Anyone in the Portland area that can help me with a C band alignment?

[Alan Rovner]

Hi all any C Band gurus in the Portland, OR area that can help me align a C band dish? It's installed, just needs to be aligned. It's an old KTI 10' dish. I'm not clear where to set or even measure the declination offset adjustment. Well I know where the bolt is, but the documentation isn't clear on where to measure it. If you can help please send me a private message. Thanks as always.

Alan Rovner
Vancouver, Wash.

 

[phlatwound]

Alan, if you don't have any luck finding someone nearby to help out you could post some pictures here and get talked through it.

I'm not familiar with the KTI dishes but most brands have somewhat similar setups for declination adjustment.

 

[Alan Rovner]

OK here you go, after looking at these pics you can really see how much rust is on this old dish. The declination offset adjustment is at the bottom of the center mount. The manual shows a right angle bracket for this bolt but as you can see there is this odd bent over bracket that holds the bolt. There are 2 thin ribs on either side of the bolt. If I put my angle finder tool on these thin ribs it measures something like 60-70 degrees. Let me ask this, if I took 90-(60-70) that would be in the ballpark. Do I need to do that or measure somewhere else?

 

[armadillo_115]

That's like my 7.5 KTI dish. (Except yours has bolts that tighten it to the pole.Much better than the 'clamp tight' system that mine uses)

Agreed, your declination bracket is bent.It should be a right angle.The bracket at the top is probably sprung down some as well.You'll need to straighten that bracket and reinforce it before doing anything else IMO.

Also, make sure the main pivot bolt and bushings are not worn.

Shouldn't take much effort to get it fixed up. Looks good!

 

[phlatwound]

Except for the bent pieces what you can see of that dish looks to be in great shape.

If you can put a straight edge on the face of the polar mount, and a straightedge from edge-to-edge "vertically" on the face of the dish you can measure your declination that way.

I always use the "modified" declination angle chart.

 

[Titanium]

Looks like the bends on the top of the mount and the declination L bracket were intentional. Very odd! Almost like someone couldn't figure out how to adjust for declination, so they put it in a vise to add an angle. Should be an easy fix once you get the reflector off the mount.

 

[Alan Rovner]

Thank you all, I was suspicious about that declination bracket. Looks like I have more work to do

 

[armadillo_115]

Looks like the bends on the top of the mount and the declination L bracket were intentional. Very odd! Almost like someone couldn't figure out how to adjust for declination, so they put it in a vise to add an angle. Should be an easy fix once you get the reflector off the mount.

Mine was bent pretty bad when I got it. I straightened it out some with a hammer and crowbar before installing the dish, but it kept binding up and slopping around.Wound up removing the declination bracket and had someone straighten it with an acetylene torch. (The declination T-bolt evidently was broken on mine as well.It had a homemade one in it.)

Here's a pic I posted back then that shows the bend in the bracket after the hammer job,but before the torch straightened it completely: