone using the SatelliteGuys app!
 
Looks like a way to see the whole arc on one dish perhaps? Many LNB's inside that thing I'm guessing...

Probably many bees too. :) I removed a 12 foot dish off a roof once and discovered the hood was occupied by a hundred or so hornets. They had me, no where to go but down, and down I went. Jumped 14 feet to the ground, cracked an ankle and still had 21 stings, mainly on my head and face.

Hornets have NO sense of humor. Odd thing though. I mowed all summer a couple years ago within a foot of a hornet's nest the size of a soccer ball, and not once did they get after me. When I finally sprayed the nest one night, there were about a hundred hornets fell out. Have no idea why those tolerated me. :confused:
 
Probably many bees too. :) I removed a 12 foot dish off a roof once and discovered the hood was occupied by a hundred or so hornets. They had me, no where to go but down, and down I went. Jumped 14 feet to the ground, cracked an ankle and still had 21 stings, mainly on my head and face.

Hornets have NO sense of humor. Odd thing though. I mowed all summer a couple years ago within a foot of a hornet's nest the size of a soccer ball, and not once did they get after me. When I finally sprayed the nest one night, there were about a hundred hornets fell out. Have no idea why those tolerated me. :confused:

That's absolutely awful! Last summer, my dad was on the zero-turn mower and he accidentally bumped his head on a hornet's nest that was hanging from a tree. He got stung pretty bad. I don't mess with wasps and hornets- I'm not afraid to run the hell away from them.
 
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superjack Gears

Signal on 101W MeTV

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