new 1.2 meter dish and 12 footer

[LocutusOfBorg]

About warped GeosatPro 1.2 meter dishes:

I am on my third dish (first two got bent). It took me that long to realize NOT to adjust the dish with my hands on the outer edges, especially if the dish is fairly tight on the pole. Instead, I now adjust with my hands near the center of the dish where it won't bend it. Lesson learned.

Fortunately it is only a 10 minute drive from my house to SatelliteAV so I didn't have to pay shipping when I bought replacements.

Still, $350 for a new dish....... If I decide to buy another one I'll get 2 and save money on shipping. Anyway, it sounds like you took the dish off the pole to adjust it.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

I spent some time tweaking on the dish. It seems weird that I get improvements on some transponders while losing others - sometimes on the same satellite. I got improvements on C/N on 91W but lost Azteca on 97W. It's not just this dish but I still can't get RetroTV on 113W on my 12 footer while all other transponders of interest are rock solid - a lot are 14-15 dB C/N. Frustrating.

 

[primestar31]

I spent some time tweaking on the dish. It seems weird that I get improvements on some transponders while losing others - sometimes on the same satellite. I got improvements on C/N on 91W but lost Univision on 97W. It's not just this dish but I still can't get RetroTV on 113W while all other transponders of interest are rock solid - a lot are 14-15 dB C/N. Frustrating.

See, that's NOT weird with using a 1.2m dish for C-band. That's an exact replication of every other persons experience doing the same thing. Stuff is right at (or below) threshold, and it barely takes anything to lose the lock.

 

[N6BY]

Still, $350 for a new dish....... If I decide to buy another one I'll get 2 and save money on shipping. Anyway, it sounds like you took the dish off the pole to adjust it.

How could I adjust the dish aim if it was off of the pole?

Actually what I do is put my hands behind the dish near the center (close to the pole). That way it doesn't bend the dish (like it might if my hands were on the edges).

 

[primestar31]

How could I adjust the dish aim if it was off of the pole?

Actually what I do is put my hands behind the dish near the center (close to the pole). That way it doesn't bend the dish (like it might if my hands were on the edges).

I think he meant/thinks that you took it off the pole to adjust any clam-shelling issue you may have had with the reflector.

 

[Titanium]

The correct method to correct a warped reflector is to remove the LNB support arms and remove the reflector from the mount.and lay on a perfectly flat surface. Use the method of holding the dish by the rim and making a quick passing motion to flex the reflector then return to the flat surface to determine if the motion corrected the warp. If not, repeat until the rim lays flat. Remount and perform a string test.

Bending and twisting the mounted reflector on a motorized mount to optimize for a specific transponder is counter-productive. A warped reflector might reshape the beam patterns to peak a single signal quality by attenuating a side lobe causing adjacent satellite interference. The reshaped beam or lobe(s) might not provide a benefit when tuning a different transponder or satellite without the same interference.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

How could I adjust the dish aim if it was off of the pole?

Actually what I do is put my hands behind the dish near the center (close to the pole). That way it doesn't bend the dish (like it might if my hands were on the edges).

I meant that it would be easier to reshape the dish if it was taken off the pole. Especially if you're going to push on the back of the dish in the center - at least it would be better for me.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

See, that's NOT weird with using a 1.2m dish for C-band. That's an exact replication of every other persons experience doing the same thing. Stuff is right at (or below) threshold, and it barely takes anything to lose the lock.

That's disappointing. After adjusting for true south, polarity, and elevation, one would expect that all transponders of equal or greater strength would come in just fine. Apparently that's not the case. The furthest east that I could get a signal on was at 91W. I used "The Word Network" for the true south adjustment and got that up over 10 dB C/N (up from 8 dB C/N). I didn't have to tweak the elevation when at the peak satellite (that I could get a lock - 101W - even though 103W is closer to true south for me). After doing this, I lost Azteca on 97W (I had 9 dB C/N before starting), H&I east and west on 101W (they were 6.2 dB C/N). Start TV on 101W didn't change. Still nothing on 103W or 105W. I lost everything on 107W. I wonder if a "better" LNBF would help. I do have a filtered Titanium LNBF arriving today. Maybe it'll help but we'll see. If not, it'll be time to put up another 10 or 12 footer - not looking forward to doing that.

 

[Titanium]

A filtered LNBF will have zero effect unless an out of band signal is present and overloading the LNB front end conversion process. It does not filter in-band (same frequency) interference resulting from adjacent satellites, which would be typical with an undersized reflector.


Attempting to reliably receive a satellite signal without adequate signal BER headroom above the noise threshold, one will continue to be disappointed with this experiment.

Keep piling on the lipstick, but it remains to be a pig...

 

[arlo]

Man. Again, kudos for your effort. That dish is just too small to capture and focus c band microwaves. Akin it to a cheap Wally World telescope with a 3" lens. You'll be able to see Saturn and its rings. You can even buy a higher powered eyepiece. All it will do is give you a bigger, dimmer, blurry image. Bump the 'scope up to a 6" mirror and your image will be much brighter and clearer. And a higher mag. eyepiece will do well. As well as a 6" telescope can do.
As microwave freqs. go up, dish sizes can decrease. "These guys up here" go out and buy cell phone boosters. In marginal areas the do work. But the rule still applies. If it ain't there, you can't amplify it. I'm sorry. You've spent the past few months on this and aren't getting much of anywhere.
Bite the bullet and get a 6 foot dish. Even if you had a "perfect" Prodelin or Andrews dish, 3 foot aint gonna hack it. Even with a Helium cooled LNA/downconverter setup like Arecibo.

 

[danristheman]

Hi guys I hadn't been around to much been busy doing some other things. Hey Johnny what number you have your scaler at 40 to 42? You need readjust your scaler I don't use a flat one. The summer time worked best for me the hotter it got the better the dish worked. 91W I didn't get much manly the CW channels. 99w to 101w was the ones I wanted to try to get. It takes some patience 97w wasn't that bad to get either. I got to get back into the game missing out.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

Whatever. This was an interesting project but it doesn't meet my needs so I'm preparing to assemble my TEK 12 footer - if I stop procrastinating.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

I thought that it would be a slam-dunk to get the panels on the TEK done this afternoon. Unfortunately, a lot of holes are drilled in the wrong place on the panels. Most of them that are drilled wrong are a half inch or more off. I'll have to drill some holes. I've attached a couple of photos showing some issues. You can't see the problem very well in the "Hole in wrong place.jpg" but the hole in the adjacent panel is far enough off to where the bolt won't go into it. Where the panels attach to the ring, I have several panels where the holes don't line up. And the forecast high for tomorrow is 104 degrees. This is going to take longer than I expected.

 

[primestar31]

I thought that it would be a slam-dunk to get the panels on the TEK done this afternoon. Unfortunately, a lot of holes are drilled in the wrong place on the panels. Most of them that are drilled wrong are a half inch or more off. I'll have to drill some holes. I've attached a couple of photos showing some issues. You can't see the problem very well in the "Hole in wrong place.jpg" but the hole in the adjacent panel is far enough off to where the bolt won't go into it. Where the panels attach to the ring, I have several panels where the holes don't line up. And the forecast high for tomorrow is 104 degrees. This is going to take longer than I expected.

On the holes that are drilled off, did you check to see if maybe some other panel matches the same holes? You likely did, but it's just a thought.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

On the holes that are drilled off, did you check to see if maybe some other panel matches the same holes? You likely did, but it's just a thought.

I tried 4 other panels and had the same issue. I am not happy with this purchase at all. And this all goes back to my general dissatisfaction with most electronics related devices - not enough quality control. When I complained to TEK2000 and Satellites-Gallore about the carriers rough handling of the product, I got no response. Too bad I wasn't present when the antenna was delivered - I would've refused delivery. I guess I can try to make some minor corrections to see if I can get it to go together. And I got a lot of hardware but no instructions to tell me what it is or how to install it. Not even the tvrosat website identifies the parts.

 

[primestar31]

I tried 4 other panels and had the same issue. I am not happy with this purchase at all. And this all goes back to my general dissatisfaction with most electronics related devices - not enough quality control. When I complained to TEK2000 and Satellites-Gallore about the carriers rough handling of the product, I got no response. Too bad I wasn't present when the antenna was delivered - I would've refused delivery. I guess I can try to make some minor corrections to see if I can get it to go together.

Well, I would be tempted to buy a LOT of C-Clamps for use to do this. Harbor Freight sells some good ones for this purpose, but C-Clamps are always useful.

Do all this assembly on a large hard flat surface, such as a concrete driveway if possible. Get a pail that's high enough to put in the center, as you do this with the panels face-down. Perhaps shim it a bit with some old books or something, if you need a bit more height. Get all the panels lined up that have matching bolt holes that don't need re-drilling, and bolt them together, but NOT torqued/cranked down.

Try to do a complete 1/2 of the parabola this way with all matching holes. Hopefully there's enough panels that are drilled properly. If not, do as many as you can with bolts. Once you are sure you have all of those, start bolting the badly-drilled ones together with any matching holes, until all that's left are the holes that don't match.

On those, try using the C-Clamps to clamp the edges together (maybe using thin woods shims so it doesn't deform the metal), and get them all fitting to where it looks good, the rim seems level and all seems as if it should be good. You might even be able to string it at that point. THEN re-drill the holes and use the last bolts. By the way, I wouldn't use the Chinese bolts that come with it. Every time I've tried that, that last little crank causes them to break.

It might take longer to get everything to where you think it looks good by doing it this way, but it is, what it is, and at least this way, you can make any changes before drilling holes and being 100% committed to whatever happens.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

I wonder what these holes are for on the back of the panel......

 

[primestar31]

I wonder what these holes are for on the back of the panel......

My guess is weep-holes, for captured water. If so, that panel needs to be on the BOTTOM edge of the dish, so water can leak out of it and not freeze, which can explode the rim.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

My guess is weep-holes, for captured water. If so, that panel needs to be on the BOTTOM edge of the dish, so water can leak out of it and not freeze, which can explode the rim.

All the panels have those holes. So, if that's what they're for, I'm covered.

 

[primestar31]

All the panels have those holes. So, if that's what they're for, I'm covered.

Saying that, and the fact that you said there's some panels with mis-matched holes, makes me wonder if the seller just randomly put some panels in your package to get it shipped out, and didn't pay attention as to if they all came from the same lot number.