10ft Mesh Buttonhook... My New Find

[Captain Midnight]

I saw this old guy sitting in a wooded yard and decided to ask the homeowner about it. He said I can have it if I don't damage his yard. So this will be my 2nd 10ft dish. Anyone recognize this model? I'm not sure who made it. My Odom and SAMI have smaller mesh, so this will only be for C Band. The polar mount is impressive. Looks to be 36"

 

[primestar31]

Maybe a Unimesh. Mid-'80's install. That's an old 70Mhz LNA with the downconverter hanging off the back end.

 

[stecle]

I saw this old guy sitting in a wooded yard and decided to ask the homeowner about it. He said I can have it if I don't damage his yard. So this will be my 2nd 10ft dish. Anyone recognize this model? I'm not sure who made it. My Odom and SAMI have smaller mesh, so this will only be for C Band. The polar mount is impressive. Looks to be 36"

Looks like a Cabot.

 

[Captain Midnight]

I'm in Central Arkansas, so I'm in the former Detroit of BUD manufacturing. Usually find SAMIs or Perfect 10s here. Some Odoms too. But this thing is an older mesh dish for sure. The rib frame in person looks more like steel than aluminum

 

[Captain Midnight]

Anyone else with a buttonhook feed have a recommendation on how to connect a scalar ring and LNBF to the hook? Looks like this one has the LNB bolted to the hook. That wouldn't work with my Titanium LNBF

 

[stecle]

Anyone else with a buttonhook feed have a recommendation on how to connect a scalar ring and LNBF to the hook? Looks like this one has the LNB bolted to the hook. That wouldn't work with my Titanium LNBF

I could be wrong about this, but I don't think that feedhorn is installed properly. Every button hook that I have seen has the scaler ring bolted to the half moon flange. I would calculate the focal length for the dish and measure the distance.

 

[primestar31]

It's good practice to NEVER assume an old dish was assembled properly. So, I agree with Stecle in that the feedhorn on that dish isn't installed properly. IF you get that dish, do some measurements and calculate the proper distance from the center of the dish, and see if it matches what's there now.

 

[Titanium]

Based on the presence of a LNA and the mount design, it may be possible that there is no declination adjustment. Often a mount was manufactured locally with a fixed declination basd on the area of the install. Many of these antennas only moved between 5 or 6 satellites and were not designed for tracking the entire arc.

If possible, provide close-up photos of the mount top and bottom connecting point to the reflector ring. Some mounts had a slot to allow declination adjustment, while others were simply bolt holes.

 

[Captain Midnight]

Based on the presence of a LNA and the mount design, it may be possible that there is no declination adjustment. Often a mount was manufactured locally with a fixed declination basd on the area of the install. Many of these antennas only moved between 5 or 6 satellites and were not designed for tracking the entire arc.

If possible, provide close-up photos of the mount top and bottom connecting point to the reflector ring. Some mounts had a slot to allow declination adjustment, while others were simply bolt holes.

This is what I found as a declination adjustment. It's a slot with 2 bolts to fasten it down.

 

[Captain Midnight]

The hook can be adjusted too, so that is a plus.

 

[Need2learn]

If it was me I would cut the button hook off and make some quad legs and attach the lnb to that.

 

[Titanium]

If it is still structurally sound and centered, KEEP THE BUTTON HOOK!!!

Button hook mounts simplify the install of the feed, setting the focal length, optimizing the skew for LNBFs... All while standing on the ground and not up on a ladder.

 

[Bongu]

If the buttonhook is structurally sound, as Titanium states, keep it. If you want to stabilize it more, then you can fashion guy wires and turnbuckles to keep it from sagging.

If it is still structurally sound and centered, KEEP THE BUTTON HOOK!!!

Button hook mounts simplify the install of the feed, setting the focal length, optimizing the skew for LNBFs... All while standing on the ground and not up on a ladder.

Sent from my Commodore P.E.T. using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[Captain Midnight]

If the buttonhook is structurally sound, as Titanium states, keep it. If you want to stabilize it more, then you can fashion guy wires and turnbuckles to keep it from sagging.

Sent from my Commodore P.E.T. using the SatelliteGuys app!

That's the plan. Just for stabilization. I'll probably use 18 ga wire to hold everything in place. 3 or 4 wires is all it would take.