we don't need no stinking elm's.....
You got that right gremlin, that sucker is outta here!
I removed the feed supports and scalar to paint the dish, used some $12/gal commercial exterior latex, applied with a 1/2" nap roller. Did a little restoration work with a black permanent marker to bring out the "Birdview" logo letters.
Reinstalled the support arms and scalar and added a GeoSat Pro C2 dual C-band LNBF (and thanks to Brian @ SatAv for the great deal he offered to us SatGuys on these). Set the "0" mark vertically with the dish @ apex.
IF the sun
ever reappears I will have some close-ups of the feedarm extensions and my declination adjusters, but for now will say that I have a face-of-dish center to face-of-scalar dimension of 40 3/8", and have about 1/4" of adjustment left if I wanted to move the scalar further away from the dish.
My pre-modded factory measurement was 39 3/8".
Set my "f/d" to "about 1/4" of the feedhorn sticking out of the scalar"....I think that corresponds to approximately .40 on the LNBF scale. I never touched the focal distance or skew after the initial settings. I do intend to check my LNBF pointing with a laser.....one of these days.
Set my main elevation bar to 37.7 (37.63 is what is in the "modified" charts for my location).
The BV mount has some declination built into it from the factory, mine had almost exactly 6 degrees and I need about 5.3 degrees for my location. This requires spacing the dish forward from the bottom mount plate.
I achieved this originally with a small steel splitting wedge and all 6 bolts snugged-up in the dish, thought I would need to play with this adjustment (and the wedge would make this quick and easy) but the way it turned out my digital angle finder was right on the money, so further adjustment wasn't necessary.
After leveling the BV mounting cap on the pole (which required a slight corresponding elevation adjustment).....and a minor azimuth adjustment, I was receiving the LPTV mux on 95W at 95% Q (w/Visionsat IV-200). 93W is actually my true south but there is no C-band there, AFAIK.
I then removed the steel wedge and installed 2 bolts with 1 nut and flat washer on each side of the mounting plate (in the holes that next to the "outside" holes , these could also be used to quickly and easily adjust the declination. In the other 4 holes I used stacked flat washers which I stuck in and aligned them for the bolts with a tapered punch (had no masking tape, Stogie!

), and snugged it all up.
Then I started working my way to the west, one sat at a time (peaking and noting the position numbers on my V-Box 6), made one more tiny azimuth adjustment, and in a couple hours was viewing the NASA mux on 137W, and then got that DG TX Prog tp on 139W.
Went back to 95W and started working my way to the east, never touched the az/el/dec again, and eventually made my way to 43W, on which I was getting very acceptable signal, especially considering I was looking through several leafless trees.
I then set my software limits and saved all my count numbers as Position numbers in the V-Box, and it has worked flawlessly from 43W-139W. It doesn't double the counts (like the G-Box) but I am getting 855 (24-magnet wheel) counts in the arc from 43W-139W, so should have about 1700 counts when I get my G-Box fixed.
Now I need to install my new underground runs, more pics to follow. I'm very impressed with these Birdview dishes/mounts.....anybody know where I can find a 10 footer?
