torodiol -t90

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danristheman

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Jan 25, 2011
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I need info on a torodiol t-90 dish can anyone give me some info on it and see if it is a good buy? Also where to buy one?

Dan Rose
 
Seems to me it really has more like a 3 degree separation for the birds, thus it becomes a challenge to cram the lnbfs close enough together to get the desired 2 degree separation. Iceberg found a nifty way around it with special lnbfs, but he also warned me before I got one -- that the dish might not have enough gain at the edges to have 87W and 125W rock solid both on the one dish (as the most eastern and western sats) and that seems to be the case with my dish, even with PLL lnbfs.

Someone else here has 3 of these dishes, maybe their experience is better, and probably they are more knowledgeable about this rig and can enlighten you.

I DO like it, I maybe need to play with mine more, but as is it's in daily use and am glad I got it. Got it straight from the importer, shipping costs were enough that your favorite movie star might as well be personally delivering it. These do turn up on Craigslist as bargains sometimes.
 
Having some experience with installing a few of these I would choose a motor over a Toroidal t-90 if given the option. They are a challenge to install and the gain on a given bird is about equivalent to a 75cm. Toucan-man is correct, two degree spacing is not possible with a standard KU -LNBF with a scalar.

Wescopc may still have one in storage to sell. It has been a few years since we discussed a Toroidal experience.
 
honestly after owning one I gave it to a friend. Its a massive compromise. My T90 at best performed like a 75cm on the centre and a 60cm or less on the edges. With higher order modulations being king these days I wouldnt bother. You can get a 1m wineguard, motor, and invacom qph-031 for less then the T90 (and you havent even bought multiple lnb's for the T90 yet)

UDL
 
honestly after owning one I gave it to a friend. Its a massive compromise. My T90 at best performed like a 75cm on the centre and a 60cm or less on the edges. With higher order modulations being king these days I wouldnt bother. You can get a 1m wineguard, motor, and invacom qph-031 for less then the T90 (and you havent even bought multiple lnb's for the T90 yet)

UDL
Where were you when I needed you ? :D

The concept is great, multi lnbfs are super reliable with instant channel changes, but in this execution the performance is ho hum especially considering the big size of this dish. I concur with you.

103W is reliable, except if rain gets on the front cover of the lnbf, then it loses signal. I've not experienced this with any of my 'normal' dishes.
 
has anyone tried to get c band with a t-90?

dan Rose
No, but Dish Network has the dish for you !

dish-dish.jpg
 
The T-90 is a Hacker Dish. The only thing it's good at is picking up a bunch of high powered DBS satellites. But other than that it works as well as other DBS dishes on FTA stuff. Unless you had one to play with I wouldn't spend the money to set one up. UDL is right, there are way better ways to go.
 
The other issue with that dish was finding LNB's that fit in as most were larger the the 2 degrees spacing needed.


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Yep like I said before Dan, you are better off with a motor. ;)
 
If they had a T-120 or a T-180 I think it would be an interesting design but the ones available are too small.
For those who have them, do you have to reprogram each satellite with opposite H/V polarity because of the 2nd reflector?
-C.
 
H/V remain H/V. Only circular signals are reversed by a secondary reflector. Circular signals require a special reversed polarity LNBF on the Toridals. Linear polarity signals are received with regular LNBFs.

Look into a mirror. If you hold a ruler vertically, the image remains vertical. The same for horizontal. If you hold a left spiral, it will be reflected as a right spiral.
 
Friend of mine set up a couple of these T-90`s each using bandstacked lnb`s with 4 deg spacing. 2 of them covered the majority of sats we are interested in for feeds.My first thought when I seen his setup was wow that is cool, but after seeing and comparing results with one of my smaller motorized dishs ( Ariza 90cm ) I seen the further out on the lnb bracket was a greater loss.Is good if you have a computer card and take a look where the signals are and have a larger dish to tune in.Be great if there was a 1.2 or 1.4 torodiol available....Would help in cleaning up the sat farm here.
 
T90 is my first dish (bought it about 10 years ago) and still have it on my balcony. It is great toy, and I love it. For circularly-polarized signals it is easier to turn polarisation plate in the convertor, or another way is to reprogram in the receiver. I would not hesitate to buy this dish again if I need a dish. Of course, size could be bigger, but even with 90cm equivalent it is more than enough for majority of birds. Signals are so strong nowadays, that size became not so important, in some cases that also apply for C-band. Of course, situation in Europe and Americas is little bit different, but anyway. Replacing T90 with motorized antenna.... I do not think that would bed right decision. Motorized in addition to existing T90 that is the proper way, IMHO.
 
I have a T55 (the T90's baby brother) and it's even more of a compromise. It does well enough for 97w and a few neighboring sats unless the weather gets nasty, but is really designed for the DBS services and probably the FTA scene in Europe as well. The toroidals are heavier than a comparable offset dish (two reflectors instead of one plus brackets and LNBF bar) so that adds to the installation difficulties.
 
I've been using three T-90s for several years now as part of my 15ish dish farm. Everyone seems to have extreme reactions to them. In my case I took down two motorized 1.2 m GeoSATpro offsets after installing the T90s because they offered nothing of value. Admittedly I still have a motorized 1.8 m offset used very occasionally for weak Ku feeds, and a 2.6 m Birdview for way-out-of-footprint reception games. The primary benefits I've seen with the toroids are immediate access to any satellite from multiple receivers, and complete immunity to high wind. The 1.2 m mounts were too flimsy to maintain lock in fairly typical wind for here, and when coupled to even heavy-duty DiSEqC motors, they were even worse. At one point I even tried a C-band HH motor on a 1.2 m out of desperation, but it got shredded in a rather nasty storm. When adequately crunched down, the T90s remain fully operational in the worst Mother Nature throws at them.

In terms of sensitivity, I have to disagree with others. In a post way back, I provided test results from a very careful comparison of sensitivity across a T90's arc, and then to a 1.2 m as a reference. In the center few degrees the T90 outperformed a 90 cm dish, and was very close out to about +/- 10 degrees. By +/- 20 degrees, the the gain was only comparable to a 76 cm dish's performance. Thus I use three T90s, generally sticking to the center 20 degrees on each to cover all FTA Ku birds from 72W to 127W. We also subscribe to Dish Network and Shaw Direct (Canada), and given those satellites are more powerful, I have easily covered everything from 61.5W to 148W at one time or another with the same setup.

I normally have 25-30 LNBs running off the T90s. The main downside from that is the cabling and switching required. That favors bandstacked LNBs, and I have a truckload of Superdish and Sadoun units. The feedhorns that come with Superdish LNBs are small enough to work with 2 degree spacing on the T90s, but the sensitivity is lower than I would like. I solved this by bolting on full-sized horns, but that causes spacing problems. Originally I sawed off the edges, bolted two together in pairs, and sealed them with caulk. Recently I discovered I could simply take off a little metal with a grinder, without compromising water-tightness. I wish I had realized this before.

Aligning the T90s is a little different than a typical Ku dish, but it only took me a few minutes to get the hang of it. I am an extreme perfectionist, and found I could nail a better alignment in less time than on a fixed Ku dish, partly because the T90 mechanics are generally better. When compared to a motorized Ku dish, this was a walk in the park. Even nicer is I have never had to realign the T90s, unlike my other offsets, which needed occasional touch-ups because of twisting and bending in the wind.

The bottom line is we have six locations in the house that can instantly switch to any channel on any bird with simple remote control. The toroids allow direct access to all North American FTA satellites, along with those from Dish and Shaw. When I'm looking for a feed, I can blindscan simultaneously on several PC tuners without having to move a dish, and cover the entire Ku arc in minutes. The only alternative would have been 25+ 90 cm dishes, which would have caused far more brain damage. Given that most people appear to have problems getting T90s aligned and don't want to deal with multiple units, switching, and 2 degree spacing, I generally only recommend T90s to experts who are willing to think out-of-the-box. But I never would go back to the 1.2 m offsets. They were junk and next to useless by comparison.
 
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