Dish condition problem

[Vorg]

I have a 76cm, I think wineguard. Got it with dms sg2100 and Invocom quad polar from ebay a few years back. The flange on the dish was bent in one spot and the foam it was packed in was smashed there as if the box was droped on the edge.

I spun the dish on the floor and it seemed to touch all the way around. No sign of warpage, so I put it up. Had a hard time with alignment. The elevation seemed way off from what it should be, so I emailed wineguard and got the triangle diminsions to figure where the lnb should be. It was more then an inch low towards the bottom of the dish and out. I aligned it that way and added 2 support bars because of the heavy lnb. But I still had problems aligning the arch. I could not get it correct on both the ends and middle of travel. Best I got was ~58w-129w. Got tired of messing with it and used it that way.

A few months ago I was on the roof and noticed the lens was nearly gone, but was bussy at the time so let it go.

Last week I took the dish down to work on it and the lnb. Found the lnb was off to the side by about 3/4 of an inch. I was concerned that trying to bend the arm side ways would mess up the dish, so I added a couple of washers to where it mounts to the dish to angle the arm over. The idea was it would also keep the arm aligned with the mount as it has a bolt that goes through the rotor arm and there is no adjustment there.

I got the lnb aligned according to mesurements and then added some squares of foil tape to the dish. Painted a chunk of cardboard black and taped it to the front of the lnb. The foil tape doesn't reflect well enough to see on a light surface.

I angled the dish at the sun for the brightest spot on the card board to find the true focal point. According to that, the lnb still needs to go another inch to the side and another 3 inches up towards the top of the dish. Could the dish be warped that bad? 3" is well above where wineguard said the focal point should be.

 

[Pixl]

Well you're starting with a marginal size dish even if it was in perfect condition. With the shipping damage you are probably outside the level of acceptable performance. You can try to bend the dish back to where it is focusing closer to where it should be. I really think you will be happier with a larger dish without dents.

Jim

 

[turbosat]

Agree with Tantalus, ditch that one and find yourself a good dish. Post a written ad in the paper locally, or craigslist, or try a radio call-in swap/trade show. Somebody close to you will probably have something they don't want any more, possibly a good old primestar, or store-dish not being used any more. Good luck in the hunt.

 

[Vorg]

hmm, so it is bent then some where. The only visible damage was the flange edge. Guess I'll have to take it fully apart and check it. It's my parents house and my dad said I couldn't go bigger or I would have set up this 8' that was given me. Maybe I can talk him into allowing a little bigger.

Is wineguard a good brand? Money is tight and I don't want to waste any on another junk dish.

 

[phlatwound]

turbosat gave you some great ideas to find a cheap/free used dish, here's a couple more if you want to look at new ones:

36" / 90cm Free To Air FTA Satellite Dish and .4 LNBF - eBay (item 110433609885 end time Oct-05-10 17:35:00 PDT)

WS9036 - New 90cm 36 inch 360inch 90 cm satellite dish antenna for fta satellite dish

Both are slightly bigger than your Wineguard (which is a good dish when in good condition, just a little small). Both of these are offered by fine folks that help sponsor this forum.

 

[Vorg]

I'll have to look into what I can do. I would like to go bigger, but may not be an option. Looks like ether dish would require a change to the pole. At the Least, might need to be higher and both the 90cm dishes lean the pole forward instead of back and add two extra legs. I always have the lower section lean back to center more of the weight over the base. I also had to make a heavier post because one that came with the wineguard flattened out trying to get the motor tight enough that it wouldn't turn on the pole.

So is the mirror test, putting small mirrors on the dish and using the sun to find the true focal point a good way to check the dish and maybe even fine tune the lnb alignment? Seems like at 3" off, the dish would have visible warpage. Had I known about doing that when I got the dish I would have known it needed to be sent back for shipping damage.

 

[Vorg]

I got the ok to get a 90cm dish. I like the rolled edge design of the GEOSATpro90cm, but I think the extra size of the WS9036 wins out.

 

[phlatwound]

I got the ok to get a 90cm dish. I like the rolled edge design of the GEOSATpro90cm, but I think the extra size of the WS9036 wins out.

I think you would be happy with either of those dishes, and both companies are great to deal with. :up

Looking forward to pics of the new setup.

 

[Satellite Lover]

Thanks for the interesting thread.

@Vorg how is your setting up process going?

 

[Vorg]

First dish arrived with a nice big dent. Something was dropped on it in shipping. replacement will come today. It's out on the truck somewhere in town now.

Metal seems just a tad light for the size of the dish. A bit worried how it will hold up during next summer's storms. They are over for this year. But 60mph+ winds are common.

 

[Vorg]

Well, the replacement just arrived. The metal does seem lighter then the winegard even though that's a smaller dish. Also, UPS recommends 2" of packing for the contents, yet the dish, the most fragile part is right against the outer cardboard for the intire edge on the face and much of the edge on the sides. The result is, this dish is damaged as well though not as bad. It has 3 small dents along the outer edge, one of which lines up with a nick in the box. another is flange damage which could have been done in shipping without showing damage on the box. There is also a small 1/4" round dent in the face of the dish that had to have been made during manufacturing, possibly before it was painted. These edge dings are small, so I'm just going to try to fix them.

 

[Satellite Lover]

@Vorg, any positive results?

 

[Vorg]

It's still close to 100 degrees during the day out side and at night there is currently far more of interrest on atsc, So I've been taking my time with each step.

The bracket the dish mounts to had a slightly bent tab. If you set it on a flat surface, it would rock. I checked the bracket from the damaged dish package and it is exactly the same. Tried it against the dish and same. Seems they are not getting one of the tabs fully bent into place. It's off by about 1/16". this would pull the dish out of shape slightly when the bolts are tighten down. I have corrected that.

Got a fine elevation adjuster made for the dish. Looking at ways to make sure the dish is aligned with the rotor. The Wineguard had a wrap around clamp and a bolt that went through the rotor arm with no play. This dish is a dual crusher type clamp, so lots of side to side range. Thinking of using a framing square against the side of the motor which is flat and the square should be long enough to reach down under the dish and out along the arm.

I found some chrome stripping at Autozone, most reflective stick on stuff I could find. And I glued some cardboard to the end of a paper towel roll. waiting for that to dry now. I can put that in the lnb mount and use the chrome tape to check the focus point. The dish really flexes easelly, so i'll need to see how much the lnb arm warps the dish with weight. I'd like to try a mini-bud latter and I'm guessing that 742 is heavier then a invacom.

When i mounted the wineguard, instead of just screwing the base down to the roof, I used bolt spacers. If you just screw down, you have to play with the slope of the roof and the pivot of the pole to get vertical in both directions. When you tighten the screws down, the plate sinks into the roof some throwing off the adjustment. So instead, I drilled holes and then put long bolts in from attic side using fender washers. another set of fender washers and nuts on top along with silicone between the washers and the roof lock the bolts down providing solid mounting post. Then another set of nuts go on for the plate to set on. Those allow you to play with the level of the plate/arm. Once set, a 3rd set of nuts go down locking the plate. It holds to the roof better then screws and won't shift/sink when you tighten down or when the roof heats up. The wineguard plate is larger then the WS plate and has 6 bolts so reusing it instead so I don't need redrill. Also, the pole I made to replace the flimsy wineguard pole is the same gauge as the ws pole, only a couple inches longer. So I'm also reusing the old pole, but upgrading the pole to the tripod design by adding the 2 support rods.

I had problems when using the step command to move the rotor and had problems in general using the rotor plugin for vdr. I posted another thread about this. I took the rotor down and tried it inside and it doesn't move on step east ~60% of the time but step west works fine as does the goto functions. Don't know why.

 

[Vorg]

Did the convergence test and not bad. The black dot on the first pick is about center of where the lnb would be. The second pic shows one of the edge reflectors is off by a fair amount. I was able to flex the dish a little and bring it to center. Not sure how I'll do that when I set up for real.

Sliding the target in and out kept the pattern around center, so I guess that means the angle of the bracket is good. The last pic shows the reflector points.

I am thinking later at some point I might look into adding rear support rods to help hold the dish shape. But not now. It was 98.9 outside at 3:30pm when I did this.

 

[geekt]

Dude...wow...you are not having a good experience with this thus far.
*tries to memorize what that dish is to make sure I never buy it*
That wouldn't last a few months in Florida.

 

[Vorg]

The single biggest problem with it is the metal used. I know there is a goal to keep it light for rotors, but I think it's a bit too light. The first one sent had something dropped on it in shipping. The dish gave way instead of the foam. But the dish had no foam on the concave side to support it, so depending how hard it was hit, that damage could be understandable. The second took minor shipping damage where it was hit on the edge of the box. The dish has no foam in the sides other then corners or the face. The Geosat dishes have a reinforced edge which would help protect the edge, but that wouldn't help where the dish is mounted which is the center. I don't know how thick their metal is in comparison, but you need metal to hold shape. Shippers are rough, so they should have foam all the way around.

The focus on the dish is close. Maybe the damage it took in shipping is the reason for the one reflector to be off, but it doesn't take much force to flex the dish. The edge dent was very small and using automotive body tools, required only a light touch with the hammer to fix.