BUD Design / Depth Questions - C-band / Ku

[phpinfo]

I currently have a 10' Winegard BUD, that is 22 inches deep with 4-point LNB mount. It is a mesh dish with fairly good size gaps. - I can pick up C and Ku across the whole arc, usually in the high 60's and 70's. I think the LNB needs a little tweaking as I had stuff in the 80's before.

Anyhow, I just picked up another 10' Winegard that is 27 inches deep. It has little holes as opposed to being mesh and is more sturdy.

I was planning on swapping dishes, as I read that the smaller holes would be better for Ku reception and help with the quality in general. - But then I read that a deeper dish might be worse for Ku band and might be harder to tune.

This new Winegard is a real nice dish, but if the depth is going to be an issue, I might just stick with the current setup.

Anyone have any input on this?

 

[capned]

phpinfo,

I am using the Winegard Pinnacle that you are refering to and they are an excellent dish, but even well tuned, will be a compromise for dual band with their .28 F/D. pendragon sums it up well in this post:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-...59-f-d-ratio-278-lbn-seeking.html#post1914245 Other post in this thread may also be helpfull.

Greg

 

[phpinfo]

phpinfo,

I am using the Winegard Pinnacle that you are refering to and they are an excellent dish, but even well tuned, will be a compromise for dual band with their .28 F/D. pendragon sums it up well in this post:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-...59-f-d-ratio-278-lbn-seeking.html#post1914245 Other post in this thread may also be helpfull.

Greg

I am able to get basically all Ku sats across the arc now on the 10' Winegard but they are typically in the high 60's, maybe 70's. I had the C in the 90's.

If the Pinnacle would help increase the Ku and keep the C close to what they are now, that would be great. Basically I was looking to see if I could enhance the Ku from what it is now and see if there are any Ku TPs I am missing.

But if it won't help increase the Ku signal I guess I may as well not do it.

Are you currently getting C and Ku across the arc and do you have quality readings?

 

[phpinfo]

Anyone with a 10' Pinnacle receiving Ku, please let me know your results. If this dish will make Ku worse than it is now, I don't want to go through the hassle was swapping out the dish. Any input would be great. Thanks

 

[capned]

phpinfo,
I was using the Pinnacle for C/Ku with a CoRotor 1, and precision 0.6 LNB, up until about 2 weeks ago. It worked well for both, from 30W to 139W. For my location, Hispasat 1C would be 0.3 degrees below horizon, but due to being up on an East slope, I was getting as high as SQ 55 on 12132 H Arabsat mux on the VS-Ultra. Even during ideal conditions the signal was highly variable, but really not to shabby considering Ku, and all the atmosphere to look through at that low elevation. On G-19 11929 V Daystar SQ was 52 average. One thing I would suggest, if you do decide on the Pinnacle, is to not use a golden ring on a CoRotor with this dish. I think the CoRotors C-Band feedhorn acts like a scalar and does not allow the Ku feed to illuminate the whole dish on this low F/D. Ku on my setup was at least 5-6 SQ better without the ring (after re-tuning the feed). Since I haven't tried Ku on the Quadstar, I dont know if this swap would be worth your effort.
Have you considered keeping the Quadstar up and also putting up the Pinnacle?

Greg

 

[phpinfo]

Thanks capned!

Anyone else have any feedback on using a Winegard Pinnacle for Ku?

 

[pendragon]

The Pinnacle is a much better dish than what you are using. If I were you I'd switch the Pinnacle in for C-band only and get a 0.9-1.2m offset for Ku. However there are other options if you want to read on.

You can improve on Ku if you are willing to invest some effort to deal with the low f/D. A good bet would be to keep your existing 10' for C-band only use and optimize the Pinnacle for Ku-band only. The second choice would be to swap the Pinnacle in and work out a 'siamese' feed arrangement where the Ku and C feeds are side-by-side and VERY close together.

Either way you should get a true prime-focus Ku-feed, like Invacom's ADF-120. This can be slightly modified to work well with the Pinnacle. It can be coupled with any C120 flanged Ku LNB. Invacom makes some nice ones, but a DN Superdish FSS bandstacked LNB (for 105W or 121W) turns out to be an excellent LNB that often can be found for next to nothing on eBay.

There's more detail to this, but it's only worth going over if you decide to go ahead and while you're in the process.

 

[phpinfo]

The Pinnacle is a much better dish than what you are using. If I were you I'd switch the Pinnacle in for C-band only and get a 0.9-1.2m offset for Ku. However there are other options if you want to read on.

You can improve on Ku if you are willing to invest some effort to deal with the low f/D. A good bet would be to keep your existing 10' for C-band only use and optimize the Pinnacle for Ku-band only. The second choice would be to swap the Pinnacle in and work out a 'siamese' feed arrangement where the Ku and C feeds are side-by-side and VERY close together.

Either way you should get a true prime-focus Ku-feed, like Invacom's ADF-120. This can be slightly modified to work well with the Pinnacle. It can be coupled with any C120 flanged Ku LNB. Invacom makes some nice ones, but a DN Superdish FSS bandstacked LNB (for 105W or 121W) turns out to be an excellent LNB that often can be found for next to nothing on eBay.

There's more detail to this, but it's only worth going over if you decide to go ahead and while you're in the process.

Excellent info!

I currently use the BSC621-2 and it seems to work pretty well.

Examples (cloudy day):
101 Ku:
CGN 12.117V = 72%

101 C:
Golden Eagle 3.717V = 82%

--
87 C:
THIStv 3834H = 72%
@ Sports 4154H = 69%
NASA HQ1 4001H = 75%

87 Ku:
MTAOne 11735V = 75%


Basically, I only want to swap to the Pinnacle if I can increase the quality of at least Ku, but both C and Ku would be good. Or even if the quality stayed the same, but the dish design allowed me to pick up lower TPs that I could not before.

Also, the buttonhook plate that was mounted to the dish rusted apart and crumbled when I took down the dish. I would probably want to use the 4-point leg setup though. Anyone know where to get the 4-point legs for a Pinnacle? If no, does anyone know where to get the center mount that the buttonhook slides into?