Conifer or Unimesh

[StarScan]

I'm working on motorizing a second C band dish to use in my second home bar. I currently have a 10' Winegard Pinnacle with an Amiko A3 for the living room and am quite happy with it.

I'm trying to decide whether to fix up my 12' conifer or one of my 10' Echostar (Unimesh) dishes. I will be using this one mostly for sports feeds. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

 

[primestar31]

I vote going for the 12 footer!

 

[. Raine]

Probably depend on how strong the sports signals are and how complex the Unimesh dishes are? If the Unimeshes aren't quite as complex as the Conifer and are big enough, the Unimeshes might be the easier route.

I don't have any Unimesh dishes, so I don't really know about them, but I have a 12' Conifer like yours, [you actually helped me positively ID it when I first got it ] and there's a lot of pieces to it plus the mount is super heavy!

I had my Conifer set up in back for a while next to my 9' RS dish and it works nice, but I took it back down cause I'm moving all the dishes to the side of my house for a bit better LOS to some sats. Once it's up the Conifer is good, but it's a beast to tear down and put up by yourself and a lot of pieces to restore, if yours is down and apart right now.

I think I myself would use the 12' for an general use dish for channels all across the arc, especially the weaker ones, and dedicate one of the tens to the sports dish, if a ten is big enough. I don't watch sports, so I don't know what the strengths are for any sports channels.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

Too bad Ku isn't the band of choice. Apparently, it's good enuff for DN and DirecTV subscribers though.

 

[primestar31]

Too bad Ku isn't the band of choice. Apparently, it's good enuff for DN and DirecTV subscribers though.

Yeah, but FTA satellites don't broadcast with the super-HIGH power that a DBS satellite uses for home broadcast. So that's why we don't use 18" dishes with KU FTA.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

Yeah, but FTA satellites don't broadcast with the super-HIGH power that a DBS satellite uses for home broadcast. So that's why we don't use 18" dishes with KU FTA.

I have a 1 meter offset dish but I haven't used it in years. Anyway, I remember a lot of discussion that uplinkers prefer to use C-band so that headends don't lose the signal like they did on Ku when the heavy rains come - the pizza dish subscribers will have to live with the outages. But, I was trying to make the point that it's a lot easier to install a 1 meter dish - a one man installation - versus a 3.8 meter dish installation - a lot more concrete and manpower and cost. I've heard that the 1 meter dish doesn't always work well in the rain and snow and I've worked on Ku systems where even a 6 meter dish will lose the signal from a light dusting of snow. But, since it's unlikely that mass distribution will be done via Ku, I'm left with the choices of no TV or OTA or DN or DTV or cable unless I round up a few people to install/replace a C-band dish. And I'm much more cost concious now that I'm retired.