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Ok. First things first.
I do not know what I am doing. I am in way over my head.
I have gotten by by copying what I see you guys do but with no real understanding of how it works.

I have picked up on a good deal of the lingo and I have bumbled my way through a few SIMPLE things that any of you guys could do with your eyes closed.

But the bottom line is, I don't understand most of this stuff and probably never will.

That's the truth of it.

That said, moving on..


My dad made a thing to adapt the little Primerstar dish to the ku motor he bought for me MONTHS ago that has sat in the box ever since.

He took a hinge from a fence gate and attached it to a flat piece of aluminum. He made a metal band to wrap around the motor tube. But it can't really be tightened up super tight. It's pretty snug but the tube slips plenty enough to be a serious problem. So what he told me to do is put a "drill screw" through the band he made and through the motor tube in two places once I have the dish aimed the right way. He gave me a handful of little screw bolt things that have drill tips on them and screw threads too. He also gave me a tool to put in a drill for for drilling them into the tube and he showed me how to do it. Looks pretty easy, I did a few practice ones and it's within my ability to do that.

I put some pictures of the thing he made for me in the attachments. So to help you figure out what the fence part looks like I held up the other half of it in one picture. It was a hinge. Half goes around a big fence pole and the other half goes on the frame, so I a told. I didn't see the thing before he took it to pieces.

I just gave my dad the motor and showed him pictures of how motors look when they are attached to dishes, he looked at my dish then messed with it a few weeks and came up with this.

I think it will work. Well, I *hope* it will work. I have no idea if this is right or not. Knowing my luck, probably not. If this doesn't work then I'm out of luck. I have a serious fear that I'm going to have to end up buying MORE STUFF. Like a dish that is made to be on a motor.


Also, I have come to the conclusion that I need to put in all new wires.
Goofus put the wire underground in a pipe.

I went to Houston and bought a flippin heavy roll of wire that should work for the video and to control the motors of the Cband dishes.

It is "Siamese RG-6Q with cat-5e". I went to an electronics store and told them what I am wanting to do and he suggested this stuff. I looked the stuff up on their website and they have a pdf about the wire so I put that in here in the attachment too. I'm sure you guys could look at it and tell me if this stuff will really work. The guy promised me it would.
Please tell me this wire will work!
He also sold me 50 connectors for making the ends.

A few months ago I bought tools for making the ends and some cheap connectors, watched a few youtube videos and then through trial and a LOT of error, learned to put the ends on myself. I still mess up because I have trouble setting the tool properly and I mash them where they are ruined and I have to cut them off and try again. But I'll get the hang of it..

Anyway..

I have also come to the conclusion that I will have to have several wires run from the house out to the dishes. The gbox thing plug into 110 and it's obviously an indoors only thing.

So I have to have a 2 wires, one for each Cband dish. I only have one gbox on order as of now. I'll worry about the second one later. I still have to buy proper lnbs for the cbands. Grrrrr! Always more stuff!

Then there is a wire to run for the ku dishes.

So that's three wires from the house to the dishes. I'm guessing that will be like 75 feet each wire. Is that too long or is that ok?

The guy at the store told me to tie a line to the old wire and pull the old wire out. As I pull the old wire out I will pull string through the underground pipe and then I tie the string to the new wires and pull them through the pipe. He also sold me a spool of yellow nylon string, he says it's for pulling wires through pipes. I just hope it doesn't break!
It seems pretty strong, I can't break it. But I haven't tried it for real. I have such wonderful luck you know. Maybe I should pull three strings through the pipe just to be safe.

Oh yes, the guy told me to put the roll in a milk crate and put a stick through it so it will unroll easy. He was right, it fits perfectly and unrolls a bit too easy!

Ok. So now the mysterious part. How the heck to do it..

I assume, from reading old posts, that I need to run a short wire from the pc tuner to this little Ecoda switch.

From the ecoda switch I need to run a short wire to the gbox (don't have it yet) then a loooong wire out to the cband dish (it's still not put up yet.)

On the other side of the little ecoda switch I run a loooong wire out to the ku dishes.

From what I have been told but still can't understand, I hook the ku wire to the motor FIRST, then hook a wire from the motor to the 8way switch that's out there now. Then I hook all the ku dishes into the 8way switch, including the lnb from the motorized dish.

Right?

If that's correct, how the heck does it work? This is where my brain goes into meltdown mode trying to figure out how the pc will control all this Rube Goldberged up stuff.

It's one thing to duplicate physical things that I can see in pictures but programming the stuff to work, that's where I fall flat on my face.

For now, because I am still a good ways off from having a working Cband system I will just not worry about it for now and focus, for now, on making the ku and motorized ku dish work.

Maybe you guys can look this over and divert me from any monumental disasters before I get too deep into this.

Thank you!