Chaparral Monterey as Analog, questions...

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a_hockeynut

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 26, 2006
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Rochester, Minnesota
I have been searching for an analog receiver to slave off my fortec classic NA to get analog KU signals. My local satellite guy had some of these Chaparral Monterey (model 35) receivers collecting dust (and I mean it was dusty!). He let me take one home to try it out and see what I thought.

He told me in its day, this was a top of the line receiver. I must say, receivers have come a long way since this one! As usual when I talk to the local satellite guys, their idea of what something is worth doesn't quite match up with what I expect to pay. Can someone give me an idea of what I should offer for this receiver? He already quoted me a price on the phone (which he cut in half already when I picked it up from him... I am thinking maybe half again and I might take it).

I am not certain about the electronics in this unit. When I first turned it on, the video was not synced up at all. He had told me how to reset the unit, I reset it 4 or 5 times before I was able to read the menu screens (prior to that they were not syncing correctly). The menus were not to easy to traverse, of course all I was looking to do is scan for analog KU channels (as I am using my fortec to position to the satellite I want).

I had it setup so my fortec was going to one TV, and the analog receiver was slaved off the fortec and going to a seperate (portable) TV.

The strange thing is in order to find channels, I had to do 2 things. For some reason I had to have my fortec turned to an H channel (if I had it on a V channel, the Chaparral would not get the channel). I thought the fortec just passed the signal through to the slave? I wasn't expecting to have to tune to a horizontal channel on the fortec to be able to view analog KU channels through the slave. I looked for some sort of setting on the fortec, but found none.

The other strange thing was to get the analog channels, in the Chaparrel I had to select a satellite which had enough channels defined (G5 worked best, but it had 48 channels defined). I am guessing some of those are C-band, and some are KU-band. All I want to be able to do is move to a satellite with my fortec, and at that satellite flip through the analog channels to see if there is anything there (for some reason I was expecting there to be only 24 possible KU analog channels, is that right?).

If I had the owners manual, this might be possible to figure out. But I figure with the expertise on these boards, I will have some answers to the mysteries in no time!
 
a_hockeynut said:
When I first turned it on, the video was not synced up at all. He had told me how to reset the unit, I reset it 4 or 5 times before I was able to read the menu screens (prior to that they were not syncing correctly).

I had the model-50 when they we first introduced and a few years later upgraded to the 95... and they were indeed top-of-the-line in their day.

To fix the problem with the menu sync, press MENU -> SATELLITE and set "INSERT SYNC" to either "AUTO" or "ON" - whichever works best in your situation.


a_hockeynut said:
If I had the owners manual, this might be possible to figure out. But I figure with the expertise on these boards, I will have some answers to the mysteries in no time!

You can find the manuals on my website here...
http://myweb.accessus.net/~090/bearcatting.html#chap



Tony
Home Page - http://www.cyberspace.org/~awh/
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Thanks for the plethora of information! I decided to offer him $20 for it, and the lowest he would go was $40. Thus I am going to bring it back and continue shopping for an analog receiver.

Pete, if you come across an analog KU receiver somebody wants to get rid of remember me :)
 
Thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales are great places to hunt for an analog receiver. Over the years, I've picked up a couple of GI 2400s, a GI 550, a Houston Tracker, a Drake, and a couple of other models that way. $20 or less...
 
Monterey 95 had a price of $2,000 in the days.

However the glory days of Satellite TV is long over and it's all cheap plastic boxes these days and strong signals.

I had the Monterey 40 , european model, modified by Steve Chilver Trading in the UK with built-in 5 card reader and low threshold extension, it was the Rolls Royce of receivers.

Too bad no one makes that kind of receivers these days, i guess there is no market for higherend products in this area anymore.
 
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