By jove, I think he's got it!

I've been meaning to get into fta for some time now. I acquired an old muzak dish from the store where I used to work, but never has LOS at my old apartment. Over a year and 2,000 miles later, I finally got the thing put together and got some aiming experience. I was able to hit 125W, after some effort. Most everything scanned in except for OETA. I figured it's not bad for a newbie.

The only problem is that the balcony is less than half the size of the old one, so the 1m fiberglass dish on NPRM is just too big. I'm getting a Geosatpro 90cm tomorrow, so that I still HAVE a balcony. I'm sure I'll be posting some noob questions in the coming days, and soon the 1m will be in the classifieds section with photos. I'm in Grand Junction CO, and it'll be dirt cheap if another SatelliteGuy picks it up in town.

Happy feed hunting!

KE4EST said:

Yes ask all the questions you need -- Don't be shy.
Also please post up some photos of now and then with the 90cm and everything installed.
I think you mentioned before, but what receiver and LNBF(What came with the dish?) are you using?

Click to expand...

This weekend was the Muzak dish, its original LNB plus feed, and an X2 mini HD that I bought from another member here. I wasn't having much luck, so I switched out the LNB with a Geosatpro SL1-PLL. I first hit 119w, then 127, then 123, then finally got 125. I think the issue was more of my RadioShack sat finder with its adjustable sensitivity not noticing the regular birds vs. 119.

The new dish will be either on an NPRM I picked up on Craigslist, or its own little stand that I think it comes with on eBay. That'll be my project after work this afternoon, with pics coming soon.

Now that I have a little time, here are a few pics. First up is the 1M dish. Heavy duty, solid construction, too big for the balcony. I had to brush up on my trigonometry to figure out where it could go on the balcony and actually get a signal from the targeted birds (not blocked by the railing, not blocked by the balcony above). The ideal spot is RIGHT in the middle of the balcony, or on top of the table that's hiding the TV antenna. The base for the NPRM is the main problem, as it's around 40x44", and the balcony is small. Also, in the 3rd picture you can see the diagonal bar that keeps the pole upright. I can't have the dish aimed over the bar at an elevation below 45º or it'll hit. The dish needs to be tuned away from the base, ideally 90-180º, making it take up even more space on the balcony.

(yes, the fine elevation adjustment is gone. It was more rust than anything when I got the dish).

Here's what I have set up right now. I screwed the Geosatpro mount onto some pieces of 4x4 as a temporary mount before trying to put it on a different NPRM. 125W is nice, but since we get 3 PBS's OTA (Rocky Mountain PBS, V-Me, Create) I figured I'd try elsewhere. It's currently aimed at 103, getting everything I should be getting less the Huntington beach cams. Since I already had an extra LNBF and switch (planning ahead) I attached the second LNBF to get 97W and have 180ish channels from there so far before peaking it. The base is obviously smaller, and the arms don't stick out nearly as far, so it has much more wife appeal.



Yes, that's the whole balcony. It's going to be interesting to make this whole thing wife/OTARD/landlord friendly, especially if I have a second dish. Luckily my wife thinks a motor would be a good idea so she can switch between NHK (103W), a $channel that's ITC right now (123W), and PBS (125W).

Here's my setup so far:
Dish: Geosatpro 90cm
LNBFs: Geosatpro SL1-PLL
Receiver: X2 Premium Mini (will be replaced eventually)
Switch: Amiko 8x1, waiting for more LNBF's

In storage: one 1M muzak dish, NPRM for the Muzak dish, plus a tall NPRM from Craigslist that fits the 90cm dish

Eventual goal: get a little land and get this bad boy from a restaurant near me, plus a couple more dishes:

I've stopped toying with the dish for now, since it gets most channels on 103 and 97 (just one tp is really weak on 97, 11898 V.) For my next project/headache, I've connected the coax to my Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S2 which has been in the computer unused for a couple of years.

I haven't installed any DVB-specific software yet. Scanning in WinTV 7 is painfully slow and only seems to scan a pre-set list of transponders. It picked up some stuff on 103W, but nothing from NBC. It scanned in nothing from 97w on port 2 of the switch. This is probably a weakness of the WinTV software, since it only gives an option of "Diseqc 1.x A/B/C/D" for the switch rather than specifically 1.1. I'll probably give WinTV 8 a try if I can find my 7 cd

Windows Media Center has already been giving me some issues, so I decided to redo the TV signal setup and add the Nova S2 to the mix. When WMC did its automatic setup, it selected the two OTA tuners and skipped the Nova. I switched to manual setup, which had me put in the sat positions, then OTA, then saved. Now there's a screen I've never seen before: Satellite Transponder Scan. I probably should have set a timer, but I can safely say this card (or at least the software runing it) is much slower than the receiver when scanning. After the long wait, nothing it "scanned" will tune.

Edit: on the Hauppauge UK site it says Diseqc 1.0 supported. Maybe I'll just need to buy another switch or two...

Next question: I know when you add more lnbf's to a dish, they won't get quite as much signal as the center lnbf. At what point is one "too far" from boresight? The dish is still parked on 103w with a second lnbf at 97w (the two are actually barely touching.) Would it be worth trying to add another one for 91w or 87w? Or would 87 simply be too far off to be able to get much?

The fiberglass dish would be tough unless I figured out a new way to mount it. With the size and shape of my balcony, the only place to put it right now is right in the middle of the balcony. Here's the layout right now:



Using the current mount for the 1m, it would have to be put in the notch by the sliding glass door, further encroaching on our usable space. It has to be far enough back to see over the railing (41" high), but not so far back that the upstairs balcony blocks the top of the reflector. It can't fit on my temporary mount for the 90cm (two 4x4's screwed together). The two mounts are completely different, and if I were to swap the reflectors I'd have to make an adapter plate for the hole spacing, and have to worry about the different offset angle. It would still be questionable given the wight difference between the two reflectors.

I'll probably move the 90cm to the taller NPRM this weekend (upper left corner) and see what sort of space I have to work with. A more drastic option would be to swap out the antenna for one that's VHF-hi/UHF, give up channel 2, and watch it as a lower-quality subchannel on 27. Then I might be able to move the table that's hiding the antenna.

The dish is on the taller NPRM, and lo and behold, a letter from a cranky neighbor appeared on my door! She says the dish is not allowed according the the lease (incorrect), and that it is interfering with "everyone's lower cable channels that we have to pay cable for." I'm curious as to when the supposed interference stated, since there were no issues when the dish was set back further on the balcony. I'll ignore her for now, since I spoke with the property manager a few months ago and they were fine with it.

I'm enjoying the dish so far, but now I have a bigger issue: where to park it. I don't have a motor yet, so right now it's still parked on 103W and 97W. We love some of the channels on 97 & 103 (especially a couple newer feeds on 103), but the whole idea of the dish was to get the PBS's on 125. Of course I also accidentally found a $channel ITC on 123W my wife likes, which is too close to 125W. It's a bit chilly out, but I'll probably park on 125 for a few days and see how we like it.

I'm not sure if I should jump right into the fray and buy a motor. The pole isn't 100% plumb just yet, and I should probably do that before anything else.

So far I'm still parked on 103/97. When I scanned free channels only, 97W gave me 208. Does that sound about right?