FreeCycling C Band Dishes

[satguyohio]

Assuming I find one, how hard are they to dismantle?

In other words, I'm not a body builder -- will I kill myself or my back trying to take down one?

Any tips?

 

[jayelem]

Assuming I find one, how hard are they to dismantle?

In other words, I'm not a body builder -- will I kill myself or my back trying to take down one?

Any tips?

Depends how you go at it when taking it apart , I started to remove clips on one mesh panel when I figured out that I could just seperate my dish in two pieces , I don't know if this is the case with all mesh dishes.

The rust that builds up over the years makes it very difficult to just remove bolts , I think everyone agrees that spraying down the bolts with a penetrator spray will make things much easier , that said I still managed to break quite a few bolts and will have to get some extra bolts , nuts, and washers at the local hardware store.

The weight of the dish can be handled by 3 guys , as long as the dish is a reasonable distance from the ground otherwise you'll have another challenge on your hands .

If at all possible try to take your dish home in one piece , I had several hundred miles to drive to pick it up and my Toyota Corolla wasn't an option so I rented a nice pickup truck and divided my 10 footer Paraclipse into 2 pieces , paying for the gas sucked so if I had a choice to pickup a free dish 200 miles away or pay $100 for one within 10 miles of my house I'd go for the the local one as long as they were comparable.

I know this topic has been discussed before , but since I only did this one time and have yet to put my dish up I still have to go thru Trial and Error to determine other usefull information that I can't think of now , I'm sure some of the Dish Farmers here will chime in.

 

[lumpkin666]

I prefer an extra 1-2 guys and just loosening the dish from the pole and lifting it up while supporting the back (twisting back and forth as you lift, since it will tend to bind up otherwise). With a full-sized pickup, you can take an assembled 10ft dish and lay it with the back down inside the bed of a pickup and drive it home completely assembled.

If I have to do it by myself, for anything bigger than 7.5 ft, I'll disassemble it. Just use some pb-blaster on the bolts (and figure you'll break about 1/3 to 1/2 of them anyhow), then use a ladder to access the back of the dish and remove the panels. Take off the support arms first, then start at the bottom removing panels and remove the top ones last (so that you don't slip and gouge the crap out of a bottom panel while removing a top one - I KNOW about this one!) Mesh is incredibly light and doing it a panel at a time is really easy for one guy. Removing the mount can be tricky for one guy unless it's low to the ground, but doable.

Make sure you take a big magnet and a bucket with you. When those bolts break, you want to be curteous enough to find all the parts on the ground and remove them so that the other guy doesn't have to find them with a mower.

 

[Lak7]

I have taken down several 10' Unimesh without any help, but the were not mounted very high.
What I do is remove the LNB support arms, remove the dish from the mount, remove the actuator, then the mount. Place birdhouse on pole.
The Unimesh, along with a few others, splits into 4 "pedals" and fits neatly on an SUVs cargo rack.
You will be better off replacing the hardware, so don't sweat saving the bolts.
Happy hunting.

 

[satguyohio]

How likely is it to fit most mesh dishes into an average coupe?

I'm familiar with are Patriot 3.1 meter dishes, which would be amazingly easy to remove due to their design.

 

[iammike]

How likely is it to fit most mesh dishes into an average coupe?

I'm familiar with are Patriot 3.1 meter dishes, which would be amazingly easy to remove due to their design.

I did the same thing as Lak7. I got a 10 foot Unimesh by myself without any trouble, but it wasn't very high. I didn't even need a ladder. It breaks down into 4 sections, but they wouldn't even fit into my minivan. I lacked about 3 or 4 inches of having enough clearance no matter what way I tried putting them in. Throwing them up on the luggage rack was no problem though. There's no way you'll get a 10 footer into a coupe. I think you'd really be pushing it with a 7.5, but I guess it's possible.

Mike

 

[Lone Cloud]

I am pretty big injun, but I basically have gotten two 8 foot aluminum solids by myself.

I put the first big dish I got onto the roof of a Toyota Camry. I had it resting on the ladder I used to get up to the roof, and some other 1 by 4s I brought with me. Strapped it all down securely, and drove slowly to my house (it was Sunday)

The Birdview I am flying right now was on a ground mount. I put the HH motor into a wheelbarrow and pushed it to my house. The dish was big, but light. I only had a block to go.

I actually installed both big dishes entirely by myself. The hardest part of all of it was installing the Birdview hh mount. That thing weighs a ton. I had to use a little block and tackle. I took me all afternoon just to get that dang mount onto there.

Fortunately I'm a big guy, but it is possible to disassemble, transport and install a big dish entirely alone. When you have "friends" who arer glad to visit you when you have beer, but suddenly vanish when you ask for help, basically one is forced to make do.

 

[Radioguy41]

It might depend on who made the dish. For instance my KTI 7.5foot comes apart in 4 pie sections but the early Radio Shack dishes are individual arms slid into the base plate, pieces of mesh slid into groves in each arm, and then it's all held together by 4 circular pieces that go all around the outer edge and are held on with sheetmetal screws. That type of dish has to be completely disassembled or moved whole, there's no in-between (like pie wedges). I just disassembled a 9.5 mesh dish that was just awful. It had a H-H mount with individual arms attached. Mesh panels were bolted to each and every arm with many bolts. There were no less than 30 bolts just to hold the arms to the mount and you couldn't just remove the arms from the mount because the was no supporting piece around the perimeter. If it wouldn't have had a decent H-H mount to salvage I'd have thrown in the towel. Mesh dishes under 10foot are fairly easy to work with but some solid dishes can be quite heavy, especially the fiberglass ones. What type of dish are you talking about?