I was reading an old thread about Toroidal dishes. There was an error about them requiring special LNBFs, but that's only partially true, you only need reversed polarity LNBFs for circular satellites, linear LNBFs work just fine as they are.
Mine is the larger T-90 model. They are a bit tricky to setup, but worth it if you have the time and patience. I currently have 8 satellites setup and they are all linear satellites. It takes a bit of fine tuning to get everything to have nearly equal signal quality.
From what I can tell, it looks like these may have been mainly designed for the European market, because most of the info I've found is all from European countries, so I had to do a lot of my own trial and error to get as far as I have with the setup.
According to the specs for this dish:
- T90 has the same effectiveness of 90 cm (38 inches) dish for each LNBF installed.
- T90 can accommodate up to 16 LNBFs.
- T90 can cover up to 40 degrees in arc (60 degrees in azimuth)
The minimum spacing requirements between two satellites is supposedly 3 degrees, but with a little change in the angles of the LNBFs, I was able to pick up satellites 2 degrees apart. I have 91W, 93.1W, 95W, 97W, 99W, 101W, 103W, and 105W setup so far. Had to tweak the dish a little more with each addition. I'm averaging around 60 to 65% quality on all LNBFs, but it does work. I was able to also get 85W, 87W, and 89W, but I decided to start at 91W with the hopes of picking up signals all the way to 125W.
I'm thinking I may be able to possibly add 8 more if I can tweak them the same way. Also may try using some 20dB inline amplifiers to see if I can boost signal quality.
I also have seen photos of custom made holders and extensions that allowed for more LNBFs, up to 70 degrees in ARC, so more experimentation is planned after the initial LNBs are set on the default/existing mounts.