Social Feed

Yesterday morning my actuator on my C-Band dish gave up the ghost. It was a cheapo WSI that I had when I used the WSI $69 special. When I acquired my 10' Unimesh, it did not come with an actuator, so I just used that one. I was concerned at first, but it moved it ok with no issues so I left it.


Well the last month or so I have noticed a pronounced "groan" coming from it, so I knew is days were limited. Well yesterday it happened. It stopped moving the dish. It stripped out inside the actuator cause the motor would still run and the ASC-1 would show the pulses counting. I have a couple of Venture Actuators laying around that someone gave me years ago. These things are way bigger and heavier than the WSI, I just hadn't took the time to install one. You know how it goes, I kept meaning to...

Well now I had no choice if I wanted to move my dish. So out of the two, one was froze, looked as though it was laying in water for sometime, the other the arm part was rough, but the motor part looked almost new. I figured the motor must have go replaced right before it was not used anymore.

I tried to free the first one up, but it was pretty bad, so I took it off and used the motor from the other one. Got it installed on the dish and working using a vbox hooked up outside at the dish so I could get it just like I wanted and be able to be right at the dish to watch for any issues with the actuator.

Then I hooked the normal wires up to it leading back to the house and figured I was good to go. Wrong, ASC1 keeps giving me an error that it is not reading pulses. I checked and double checked my connections and finally hooked the vbox up inside and all was working great. OK, time to phone up Mr. Gohl. Brian told me that with a few real old actuators the switches in them had a high resistance and he has ran into a couple others with an issue. He told me of a mod I could try, to see if it would help my situation.

Now first off this is one of the original first run production boxes, I understand from Brian that the boxes that are now shipping have this modification made already. Long story short, after going crossed eyed working with 0603 resisters, it is now working as it should.

So I thought I would pass this along for guys out their that have the first run boxes and might want to tinker with it like I did. Here is the process:

On the main board to the left of Con103 there is a smt resistor R145 this is a 3.3K resistor for anyone wanting to know.

• Remove R145
• Put a jumper where R145 was
• Take the 3.3K resistor you removed from R145 and move it across to the right side of Con103 and place it where it says R147
• Modification Complete

This should only be performed if you are experienced with soldering and smt. The resistor is in a 0603 package and is very small. It can also be destroyed very easy with too much heat. So take your time and be careful.
Below is a picture of the completed modification for reference.