40" C/Ku - Band Dish

[CharredPC]

Similarly, I had some results off of the 76cm and analog. While there's too little signal and too much breakup for DVB to work, apparently, good 'ol analog will work but have 'snow.' It's VERY helpful to have an analog reciever; instead of getting no results at all and no ideas how to improve things, you can use the picture clairty to tweak lnb position, aim, etc. Makes me wish that pci sat cards weren't so severely limited... no analog, no Videocipher/Digicipher, no blind scan...

 

[sharris]

I'm just in the process of trying out an old 25" +/- expressvu dish with a c band lnb. I have all the parts cut and just need to weld them together (the mount). The c band lnb I have has a normal coax plug into it, but it also has 6 small wires comming from a small blue box attached to the lnb. 2 - white, 2 - red, 2 - black. Any idea what these are used for?

 

[MikeI]

Blue box is your servo motor that connects to your receiver/motor part of your receiver to move the polariity between vertical and horizontal.

 

[CharredPC]

Basically, unless your reciever has the hookups for this, you'll be stuck on either V or H (hopefully not somewhere in between ). I have one of those here, and it works for testing... but for a long term setup, I'd spend the $32 on one pf PSB's auto-switching c-band lnb's.

 

[sharris]

Tried a 21x28 oval dish and a Chaparral C/Ku LNBF this afternoon.

Using the C100 analog receiver, I was able to see numerous channels on birds from AMC3 to Galaxy 12. I swung back to AMC3, tweaked it for vertical (could see Doc on TP20 but VERY snowy), did a blind scan with the Pansat 2500 and came up high and dry. It started looking stormy so I will try again tomorrow. Also, a better C-Band LNB should be here as well.

On Galaxy 4, I had color and audio on "World Harvest TV", analog of course.....Also noticed some weird goings on on TP1 of IA-5. It was scrambled, but intelligible!

See photoz below...

On a final note, an analog receiver is invaluable for this experiment.

What are you using for a mount? I am fabricating a sleeve (2" pipe slightly hammered into an oval) to fit over the "d" tube. Then some angle iron welded in place. It almost looks like your angle of the lnb could be tweaked downward. Don't know if you tried this, also try using a piece of string to find the focal point intersection.

 

[vj9999]

I haven't played too much with western part of the arc (expet for analog which comes in all over the place). Ia m able to pull in dvb signals from as far as AMC12 with pretty good signal quality (55%) and no breakups.

This is without twaeking my LNBF, just slapping it on there with plastic ties. Can someone who tried this with 120cm dish point me out to the best place to set the scalar ring for f/d? I'll take a look at Cascade's pictures again as well.

Also, scalar ring that comes with asc421 is for prime focus dish. I saw picture on some german forum that came up when seraching for scalar ring and offset dish that looks like a funnel. I couldn't find any more details, but it looked like scalar ring for offset dish should look more like a funnel to narrow down the beam a little.

 

[CharredPC]

Seems like a good enough place to ask this;

Anyone know of a cheap place to get, or a creative way to make a triple lnb setup like this one?

I'd love to have a C-band, Ku, and DSS lnb all on the 120cm I'm getting Best of every world! Already ordered the C and Ku band (Invacom 0.3dB! Yay!) lnb's from PSBsatellite.com (thanks again, Pete!), and I have a spare undoctored DSS lnb sitting here... now I just need a way to mount them all up. The holder in that auction looks nice, but becuase it's overseas it'll cost me $6.04 plus $17+ shipping. Anyone have a more local source, or have fabricated something I can recreate? No, I don't think hose clamps will work very well considering the variety of lnb's I'm tossing together

 

[n4bbq]

What are you using for a mount?

I have a 1 x 1/8 piece of aluminum (about 9 inches long - kind off looks like a question mark). I drilled it, and bent it, and fastened it to the scalar ring of the LNB. The other 7 inches of so is just stuffed into the arm of the dish (where the normal lnb is mounted). By holding up the LNB and moving it around the focal point, there is a large area of RF hitting that area so precision in mounting isn't near as critical as with Ku Band.

 

[PSB]

By holding up the LNB and moving it around the focal point, there is a large area of RF hitting that area so precision in mounting isn't near as critical as with Ku Band.

Ain't that the truth! We had a storm overnight so I will have to reset my 40" C-band dish back up again, this time I will be putting it on a H to H mount, that should make hitting the C-band satellites a lot easier : )

 

[n4bbq]

Ain't that the truth! We had a storm overnight so I will have to reset my 40" C-band dish back up again, this time I will be putting it on a H to H mount, that should make hitting the C-band satellites a lot easier : )

I'll tell you something else I've noticed. The P* type antennae are way better for C-Band than the Fortec Star types. I have a small P* 25 x 21 inches and it works as good as the 90cm Fortec that I have for these C-Band experiments. That or I just haven't quite found the sweet spot on the Fortec yet.

BUT, if you just aim the P* near say 125W, you can pick up crap from 123 to 129!

But we're just playing anyway.

 

[Shawn95GT]

I was suprised to read that even with an 8' dish the beamwidth is about and sometimes slightly over 2° on C-Band.

On Ku that same dish would have a .76° beamwidth. No wonder the big dishes have to work for Ku.

 

[PSB]

I'll tell you something else I've noticed. The P* type antennae are way better for C-Band than the Fortec Star types. I have a small P* 25 x 21 inches and it works as good as the 90cm Fortec that I have for these C-Band experiments. That or I just haven't quite found the sweet spot on the Fortec yet.

BUT, if you just aim the P* near say 125W, you can pick up crap from 123 to 129!

But we're just playing anyway.

The P* 40" dish seems to do the trick

 

[MrMylesG]

Odd ball size

I have a dish I bought last year and today I went out to measure it so I could see if it wiil work with the C-band experiments that are being done here. I measured the major axis and it was 37" and the minor axis was 34". Is this considered a 90cm dish? I measured from one end of the surface area to the other on the front of the dish.

I checked some of the c-band footprints and it looks like I may be able to get some c-band signals but for the majority I will need a larger dish.

Thanks

MrM

 

[Mr Tony]

yes a 90cm would be that

Mine is 37x35

 

[CharredPC]

I'm all excited about my huge MicroBUD upgrade

76cm to a 120cm dish...
0.6dB lnb to a 0.3 Invacom...
Adding C-band and DBS lnb's...

Think I'll just delete my channel lists and start over
I'm only $75 away from being able to order the last piece of the puzzle (120cm dish); somone make me an offer on all the stuff I got for sale! I can't wait!!!

 

[PSB]

Getting MUCH better results now watching some GREAT stuff that can't be mentioned here, but my signal quality has jumped to around 45% on some channels at the top of the arc (Satwork 3618). Thanks to the recent storm I off-set the mast to 45 deg. the same angle as my motor, dropped the elevation until I was bang on the Clarke Belt and now I have a poor mans "H to H" mount. Its making life a lot easier as my satellite meter of course always wants to land on the REAL strong DBS and KU satellites.

 

[scupmando]

PSB,
Once I get my 1.0m round Primestar dish up; I will be ordering an invacom lnb from you. Is it worth the extra money to get the c-band lnbf as well. I'm gonna be motorized thanks to ziploc's manual! Could you pm me with examples of what some of the "great stuff" is that you are receiving with the c-band set-up please?
Thank You.

 

[PSB]

The C-band part is more of a project than a sure thing but I have been having a lot of fun and some success.

PM me if you want some of the channels/feeds I have been lucky enough to find on C-band : )

 

[raydio]

Well I have received the first video with my 40" P* setup! I am pointed at Anik F1 and oddly only receiving vertical signals. Not sure what's going on with that - getting about 70% quality on the channels that I am receiving on my Coolsat Pro.

 

[PSB]

Good Start! I am getting good results on this satellite! Did not check the polarity, too many other satellites to check for : )

Adding my analog receiver next to see what I can get : )