Found an awesome dish

[Dee_Ann]

I'm a city boy, but whenever I've visited friends or relatives who live in the country, I've been warned to wear bright orange whenever walking around in the woods ... That way, I've been told, I should avoid being strapped onto the hood of someone's car or mounted on a wall...

GOOD IDEA!!! Thank you! I would have never thought to do that. I'll pick up a few of those orange work vests like you see people on road construction crews wearing. I'm sure those are abundantly available.
My dad worships at the alter of Harbor Freight. I'll ask him to pick some up next time he's there. Which is often..

Racks are a great way to organize equipment. The ones in the pictures look like rack frames, so I'm not sure how well they'd work free-standing. All sorts of rack accessories are available to mount equipment in racks, cool the equipment, and organize cables. There are even mobile rack cases that are available, which are generally used by traveling musicians and DJs to mount their gear. I will be using such a case to mount the microHDs ...

I can see from how those racks were in that old building that they were set up so that you can walk around them front and back so you can work on them, get to the wires and stuff.
That would be nice. Maybe I could put a few on rollers so they swing out where I could get behind them. I've seen some nice setups where people put everything in a rack.

My problem, the demon that haunts me, wires... OMG the wires...
And since I had some security cameras put in (by a friend who is not a professional) it's even worse now.
He told me he could get me a used rack for free but that it's big and clunky.

What I have now is an old entertainment center. It's home made out of solid wood, no particle board.. It's ugly as sin but it works.
All the wires come into my, um, I don't even know what to call it anymore. It was a craft room, then my home office. Now all the satellite stuff feeds into it, my computer desk is there, old junk, you name it..
Now it's "the nerve center junk room home office craft room hang out pseudo living room"..



The PC laying on it's side is the one that is the Home Theater PC that I've been watching FTA on all this time. It's pretty shabby looking. The DVD disk in it doesn't work, hasn't worked in a long time.
Under it are old broken PC's and stuff, a Coolsat 6000, an antique DVD player, etc.. On the other side at the bottom is an antique satellite tuner that I use to move my little 6' WSI dish, which has fallen into disrepair. It's going to be replaced soon..

Really, I wish I could move ALL the electronic stuff to another room so I don't have to listen to the noise they make or put up with the heat from the stuff.
But with all the junk in my house there's no way.. I kind of have a little bit of a hoarding problem but I'm working on it.. I've sworn off shopping at curbmart for several years, now I just need to get rid of all the past "purchases"..

 

[Tron]

You can purchase rack-mountable PC cases, which are great for home entertainment centers. There are shelves available to allow rack mounting of non-rackmountable equipment. There are rack wire harnesses for the cables... So many options...

There should be something bright orange at Harbor Freight, they have everything there ...

 

[starwatch]

Hello Pixl..Can those SA's be motorized using the same mount by readjusting the attachment to the hub base? It look like there
are different positions to attached to the round hub, hopefully to create polar axis. Its mounted there by 6 bolts, 3 on each side.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Many, many thanks to Pixl for sending all these wonderful instructions for the Scientific Atlanta 9000 dishes!

21 images in the gallery --> Scientific Atlanta 9000 instructions - Minus


And here's the scans all in one easy zip, Scientific Atlanta 9000 instructions - Minus




And a few random images from the booklets....

 

[Pixl]

Many, many thanks to Pixl for sending all these wonderful instructions for the Scientific Atlanta 9000 dishes!

Dee Ann,

Glad you got the manuals ok, nice job of copying and posting them, might help others.

I hope you are able to get it home safely, will be the best dish you have had so far.
That is a very good orthomode feed horn on your dish. Don't you dare put an lnbf in it's place.

Two fixed lnb's and a Zinwell polarity switch is all you need to use it and will out perform an lnbf.

 

[Pixl]

Hello Pixl..Can those SA's be motorized using the same mount by readjusting the attachment to the hub base? It look like there
are different positions to attached to the round hub, hopefully to create polar axis. Its mounted there by 6 bolts, 3 on each side.

It is designed as a EL over AZ. The AZ pivot is half way down the tubular mount.
The only idea I have for using it as a polar mount dish would be to salvage a polar mount from an old fiberglass dish and bolt the square frame to the circular hub as I did with an Andrew microwave reflector. I then put it up on a post.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Pixl,

Thank you again for the help, advice and booklets.
And many thanks to your radio station as well (I'm not sure if it's allowed to mention the call letters but thank you to them too! )


Believe me, I have no intentions of putting some little $30 LNB on these things. I'll go with the good stuff and I'll be looking to you guys for advice when the time comes to buy.

So.. Lots going on today..

Earlier today I talked to the gentleman who found these things and brought me in on the deal. Mostly just throwing ideas back and forth on how to get in and cut the growth down (which is going to be very thick now that it's full on spring).
I asked him if the big Patriot dish is spoken for and he said no so I'm officially calling dibs on it.
I'm not sure of the size of it but I'm reasonably sure it's a minimum of 14' and maybe 16'. It's flippin BIG...

So we agreed I need to give the property owner some more cash for it. So I'm getting one complete SA9K, half of another one for spare parts, the BIG Patriot dish and a 6' Andrew. And perhaps a rack or two and I may pick up those little Primestar .75m dishes and just give them away as gifts to SGUS members. I don't need them but I'm sure lots of folks would love to have them, especially for free..

Then later I had to go to my folk's house. My dad wanted me to take Mom's jewelry and misc. knick-knackery that she had all over her dresser and night stand. That was extremely difficult.. :cry:

After we spent a few hours remembering Mom and the old days, we talked about the big dishes.

I showed my dad the manuals and drawings that Pixl sent and Dad had a few things to say. "D*mn!" and "WHY?" and "Have you lost your mind?" to name a few.
We calculated from the manuals that the 6' x 6' x 3' cement pad it needs to bolt down to will take "4 yards" of cement. Dad said that's pretty much a full cement truck worth.
He said that will run me $400 to $600 to have the rebars made, the bolts put in and cement poured. The problem will be getting the cement from the truck in the street 200' through my yard to the back.
It's impossible to drive a truck back there. And it will be a 200' trip. Wheelbarrows don't seem like a good idea either. So I don't know.. And that's just for the one SA dish. That doesn't include the much larger Patriot dish.
But it's on a normal pole and won't need that fancy pad. It's going to need a 6" pipe 8 or 10 feet in the ground and probably 2 yards of cement. At least that's my dad's guess after having seen what it took to put in my 10' mesh dish.

He made sure to remind me that I've lost my mind. Again.

Dad told me that getting these dishes put up here at my place are to be a low priority and need to be put on the back burner.
We're having the trees taken down here first. Then my bathroom is being totally gutted out and all new everything put in, floor, sheetrock, tub, sink, 100% gutted out. This is going to be a BIG deal.
I've got a new 10 x 8 metal building that needs to be put up for my mower and gardening stuff too.

Sigh.. Lots of stuff to do.

My cousin is moving in tomorrow at my folk's house for a few months until she can find a job and her house is made ready to move into.
Next week my dad is having eye surgery for a detached retina so there's no way he can go out to the dish site with me to look things over. There's just too much happening next week.
So we're going to try to go look it over the following week.

We did however agree that trying to transport the dish in one piece is not feasible. We don't have a trailer and even if we did, the dish is wider than we would feel safe trying to transport.
So the plan is to take them down, take them apart into quarters (or 8th's) and bring them home in our vans. Dad has a full size Chevy van and I do as well.

I'm going to cut the pipe off at ground level that the big Patriot dish is on and bring it home to make a bell. I make giant wind chimes and bells of epic proportions. Big, heavy pipes make the most gorgeous bells, IF you know the secret. I do..

Because there is so much happening that's going to put my dishes on slow simmer, I'm going to use that time to restore them to brand new condition. I'm going to sand and polish and paint every single little piece and part to like it was when it was brand spanking new. When these dishes go back up, they'll be brand new in every way I can make them. They'll last me the rest of my life. They've been out in the woods 30 years and through a lot of hurricanes and bad storms and are still in good shape..


I may be biting off more than I can chew here but I don't care. I see a challenge here and I'm too hard headed to pass it by. And I was reminded earlier today that this is a rare, once in a lifetime opportunity that very, very few people get a chance at. So, I'm going for it.. I may fail but if I do, at least I'll fail on a grand scale.. Epic win or epic fail.. Either way, it'll make for great photos!

Oh, and there's an old very large fiberglass dish out there on the ground in quarters. It's no good as ALL the hardware is missing but I'm going to offer to haul it off just to clean the site up.
I think I'll bury it and turn it into a lotus and lily pond. It would be a shame to just throw it away. I love recycling things..

 

[rv1pop]

I use cement pumper company trucks to get my mud where I want it. So far so good. Two hundred feet is not too far for a big truck if they can get the boom up high. But for 4 yards.... I do not know if it would be worth it. One company (rental) had a mixer trailer that could be towed by yard tractor. It was designed to tow with a pickup from the ready mix plant to the job site, held a little over 1 yard, but we rented it to get to the far side of a 250 foot long office building. Through the front doors and out the back! Took about 12 trips, and the driver was laughing so hard, he did not check the clock on delivery so we were not dinged for extra unload time.

 

[cyberham]

I use cement pumper company trucks to get my mud where I want it. So far so good. Two hundred feet is not too far for a big truck if they can get the boom up high...

Extra charge for bringing in pumper was about $250 on top of job cost. Concrete cost $139 / yard delivered in 2008. One large truck (as below) carried 8 yards each.

 

[toucan-man]

...I asked him if the big Patriot dish is spoken for and he said no so I'm officially calling dibs on it.
I'm not sure of the size of it but I'm reasonably sure it's a minimum of 14' and maybe 16'. It's flippin BIG...

...I may pick up those little Primestar .75m dishes and just give them away as gifts to SGUS members. I don't need them but I'm sure lots of folks would love to have them, especially for free..

...We did however agree that trying to transport the dish in one piece is not feasible. We don't have a trailer and even if we did, the dish is wider than we would feel safe trying to transport.
So the plan is to take them down, take them apart into quarters (or 8th's) and bring them home in our vans. Dad has a full size Chevy van and I do as well....

...I'm going to cut the pipe off at ground level that the big Patriot dish is on and bring it home to make a bell. I make giant wind chimes and bells of epic proportions. Big, heavy pipes make the most gorgeous bells, IF you know the secret. I do..

...Because there is so much happening that's going to put my dishes on slow simmer, I'm going to use that time to restore them to brand new condition. I'm going to sand and polish and paint every single little piece and part to like it was when it was brand spanking new. When these dishes go back up, they'll be brand new in every way I can make them. They'll last me the rest of my life. They've been out in the woods 30 years and through a lot of hurricanes and bad storms and are still in good shape...

...I may be biting off more than I can chew here but I don't care...

...Oh, and there's an old very large fiberglass dish out there on the ground in quarters. It's no good as ALL the hardware is missing but I'm going to offer to haul it off just to clean the site up.
I think I'll bury it and turn it into a lotus and lily pond. It would be a shame to just throw it away. I love recycling things..

I also sit.
The serenity of silence also washes over me.
I also seek nothing.
This moment has found me and leads me to say,
"Dee Ann, you're more amazing than you'll ever know."
?

 

[Pixl]

I showed my dad the manuals and drawings that Pixl sent and Dad had a few things to say. "D*mn!" and "WHY?" and "Have you lost your mind?" to name a few.
We calculated from the manuals that the 6' x 6' x 3' cement pad it needs to bolt down to will take "4 yards" of cement. Dad said that's pretty much a full cement truck worth.
He said that will run me $400 to $600 to have the rebars made, the bolts put in and cement poured. The problem will be getting the cement from the truck in the street 200' through my yard to the back.


Oh, and there's an old very large fiberglass dish out there on the ground in quarters. It's no good as ALL the hardware is missing but I'm going to offer to haul it off just to clean the site up.
I think I'll bury it and turn it into a lotus and lily pond. It would be a shame to just throw it away. I love recycling things..

Dee Ann,

The foundations in those drawings were engineered to be liability free commercial installations in public places, and are over built for the the backyard homeowner.
I would say something like 4ft square and 12" deep would be generous to get the job done, especially considering that you probably don't have any frost in the ground.


An alternative idea may be to use the frame and polar mount of the fiberglass dish and put it up on a post. You can still have your frog pond.

 

[rv1pop]

Pixl, my thought and question; would the wind load there and the water table require somewhat deeper than 12 inches?

 

[Pixl]

Pixl, my thought and question; would the wind load there and the water table require somewhat deeper than 12 inches?

You're right. The commercial engineering for this calls for the dish and it's foundation to stay pointed and functional up to 60mph winds, and to survive 100mph winds. If Dee builds to this spec and encounters those winds the only thing left standing in her neighborhood will be the Scientific Atlanta Dish.
I'm suggesting that a home owner would build the dish to blow away at the same time the house goes as you won't be watching tv anyhow.

There are some alternative configurations in her manual that show a 24" column of concrete going down 5-6 ft. It might be practical to build this to 3-4 ft instead of the pad.

 

[RT-Cat]

Unless concrete has changed over the years, that thing(block)would weight around 1800 to 1900 pounds. Dee's wet soil might just suck it out of sight?

RT.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Extra charge for bringing in pumper was about $250 on top of job cost. Concrete cost $139 / yard delivered in 2008. One large truck (as below) carried 8 yards each.
View attachment 75969View attachment 75966View attachment 75967View attachment 75968

OMG!! That's scary! I can't see how that thing doesn't collapse, there's nothing supporting it!

I think I'll let Dad brainstorm the best way to get this done..

You're right. The commercial engineering for this calls for the dish and it's foundation to stay pointed and functional up to 60mph winds, and to survive 100mph winds. If Dee builds to this spec and encounters those winds the only thing left standing in her neighborhood will be the Scientific Atlanta Dish.
I'm suggesting that a home owner would build the dish to blow away at the same time the house goes as you won't be watching tv anyhow.

There are some alternative configurations in her manual that show a 24" column of concrete going down 5-6 ft. It might be practical to build this to 3-4 ft instead of the pad.

Well, when hurricane Rita hit us in 2005 we had gusts up to 131mph. The sustained wind speed was like 114mph for over an hour. My house was trashed and the area in general was pretty torn up..

Hurricane Ike in 2008, we had sustained hurricane force winds for like 14 hours straight. It hit High Island / Boliver and stalled in place. A normal hurricane doesn't do that and usually doesn't last for long.
We were far enough away from the eye that it wasn't devastating wind speeds but the extremely long time they stayed was scary and damaging enough. Lots of stuff around town got torn up pretty bad, mostly power poles.
My house did better than with Rita but my parents lost their garage roof. I was at their house and had the back door open and standing there watching the wind peel it off. That was spooky..
Hurricanes under 110mph I don't worry about at all. Just another Texas Gulf Coast breeze passing through. But over that, I get a little nervous..

We had Hurricane Humberto hit us out of the blue a few years ago with zero warning. It just all of a sudden appeared in a matter of an hour and hit us directly. It was only like 80mph so that was nothing. I sat on my patio and watched limbs and shingles whiz past me.. It just inconvenienced me for a half day because the power went out and I had to pick up some limbs. Ho-hum.. Zzzzzzzzzzzz....

Dee Ann,

The foundations in those drawings were engineered to be liability free commercial installations in public places, and are over built for the the backyard homeowner.
I would say something like 4ft square and 12" deep would be generous to get the job done, especially considering that you probably don't have any frost in the ground.


An alternative idea may be to use the frame and polar mount of the fiberglass dish and put it up on a post. You can still have your frog pond.

Well, I'm not capable of redesigning these things for polar mounts. And I'm not really interested in doing so, at least not at this time.
I plan to have them parked on my favorite satellites and just leave them there. 87w is 100% going to happen. That is my #1 favorite satellite with all the TV goodness I need.
I'll have to pick another satellite for the other dish but I have time to think it over.

The pad in the drawings, it matches the pads out on the site where the dishes are. And the ground out there is wet and swampy and after all these years, wet ground, hurricanes and red necks with tractors, they are still standing straight and level.
So, I want to go with that. BUT, with slight modifications.





I want to first off dig the hole, 6' x 6' by 2' deep. Then inside that hole I will dig five postholes, 6' deep each one.
I will put five 3" pipes in the holes. I'll drill holes in the pipes and put rebar rods through the holes both top and bottom.
The rebar will keep the pipes from spinning and will keep them from pulling out of the pad.
The pipes will be 6' in the ground and extend upwards into the pad by 18".. There needs to be a rebar cage inside the pad so I am thinking that
it would be a good idea to weld the pipes into the cage so it's all one piece. Then pour the cement in ground and put the big bolts in for bolting the dish to the pad.
I'm guessing we'll have to have a wooden disk with holes drilled in it. Put the bolts through the disk so that the bolts will be 100% perfectly aligned when we set the post on them.
Mistakes are not an option.

Once it all dries I think it will survive anything.

I got the idea for the legs extending below the pad when I was watching a show on the History Channel about how sky scrapers are built.
Like that one in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. It has 192 pylons buried 200 feet deep and embedded into the slab and I guess built into the frame work.

With the pipes underneath the pad, I believe that would prevent tipping even in a really strong hurricane. And I wouldn't have to use a 3' thick pad. Less cement = less $$ and less work.

Now I haven't talked to Dad about my pipes idea but I think he'll agree it would be plenty strong and probably overkill. But I would rather have a little overkill than a disaster later on..

And then there will be archaeologists who one day will dig this thing up and sit there thinking "WTF?"

 

[Pixl]

Well, when hurricane Rita hit us in 2005 we had gusts up to 131mph. The sustained wind speed was like 114mph for over an hour. My house was trashed and the area in general was pretty torn up..



Wow, never seen winds like that in Michigan. Ok, I resend my statement. You are serious about this staying put. Your modified drawing looks good to me, especially the deep posts under the pad.

 

[RT-Cat]

And then there will be archaeologists who one day will dig this thing up and sit there thinking "WTF?"

Add a little excitement for the archaeologists, Dee, Place a dated note in a bottle in the concrete! I've done that a time or two at my place. So when they do find it, they will know a real Luna-tick lived here.

Meow.

 

[Dishman Dan]

So when they do find it, they will know a real Luna-tick lived here...

...along with a Tuna-lick named RT!

 

[Cham]

I like the posts idea. I have done that when installing towers, adding three or four piles below the cement block. Helps to keep the pad/block from tipping in clay (plastic) soil conditions. Your soil is different from my area of course, and talking to a civil engineer or experienced contractor who installs cell towers or similar dish antenna setups in your area would be wise. I think a 24" deep pad is fine for your install.

 

[RT-Cat]

I like the posts idea. I have done that when installing towers, adding three or four piles below the cement block. Helps to keep the pad/block from tipping in clay (plastic) soil conditions. Your soil is different from my area of course, and talking to a civil engineer or experienced contractor who installs cell towers or similar dish antenna setups in your area would be wise. I think a 24" deep pad is fine for your install.

Yes, done that with power line towers in a swamp or two. Makes a good solid place to sit the footers before the cement gets put in place.

RT.