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wagonman76 said:

Late to the party, been out for awhile. I still run the old time Corotor turned by a servo motor. And separate C and Ku LNBs. No 5g out here, and I like my old setup.

What I do is use my analog box for dish moving and servo motor polarity. It's also nice for fine tuning the rotation (especially dealing with snow). It has 18v ports for both a C and a Ku LNB.

Check. The ASC-1 will do the same. With a box of several corotor's it could be done here.
Read back. I have a good power cable with shielded sensor wires out the the actuator.
2 coax cables. One for the precious C2-W lnbf that has since totally went south and didn't stop at the border. Both ports now dead.
The other coax runs from the house to the dish also and is used for a sidecar ku lnbf.
That's it. Everything is in 2-1/2" pvc. And since being in the ground since the 80's. Nothing will budge.
A driveway has been constructed over the pvc. It's buried at least 3 feet to be below the frost line.
My yard has maybe 6" of topsoil and basically footbll and bigger boulders from there on.
There is actually a cable for the original corotor. It's defective and shows no continuity on any wire.
Stated.

I use the 13/18v from my FTA receiver for controlling C/Ku. Therefore all my C satellites are H, and all Ku satellites are V. When I blind scan, I do each satellite twice, each with the polarity turned manually by the analog box. Just channel up or down one to flip the polarity, no big deal.

The coax from the FTA box goes to an Eagle Aspen 13/18v multi switch. Got a few of them from a box of DIRECTV stuff in a roadside pile.

At the dish side of the switch, I put voltage block couplers. This lets the 13/18v run the switch, and the 18v run the LNBs, without interfering.
And that is my intention. Firstly using the directv 20V power supply/inserter to inject voltage to the pair of norsat lnb's with a tone switch.
The whole intention is to keep current load off of the receiver or ASC-1 lnb power circuitry.

Then each coax goes to a basic splitter before going out to the dish. The 3rd leg of each splitter goes to the analog box, to send the 18v to each LNB.
The splitters I have are all non power pass. And I continuously read. And know. That unless specially constructed. As is such for broadband/catv splitters that divide rf unequally.. Each port of a 2-way splitter attenuates the signal 3dB.
And also common sense and every single post here and elsewhere states never use a splitter in a fta setup.
Not sure how much of this is applicable to your setup, but hope it helps.
It could be all applicable. Power inserters are used commonly in the amateur radio world.
And I am quite familiar with using DC blocks to provide juice to a pole mounted preamp. They work.
Also for you average everyday TV antenna with a mast mounted preamp.


With just the dtv power inserter connected. Again. Firstly on my bench and injecting a 22kHz sine, square wave signal.
The tone passes the DC blocking capacitor and into port 1 (0 Volts) of the unpowered tone switch.
When I plug in the power inserter/suppply. All 22kHz disappears. Past the bias tee DC blocking capacitor. Out the lnb port. And then of course no tone at either switch ports. But there is 20 VDc at port 1.
It didn't 'hear' a tone. And hence did not switch.

Dirty. rotten, filthy mods aside...
Doing my homework a few things come to mind. With the diseqc packets and tone riding on 18 volts from the receiver/ASC-1. Is 20 volts out of the bias tee 'swamping' the multiplexed -in- port signal?

Secondly. Wondering if I bench just the bias tee and hook up a lab supply to it. If slowly ramping up the voltage with everything past the switch hooked up. Will I get tone with a variable voltage up to 18 VDC. And past that start losing it? Doesn't make sense really. It's a FTA-WTF situation.

Thirdly. A few. EB over legit included. Mentioned that both ports of the tone switch get juice and only the RF signal was passed when switched.
Reading also I need to use an Ecoda switch. I see Ecoda switches marked as such and then I see GeosatPro tone switches marked with Ecoda with their logo on them also. Is-there-a-difference? And if so, how?

I don't know if anyone has done business with Satellitedish. I gave them a call. Friendly and informative and not in a hurry. Was told that his commercial customers using DC block F couplers sliced the coax open past them to inject DC by connecting power to the stinger and shield and it worked. Very well.
Although until I can figure out how to get a tone out of a bias tee. Or where exactly a US vendor has Ecoda switches that don't cost an arm and a gizzard.
Still in the doldrums.

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