Down the middle hole or over the rim?

[colbec]

When it comes to cabling, I see most dishes with the lnb cabling carefully tied to one of the struts, over the rim and back to the mount for distribution. Other dishes have a buttonhook arrangement where the cable just heads straight for the middle of the dish. Since the direct route to the mount is a lot shorter than the rim alternative, is there a reason why in some cases the rim route is preferred?

I realize that a small 'shadow' would be caused by the presence of part of the cable using the centre route. Is there a situation where the shorter cabling would offset the shadow caused by the cable? My 2 channel masters both have plastic plugs in the centre of the dish as if they were put there for this alternative, but I have not seen it used.

 

[gabshere]

i really feel like the main reason for not running through the center is there used to be a focal distance tool that fit in that hole and went to the feedhorn and measured the correct fd.

 

[Steveo]

Don't think it makes any difference. Just personal prefference. When it comes to shading the dish, percentage wise there is hardly nothing in it.

 

[Hermitman]

There's a couple of things to consider here. The concept of using the buttonhook was to eliminate the support struts and allow more signal to reflect off the dish. However, there can be a problem of maintaining the proper position with the buttonhook over time. If you notice the buttonhook, the pipe is away from the scalar ring so not to effect the focal cloud in front of the feedhorn. If you ran the coax next to the feedhorn and to the middle of the dish, it would probably effect the shape of the focal cloud and decrease the signal strength. Also, the length of a coax running down the strut instead of down the middle is about 8 feet longer on a 10 foot dish. That's a signal loss of .68 db for RG-6 coax. In the big picture of satellite dishes, that's a very minor consideration. It is more important to adjust and fine tune the dish to receive the maximum signal. Have fun.

 

[tvropro]

When it comes to cabling, I see most dishes with the lnb cabling carefully tied to one of the struts, over the rim and back to the mount for distribution. Other dishes have a buttonhook arrangement where the cable just heads straight for the middle of the dish. Since the direct route to the mount is a lot shorter than the rim alternative, is there a reason why in some cases the rim route is preferred?

I realize that a small 'shadow' would be caused by the presence of part of the cable using the centre route. Is there a situation where the shorter cabling would offset the shadow caused by the cable? My 2 channel masters both have plastic plugs in the centre of the dish as if they were put there for this alternative, but I have not seen it used.

I think it's a neater install job to run it down the struts vs have it hang there in the middle.