1st Birdview score!

[Cadsulfide]

Got the mount on the trailer post last night, removed the plastic shroud, hooked it motor to a near dead car battery.

It's alive! Motor is quiet, and it pans very smoothly. Next step is to fab a magnet wheel.

Still too cold to paint, forcast for daytime highs in the 40's for another week. Will clean off the old grease and put new on the worm and arc gear. Maybe even clean and chase threads on the reflector.

Stogie; We do have spiders, ticks and mosquitos. No fleas or roaches--too cold.

 

[Cadsulfide]

Got the Scalar ring back from my machinist buddy, honed out for a standard C-Band lnb, he used some unistrut scraps for centering clamps. Should work out ok. Went rooting through my junk boxes and found a couple of HP rotary optical encoders, going to replace the original 10 turn pot with an encoder/ reed relay setup, that way the original hardware is not being modified. With a 256 ppr encoder that should be 2560 pulses for the arc on one channel of the encoder. 14 tics/degree should be enough. If need be I can use both channels and an XOR gate as an edge detector to run it up to ~28 tics/degree.

Picked up the 8" concrete tubes this week, still a bit cool to dig. Will be welding some bolts to rebar for the trailer mount to sit on.

 

[Cadsulfide]

Drew up the encoder to dry contact circuit. I added limit switches with steering diodes to keep the motor from running off the gear. Also ordered a Vbox 3000 from Sadoun

 

[Cadsulfide]

Been a rough spring, finally got back to working on the BV. Dug three 3' holes, pounded in the rebar, put in the sleeves and leveled everything. Added 1 sack of quickcrete per tube before I ran out. Set the plywood jig on until cement cures. Lumber yard opens back up Monday, will pick up another 6 bags and do the 2nd pour with the BV tripod in place. the 3/4" bolts should give me about 1/2" adjustment room on any one leg, more than enough to get it perfectly level.

 

[SomeRandomIdiot]

See this thread for scans of Birdview original sales material.
They call out 8, 9, and 10 foot dishes (zoom in), in solid and perforated.

First thing is this: the 9' dishes are what we call 8½ foot, measured straight across from rim to rim.
That's the honest way to measure a dish.

Second thing: some members have solid and perf in the 8½ size, but no others.
Linuxman has both, and they apparently both perform equally on C & Ku.

So, all solids are one size: 8½
The only perf we've seen is: 8½
Nobody has come up with the smaller nor larger perf, from Birdview.
There are a number of similar dishes around of equal and larger size, but if they're not on the unique Birdview mount, then they aren't even related to Birdviews.

Actually, that makes sense as the 10 foot I came across actually measures 9.5 feet across.

I have spoken with 3 former BV dealers. They tell me the preforated dishes were actually better constructed than the solid dishes. The dishes were stamped out of 8ft, 9ft, and 10ft pieces of metal, so that is why the 9ft measures out at 8.5 foot etc.