Newbies Gone Wild

[CenterFreq]

The Newbies: Me and son #3 (age 18).
The Counselors: Various senior members of SatelliteGuys.US

Counselors advise, "Get a 36 inch dish, easy to start with, get some FTA up and running for family enjoyment."
Newbies meet with Mom and reason, "They tell us 'rainfade' can occur, and we may be moving to Oregon or Washington. Let's get bigger"

Counselors advise, "Start out simple without motor."
Newbies and Mom decide, "Climbing up to the roof and reinstalling later will mean more suffering in 112 degree Nevada heat. Just install the motor, but don't *run* it until we figure everything else out."

Counselors advise, "Install at ground level first, keep things simple."
Newbies already excited, do not see the post until later. "Let's build a wall mount."

Photos below look like Newbies succeed. Don't be fooled.
Advice to other newbies; DO WHAT SENIOR MEMBERS ADVISE... they don't call them "senior" for nothing!

 

[Rosey1]

Watching on the other thread, and thanks for all the step by step info!

Hope you find a signal on the Belt and can report success to all of us. Will follow along from rural North Dakota. We have the same issues, big dish/little dish/FTA, only difference is the temp!

Good Luck and keep this thread going! It's really helpful to us!

Mike R

 

[voomvoom]

Nice pictures... looks good to me... good job..!!!

 

[digiblur]

Nice work. Christmas starting early this year?

 

[eurosport]

Nice work. Christmas starting early this year?

:haha ROFL! Or never ended LAST year! (Nice dish mount too!)

 

[badhat]

I am in Central Washington State and I have to say... that when we do get tons of rain... I don't experience rain fade and I am using a P* 75E dish. Nice job by the way. Definitely let us know once you have acquired a bird. Go for 123W.. you won't be disappointed.

 

[rv1pop]

Agree, badhat! The P* dishes seem to shed the WASHingTON rains. (They do call it the EverGreen State for the Algee you know!)..... The mounts hold up well in the wind also.

I have made plans, posted them and waited for comments from the seniors. - My wife calls it procrastinating - but it sure has paid off! GOOD WORK!

 

[CenterFreq]

Did I put this thread down here in FTA Shack, or was it moved? Maybe late night posting confusion on my part.
----------------------------------------
Okay, maybe our setup *looks* good, but we still don't see any programs. But before I get to that, I want to explain one of the photos, the last one entitled "Rod Details".
One of the problems we were having was that the mast was rotating slightly in the breeze. And not much breeze at that. So I thought that I could drill two holes through the bottom of the mast, slip a steel rod through the holes, and capture the end of the rod with a screw eye in the wooden "foundation" of the wall mount. This basically worked, but I stumbled upon another nice feature: by surrounding the bottom of the mast with two Nut - Washer - Lock Washer combinations, AND surrounding the screw eye with the same combination, I could now make small adjustments at the screw eye which yielded very minute changes in the East-West leaning of the mast. I wish I could say that I had planned that, but it just came upon me when I was trying to keep the mast from rotating. In the photo, I left the nuts and washers loose so that you all could see the arrangement of the pieces. Note the yellow carpenter's level in the background. After I shot the photo, I tightened up the hardware surrounding the screw eye, and made several small adjustments, checking each with the level. The result was a dead accurate East-West alignment of the mast... it is perfectly straight up from an East-West standpoint.
Now taking my accidental invention one step further: what if I added another foot long threaded rod, say about 2 inches above the first rod, BUT on the North-South axis, and I anchored this second rod with a long-shafted screw eye? Then when I adjusted the second rod, and used the level for checking, wouldn't I then have a perfect straight up mast, East-West, AND North-South?
This post is getting long (I think), so I better wait to see if there's any response before I go further.

 

[SatPhreak]

That sounds like a good idea because motorized dishes just don't work unless the mounting pole is plumb in ALL directions. I had mine on a mount that leaned forward a couple degrees over the winter and I lost most of the sats till I went out in the cold and replumbed it.

 

[CenterFreq]

Since nobody has any questions/comments regarding the rod details, I'll move on.

Before setting up the dish as pictured, we had to figure out how to get the clamp from the dish's butterfly bracket to hold tight onto the small (42mm ?) tube of the SG2100 motor. Someone suggested using some PVC which could be cut to fit, but I believe that I used an inferior grade of PVC.

We had been advised (wisely) to set up the dish without the motor first, and just try to get a signal. After we got good at receiving programs we could add the dish later. We thought that installing the motor right away and just not using the motor was the same thing. We were wrong. We installed everything, and of course, saw no programs. So somebody suggested "Hey, let's turn the dish just a little bit to the West and see if we can get a channel." It's funny how our dumb decisions sound so reasonable at the time we make them. We had never seen a dish turn before, so we had no idea what to expect. So when we used the remote and told the dish to turn West, it rotated and then slipped away from the cheap PVC. It nearly slipped all the way off the motor tube, but somehow just stopped short. But now it was facing what we figured must be all the way West, and seemed to be stuck there. Maybe it hit some mechanical limiter, but it would not move back.
We then climbed back up on the roof, and examined the damage. Hoping that the motor was not burned out or something, we decided to replace the failed PVC with a strip of soft pine. It took us awhile, being close to the edge of an eighteen foot drop, but we got the wood installed and the connection to the dish was now very tight. I left my son up on the roof to observe from close range while I went back down to energize the system. He told me later that, after I was gone about a minute, he saw the LED on the bottom of SG2100 flash red, yellow, and green, in quick sequence. After that, the LED stayed dark, and the dish would not move.
That is where we are now. Does anyone know if we have burned out the motor?

 

[CenterFreq]

Ooops... replies crossed in the mail. SatPhreak, if you are still here, what do you think about the symptoms I just described?

 

[TRG]

CenterFreq, What size and brand dish is that?

 

[SatPhreak]

You can try to reset the motor. I have no idea how that is done since I use a stab hh-90 which has no reset. I have read that the sg 2100 does have one.

All the dishes I've used have clamps that are 42mm and the top bolt in the clamp goes though the clamp and the hole in the shaft of the motor. What kind of dish do you have? Does it use u bolts to hold to the motor or a thin metal clamp with 2 bolts to tighten?

 

[SatPhreak]

I've just read your other thread and see that it is a 1.2m geosatpro dish with u bolt clamps. In that case there is no bolt that goes through the clamp and shaft. Make sure the dish is not rotated on the motor shaft. The threaded part of the u bolts should be perpendicular to the hole in the motor shaft. Check with a square. Make sure the shim won't crush and that the u bolts are tight enough not to let it slip again. If the dish is rotated on the moter shaft it won't track the arc properly.

With the other type of dish mount it can't be rotated because of the bolt going through the clamp and shaft. This also prevents the dish from sliding off the shaft.

 

[CenterFreq]

Eventually, the shim may dry out, crack and fall apart. Right now, it's holding on tight. I'm going to go look at the booklet right now to see if there is a reset button.

 

[CenterFreq]

You guys are incredible! There is a "Pin hole for Reset" according to the booklet. Now if I guess right, I should have my son hold the dish up slightly from the extreme West position that it is currently sitting on, and that should take it off of the hardware limit. While he is holding it, I should hit the reset, and then try to use the manual button to get the dish away from extreme West. Am I correct?

 

[Anole]

reset

If you decide a reset is needed, first check your manual.
Then, of course, check here with the forum.
We folks might have had a discussion on the subject a long while ago . . . -

Eventually, the shim may dry out, crack and fall apart.

edit: and I think I'd drill my dish mounting hardware to allow the sloppy installation of a little keeper-bolt through the motor's shaft.
re-edit: don't get seduced by the subject of this thread, but it does have some representative pictures for mounting a too-big dish on a motor.

 

[CenterFreq]

Anole, I'm glad you haven't given up on me. We were trying to merge your good suggestions with our hasty situations and we screwed ourselves up. How do I find where we may have discussed resets before. Or can you just remind me, how do I know if a reset is needed?

 

[CenterFreq]

Okay, Tuesday evening we go back up and install that "little keeper bolt". After all this work and frustration, I don't want to come home some afternoon and find that the dish has taken the 18' dive to the driveway. Thank you.

 

[mikekohl]

Past experiences in southern California as well as Las Vegas have taught me to choose materials carefully, due to "surprises" caused by extreme high solar radiation and heat. The suggestion for using PVC as a shim is not a good one.
In normal circumstances, PVC has much less resistance than a steel pipe when one is tightening up the bolts on the pole cap. Great idea if you want to dig in to the pipe at the same time, but after it has done that, you will never be able to do another adjustment again without sinking into the hole you have created in the wall of the PVC. Under desert conditions, problems will happen even quicker, with heat tending to soften the material somewhat in the midday sun over time. Since you already have things in place, leave it alone and see what happens, but if you have to replace----consider attaching the proper diameter pipe immediately under the motor drive clamp and secure it below. Much stabler than a shim, because antennas that large on top of a roof in Las Vegas are are target for a sudden windstorm. At a Las Vegas trade show in 1985, I saw a whole row of 10-foot mesh antennas blow over without much warning, because they were not properly weighted. Mother Nature has little respect for mechanical things, so unless there is a good reason to elevate an antenna, it is best to keep the mast as close to the ground as possible; reducing exposure to the wind, and danger to the technician.