Recent content by k2ue

Yes, and it should be "Flooded" Burial Cable, which has a gooey substance designed to prevent waten ingress even if the jacket has pinholes.

That's not true for two reasons: If you look at the expression for System Noise temperature, which defines the Carrier-to-Noise-Ratio available for detection, it is an expression with many additive terms, and Cable loss only affects the denominator of some terms, and thus only materially...

The AT-9 antenna is the same as the old Phase III with regards to cables: you need as many cables as your receivers have inputs, up to 4 max, at which point further expansion is done with multiswitches.

No problem -- I'm using an HR10-250 and two H10's happily with the new AT9 Ka/Ku 5-Sat Antenna.

Power gain is directly proportional to capture area for the same efficiency, and efficiencies are all fairly similar, plus the noise temp goes down slightly as dish size goes up, so there is a (very) small improvement there too. 24" to 30" would be 1.9+ dB, 0.9m to 1.2m would be 2.5+ dB. The...

The move from 0.5 to 0.9 meter would have netted about a 5-6 dB improvement in CNR, roughly 4x what the LNB change would yield. Small antennas have a higher noise temp at the same elevation, giving less advantage to a better LNB, so you should max out antenna size before going to lower temp...

It depends entirely on how adequate your signal is now: if poor, 1.5dB might nudge it up to good; if good then perhaps to very good -- but it probably won't make a poor signal very good.

Yes, early C-band setups (circa 1979) actually brought the 4GHz signal amplified by the LNA indoors, originally through copper hardline pressurized with dry nitrogen, then through foam-filled aluminum hardline. Early Downconverters (often single channel, not Block) weren't weatherproof, so it...

Noise Figure is based a terrestrial ambient temperature reference of 290K, and is defined as how much noise is added by passing thru the amp. So 0.3 dB adds 21 degrees K, 0.6 dB add 43 degrees K. The unknown is the Antenna temperature at your elevation angle above the horizon (the higher, the...

Such signals are not actually below the noise floor per se, they are below the broadband noise floor, i.e. they can't be seen by a wideband receiver or spectrum analyzer which has a wide noise bandwidth. The matching hopping receiver knows where the signal will be, and can look for it a narrow...

Actually, you could get by not knowing the tilt -- if you aim at 101 initially, as instructed, it stays on 101 as you rotate to peak 119, so even if you didn't know the tilt, you would find it readily by sweeping through the whole range. Since you are, in effect scanning vertically thru the...

I had the 3-LNB GainMaster and switched to the AT9 5-sat Ka/Ku. They are similar in size, and both use a 2" mast. The az/el adjustment verniers on the AT9 make it WAY easier to set up. Also the AT9 adjusts the 101-to-119 spacing as a function of location (in 3 zones) which makes for...

Yes, I have two d575's in excellent condition I took out of service this spring when a ran more cables and didn't need them any more.

5/16ths should be about right, 1/4" is a bit small in the holes, and would definitely want washers. Considering the bulk and weight, I'd feel much better with 5/16ths hardware. My AT9 is mounted to steel channels bolted to spacers on a 3-foot dia. tree, with 1/4" hardware with washers under the...

You need as many cables as you have inputs on your receivers, up to 4 max. Beyond 4 receiver inputs you bring in 4 lines from the AT9 and expand further with a multiswitch.