1st spring project completed, write up got kind of long

Status
Please reply by conversation.

SatinKzo

Supporting Founder
Original poster
Supporting Founder
May 22, 2004
6,232
83
Louisiana
Got my first spring project completed today. Now that the snow has finally melted (more coming though, sigh) I decided to take on an easy project.

Replace my Invacom QPH-031 with a universal and dss LNB. While I really like my Invacom, I was missing not having my universal lnb on there(I really like the few sats I can get stuff on with it).

So today I got together my pieces.
Fortec .4 universal lnb
Sadoun DSL2 Dual outpul DSS lnb
scrap piece of wood 1/2 inch thick (for spacing and bracing due to different lnb sizes)
scrap piece of foam extruded trim (left over from small project and it happens to be the right thickness for the other spacer)
and of course, zip ties

Took out my little sat toolkit conisting of extesion cord, 5 inch B/W tv, and my newly aquired viewsat ultra (http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=94066).

Based on some rudimentary calculations, I estimated I woud get about 4-5 degrees seperation of sats using this setup. So to test my placement of the dss lnb, I aimed my dish at AMC3 (87w) in the house and went outside
I placed my dss lnb to the left (facing the lnbs or to the right if facing the dish) of my fortec universal with the spacers temporarily in place with of all things, silly putty cause it would hold the block in place while I temporarily fastened things for testing without being permanent.

By aiming at AMC3 I was hoping that I would then be able to align my dss lnb on Nimig1,3 at 91w with the spacers I was using.

After some simple placements of the lnb just by holding it by hand next to fortec lnb and some minor adjustments of the angle the lnb was at I was getting a pretty decent S 81 and Q 87 on 91w on the ultra's meters. This whole process took about 20 minutes of trying to keep my hand steady and trying to remember how things looked so I could fasten it this way permanently.

So now that I had some decent signal on Nimig1,3, I decided to tighten it up and see what I could get. 4 zipties later (combined into 2 cause I only had short ones laying around) and a little more adjustment by hand before really pulling tight on the zipties and I had S 85 Q 92 peaking on the ultra. I figured hey, that's not bad at all. :)

Finished up with some coax putty to seal things up, a couple more zipties to hold the cables in place and hooked up the coax that used to go to my invacom to the 2 new lnb's and back inside I went to see what I had on my Pansat 3500.

Hooked everything back up inside, turn on the receiver and the screen was blank. Dang, what did I break, I should be getting PBS something since I hooked the unversal back up to the coax that went to the Linear port on the invacom. OH yeah, duh, I am using a UNIVERSAL lnb now. Phew, that little panic attack was easily fixed.
Got into the setup of the pansat, changed my lnb's over for my linear sats and all was peachy. Signal strength was just as strong as my invacom gave me.

Ok, now to get the dss side configured. Figured ok, I was on AMC3 for nimiq 1, let's get this figured out so I don't have to aim at AMC3 to get nimiq1, let's figure my spacing out.

To try to cut some length out of this post I'll abridge a bit, after some fiddling around with the longitude value of nimiq1 I was able to determine that my best signal on nimiq1 was if I pointed my dish at 86.2w. So I set my long for nimiq1 at 86.2 and turned USALS back on for this sat. had the dish move to SBS6 get signal and then moved it back to nimiq1(at 86.2w instead of 91w) and viola, S 84 Q 83 (pansat meter alwasy seems lower than others, but it locks in around 28-32 for Quality readings).

Anyways, so by this math with this little apparatus, I am getting 4.8degree spacing on my lnb's. I used this value to aim at Nimiq 2 at 82w and sure enough, if I change nimiq 2 to 77.2w and use USALS to aim the dish, I am getting solid signal on it also.
I tested this on 110, 119, 61.5 and 129. All the sats came in by adjusting the values -4.8 degrees.

Here's a few pics of the setup, It's only ziptied right now till I get a couple bigger hose clamps but it's functional. Don't mind the HVAC tape on the DSS lnb, it's there until I can get some more coax putty to keep all the snow we keep getting so late from icing up on the connections.

While I don't have any real daily use for the DSS lnb on my setup, it's nice to have it for the few FTA things and FTE things that pop up, up there on the DBS birds. Plus I did like having it with the invacom, but like I said, I was just missing my unviersal lnb stuff

For those that will ask, the dish500 in the background on one of the pics is pointing at the Bell sats(I converted my 61.5 dish as I don't have Dish network sub anymore and got a dual lnb for it) to see what signal I could get with that setup as I am thinking of a brokered Bell expressvu sub later this year. Also, no the fence is not interfering in anyway with the signals of either dish, but it does hide the dishes nicely from the street view (well the fortec 90cm is easily visible from the street).

Also for those that might ask, why didn't I try to use my dish lnb that I had on the 61.5 dish. I did, but that thing is bulky and kind of heavy for the side attachement setup.

I might think about one of those mult-lnb brackets from digiwave or satelliteav down the road, but this method is cheap and works, just not as clean looking.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0268.JPG
    IMG_0268.JPG
    223.1 KB · Views: 247
  • IMG_0269.JPG
    IMG_0269.JPG
    280 KB · Views: 245
  • IMG_0270.JPG
    IMG_0270.JPG
    446.3 KB · Views: 250
VERY NICE PICTURES!!


Hooked everything back up inside, turn on the receiver and the screen was blank. Dang, what did I break, I should be getting PBS something since I hooked the unversal back up to the coax that went to the Linear port on the invacom. OH yeah, duh, I am using a UNIVERSAL lnb now. Phew, that little panic attack was easily fixed.
Got into the setup of the pansat, changed my lnb's over for my linear sats and all was peachy. Signal strength was just as strong as my invacom gave me.
done that numerous times. Switches to Universal and forgot to turn back to standard

Anyways, so by this math with this little apparatus, I am getting 4.8degree spacing on my lnb's. I used this value to aim at Nimiq 2 at 82w and sure enough, if I change nimiq 2 to 77.2w and use USALS to aim the dish, I am getting solid signal on it also.
I tested this on 110, 119, 61.5 and 129. All the sats came in by adjusting the values -4.8 degrees.
I would use DIseqc 1.2 on those DBS slots but thats just me :)

Here's a few pics of the setup, It's only ziptied right now till I get a couple bigger hose clamps but it's functional. Don't mind the HVAC tape on the DSS lnb, it's there until I can get some more coax putty to keep all the snow we keep getting so late from icing up on the connections.

While I don't have any real daily use for the DSS lnb on my setup, it's nice to have it for the few FTA things and FTE things that pop up, up there on the DBS birds. Plus I did like having it with the invacom, but like I said, I was just missing my unviersal lnb stuff
agreed. I have a Sadoun universal coming soon so I can get some of that stuff too :)
 
Enjoyable writeup, and clear pictures.
Just like subscribing to a sat magazine. ;)

Keep up the good work.
 
Good job! Kind of a neat feeling now that you have that done, huh? More snow? Just curious where you live? Here in Iowa, they are predicting up to 12 inches by tomorrow night. Then 62 next week - go figure!
 
Yeah, it's just fun to try it. I live in SW lower peninsula of Michigan. 42 latitude. :)
 
Nice pics, nice write-up, nice job. And like Anole said, "Just like subscribing to a sat magazine." And like Ice, only I already have mine, I plan to put it up so I can get some of that "Fun Stuff" too.

Al
 
Status
Please reply by conversation.
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)