Did I touch the Probe!???

[esteveW]

While re-reading the Corotor II Plus instructions I came across a warning that I had missed earlier. !$@!%$@$%^@^@%$^

I must have touched it since I was using it as center when I was measuring from the rim. I was careful not to disturb it's orientation but the back of my fingers must have touched it as I pulled the tape into the alignment with the center.

Should I try to clean it with something to remove any finger/skin oils?? I have used alcohol on haligon headlamps to take finger prints off. Perhaps one of this wet wipes, although I think the have some solvents in them (they took the protective film off my plastic lens glasses).

Old Saying: If all else fails, READ INSTRUCTION!!


Steve

 

[truckracer]

don't get too excited. You could theoretically take some alcohol and clean it, but i wouldn't worry too much. I had an old one that i touched and seen no noticeable degradation in signal.

 

[caddata]

....Should I try to clean it with something to remove any finger/skin oils??....Steve

Hold on Grasshopper.......the warning to "not touch" relates to static discharge from your body to the microwave circuitry, not for transfer of body fluids or oils. Just be sure you've touched something metal like the F fitting on the coax, to ground yourself, before putting your fingers inside the waveguide.

Harold

 

[wizard101]

I work with these types of components every day. The concerns are exaggerated. As soon as you install it, a bird will sit on it after gorging on your bird feeder and guess what! Your finger print is the least of your worries.

 

[B.J.]

While re-reading the Corotor II Plus instructions I came across a warning that I had missed earlier. !$@!%$@$%^@^@%$^

I must have touched it since I was using it as center when I was measuring from the rim. I was careful not to disturb it's orientation but the back of my fingers must have touched it as I pulled the tape into the alignment with the center.
...

I don't think that there is any possible way you could have touched the probe. I'm guessing that you touched the cylindrical Ku waveguide. The probe itself is way down inside this. I'd have a hard time getting any of my fingers down that tube to touch the probe, and you SHOULD have been measuring to about 1/16" inside the main throat. I have fat fingers, but I can only get my little finger down inside the throat, which is about 3/4" ID I think.

Also, I wouldn't worry about static discharge either, because there is no electrical connection between the probe and the LNB, except the ground.

I think the warning about touching the probe is because it is easy to break the connection to the polarotor rod, which is a chunk of plastic.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it.


EDIT: Question that's slightly off topic. The CoRotor I'm looking at now, is one I pulled off a 6' dish that wasn't receiving Ku. While looking at the Ku probe to answer the above question, I noticed that the Ku probe is offset by about 25 degrees or so from the orientation of the C-band probe. If anyone else has the cover off the probe, I'm curious whether the C and Ku probes should be parallel? I'd think that they should. Perhaps that's why I could never get Ku with that dish, because I'd always find a sat via C band, and set the polarity via C-band, then search for Ku signals. But if the polarity was off 20 some degrees it would have degraded reception a bit.
Just curious.

 

[SatPhreak]

The c and ku probes should be parallel, except on 103 when the ku probe need to to be offset by about 20-25 degrees.

 

[melgarga]

Hold on Grasshopper.......the warning to "not touch" relates to static discharge from your body to the microwave circuitry, not for transfer of body fluids or oils. Just be sure you've touched something metal like the F fitting on the coax, to ground yourself, before putting your fingers inside the waveguide.

Harold

While static discharge should always be considered, it is not as common as vendors profess. That is their disclaimer, CYA speak as much as anything else. The dipole is essential a 'driven element' and is electricly isolated from ground. Good static discharge practices should always be followed when dealing with electronics, just to be safe. Any electronic circuitry on the front end should be inherently well protected against static discharge, especially given the service environment.
Misalignment due to 'touching' would be a much greater concern IMO. The tolerances are tight, the support long and not very sturdy.
Since it is rotational, eccentric at that, if you somehow got acceptable alignment on one polarity with it bent, alignment of the other 'pole' could be very far off when rotated.
I have often wondered what the result would be if one bridged another piece of 'rod' of equal diameter and length, at the exact centerpoint of the rotation at 90 degrees to the existing element.
I realize that if it worked at all in such a 'dual polarity mode', conventional adjacent channel rejection would be history, but I wonder if these new generation dual conversion silicon chip tuners are selective enough to handle the extra, unwanted signal in the feed without causing problems for the desired signal receiption. I wouldnt even consider it for pre DVB technology receivers.

 

[B.J.]

Hold on Grasshopper.......the warning to "not touch" relates to static discharge from your body to the microwave circuitry, not for transfer of body fluids or oils. Just be sure you've touched something metal like the F fitting on the coax, to ground yourself, before putting your fingers inside the waveguide.

While static discharge should always be considered, it is not as common as vendors profess. That is their disclaimer, CYA speak as much as anything else. The dipole is essential a 'driven element' and is electricly isolated from ground. Good static discharge practices should always be followed when dealing with electronics, just to be safe. Any electronic circuitry on the front end should be inherently well protected against static discharge, especially given the service environment.
....

As I said above, there is no electrical connection between the corotor probe and ANYTHING electronic, let alone the front end of the lnb. There is NOTHING in a corotor that can be damaged by static discharge. A corotor doesn't have any electronics so the warning statement HAS to be mechanical in nature.

That probe just connects to a wire that goes to a second fixed probe inside the Ku wave-guide, and the signal is re-transmitted as rf through the air. So unless that static discharge travels 2 or 3 inches around a corner down that waveguide, rather than jumping 1/8" to ground, there is no way that it can ever get to anything electronic.

EDIT: Actually, I just checked my old corotor with an ohm-meter, and it looks like there isn't even a direct connection between the two probes either. It must be capacitive coupling, which makes sense given the problems of getting a good electrical connection between a moving probe and a fixed wire. I'm guessing that the moving probe rod goes through an isolated cylinder connected to the wire that goes to the second probe.
This has been interesting. Never really bothered to look at how the corotor functioned before.

 

[eurosport]

The c and ku probes should be parallel, except on 103 when the ku probe need to to be offset by about 20-25 degrees.

Hopefully the 103 "wonky-skew" will soon be a thing of the past!SES AMERICOM - AMC-1R