FTA on a Dishnetwork dish project

[turbosat]

It finally stopped raining and the sun came out, so today I decided to try the old 'fta on a tiny dish' thing again. Tried a time or two before but never really seemed to get much out of my efforts. Today, I measured distances between the placement of the old dishpro twin thing, and the dish, the angles and all that, and stuck one of these little 321 lnbfs on a piece of metal, bent it up close to proper, started scanning.
In short order I had hit AMC3 and the MTA channels were booming, but nothing else. Very good signal levels though, more than I expected with a 20"dish. The Traxis 3500 does a good job with something like this because of its sensitivity.
I started moving the dish west, and hit G28, the ABC News channels loud and strong , but nothing else there either. Elevation needed more tweaking I think, and I was skewing with the lnbf instead of just twisting the dish, which could've made a difference. Found an HD feed on 91, the Azteca channels on 93, very strong. CCTV and a ton of scrambled horse-racing channels on 95 were strong also. On 97, I got 74tv and 81 radio channels, getting both polarities on that satellite. Russia Today looked strong, PIT and a bunch of other channels. I worked over to 105 , got Macy's and the color bars, and some feed channel very nicely. Tomorrow I'll try to go over to 129 and then back to 72 just for curiosity.
This was a fun project, and I was very surprised at how well the thing worked. Of course, I was only using 20' of cable and the weather was perfect, but for anybody who's stuck in an apartment and can't have a nice dish, this would be a cheap way to get several channels you won't find on pay tv, and prob quite a few wild feeds. Making a sturdy adapter for the linear feedhorn is the only tough part, with a dish that small you need to be close to perfect to get all the signal strength you can. I'll make some pics when I get it more fleshed out, today was more like rusty bolts and coathanger wire parts! Try it sometime-its a fun way to kill a couple of hours.

 

[Anole]

sounds like a good idea:

Yea, that stuff is fun to experiment with.
Sounds like you had a fine day of it!
You forgot the picture, with the lizard peeking over the LNB! -

I was at a swap meet today, and met up with several friends.
One brought me a router and three small dishes: two DirecTV Phase III's, and a Dish 500 with DishProPlus head.
One of the other guys was talking about his work room out back, with a small TV and a DTV converter box for local OTA.
I was thinking about maybe offering him a Phase III dish outfitted to receive NASA @ 119° and Whitesprings @ 129°.
Actually, an additional friend who was there might benefit from the same lashup.
So, since I have two sets of hardware, and two friends, I'm daydreaming what would be the most efficient way to accomplish the goal on a little dish ! - :up

I thought about cutting off the center feed horn...
...ya use the existing one to the east side, and aim that at 119°.
... the center location would be about perfect for 129°
Later tonight, I'll see if I have any linear LNBs short enough to fit that space.

If that works out, maybe I can convert the Dish 500 for some of the fine signals on 97° for one of 'em! -
But if ya have a better bird, speak up.
We hardly ever have rain, so not much rain-fade. -

 

[Tron]

Getting Ku on an 18-20 inch dish is a kind of parallel to the Mini-BUD. It WILL work on many TPs, but not on all. Just like the Mini-BUD, it is a great answer for those who don't have the room for the larger dish. I should try it one day, and make a few of my Phase IIIs useful ... Besides, it looks like fun!

 

[turbosat]

The Phase 3 should do even better, I was using just an old Dish500 which I think is about 20".
It worked much much better than I expected it to..in the rain though it'd be be gone in a flash.

 

[Mr Tony]

I have an old Phase II and it worked great for 101W when KUIL was Fox
The Phase II has removable LNB"s and they were separate so I had 91/101/110 setup
91 for free (at the time) audio
101 for KUIL
110 for my (at the time) Dish sub

 

[RedSavina]

I am in the midst of a similar project. I measured my D500 at 22" tall, the Phase III at 18" tall, and the 1K2 at 20" tall.

EDIT: pix of my adapted D500 are here.

 

[RedSavina]

I have already mapped out how I would convert my lnb arm extension to accommodate the SatAV 4 degree bracket... Should such a thing prove possible!

If this little dish can pull signal from two linear sats, I would insert a slide from the SatAV multi-lnb kit between the bottom of the conduit hangers and the arm extension. Then two lnb holders could be positioned alongside each other. Another idea would be to replace my two L brackets witha T strap and drill for appropriate LNB locations. Either approach should work for very little money or effort.

 

[Anole]

Red -
Just be advised that LNB spacing is dependent on both bird spacing and focal length, so . . .
... it won't be 4° on your dish.
It has the advantage of placing two LNBs right next to each other, but as for skew, you want to skew the entire dish, then fine skew each LNB.
Don't rotate the bracket for skew.

And, I'm uncomfortable even suggesting two linear birds on a little dish.
If you notice, both Icebergs example above, and my suggestion, had a linear LNB down the center, with circular LNBs off to the side.

 

[turbosat]

Red, super idea with those conduit hangers>I think I have 3-4 left, so I will try your idea there for a permanent way to hold that little lnbf. Found the hangers but couldn't figure out a good way to put them together at first! Well, I used to get mad and snap those little tinkertoy things too, when I was a kid lol.

 

[Anole]

simplify:

Turbo -
In the post above, the originator of the hanger bracket idea, came up with a simpler way to hook two together.
It didn't require any extra parts nor drilling.
I tried z4cCamaro's trick and didn't particularly like it, but if you find it less frustrating, go for it! - :up
Not everyone likes the same flavor icing on their cake! -

http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/94189-retrofitting-phase-iii-ku-maybe-3.html

 

[RedSavina]

Red -
Just be advised that LNB spacing is dependent on both bird spacing and focal length, so . . .
... it won't be 4° on your dish.
It has the advantage of placing two LNBs right next to each other, but as for skew, you want to skew the entire dish, then fine skew each LNB.
Don't rotate the bracket for skew.

And, I'm uncomfortable even suggesting two linear birds on a little dish.
If you notice, both Icebergs example above, and my suggestion, had a linear LNB down the center, with circular LNBs off to the side.

Anole,

Oh, I fully agree. Lacking any experience of my own, I have read everything I can get my hands on here! I doubt it will work, but if I can get some strong readings with one LNB I will probably take a stab at it just to see.

The twin LNB/dish combo that E* supplies provides 10 degrees of separation. Do you think this LNB could be used as a basis to calculate arc with SL2s from SatAV - maybe 6-8 degrees or so? I have already set the dish skew - that should provide maximum performance over LNB skew alone, right? I wasn't planning to skew the bracket...

Tomorrow my fleabay receiver is scheduled to arrive. We'll see what $40 does for me on the itty bitty dish!

Thanks again for the words of caution. I do not have any illusions about this, although I am also too ignorant not to even try.

Should be a fun weekend with the extension cords and monitor out on the driveway! I'll be sure to post my results - especially any partial successes with this little dish.

 

[Anole]

Even on the DirecTV and DishNetwork Superdishes, where they have one linear and several circular LNBs, the linear is always bore-sight.
The circulars are off center. And they run more power, so that's fine.

If you have a real Dish 500, measuring the distance between the centers of the two LNBs, will give you a reference for 9° of separation.
(82°/91° or 110°/119° is their typical usage)

We also have math you can use, which is quite accurate, if shooting from the hip is not your style.
I've checked it out extensively and posted results in a number of threads over the years.

Yes, does sound like fun.
I don't mean to sound discouraging, but if you are armed with the best info, then you can concentrate on the possible instead of the impossible. -
Keep up the good work, and show us the beef! -

 

[RedSavina]

Even on the DirecTV and DishNetwork Superdishes, where they have one linear and several circular LNBs, the linear is always bore-sight.
The circulars are off center. And they run more power, so that's fine.

If you have a real Dish 500, measuring the distance between the centers of the two LNBs, will give you a reference for 9° of separation.
(82°/91° or 110°/119° is their typical usage)

We also have math you can use, which is quite accurate, if shooting from the hip is not your style.
I've checked it out extensively and posted results in a number of threads over the years.

Yes, does sound like fun.
I don't mean to sound discouraging, but if you are armed with the best info, then you can concentrate on the possible instead of the impossible. -
Keep up the good work, and show us the beef! -

 

[turbosat]

I knew I'd seen that before, thanks Anole! And, I thought that was a really neat contraption in your last pic in post28 -until I realized it was the top of your ladder, haha.

 

[Anole]

I knew I'd seen that before, thanks Anole! And, I thought that was a really neat contraption in your last pic in post28 -until I realized it was the top of your ladder, haha.

The post #25 shot against the sky 'n tree is the same view, from a slightly different angle.
I forgot the first rule of such pictures: don't confuse the viewer.
The phone pole growing out of the top of the LNB didn't fool anyone, did it? -

Yea, my aluminum ladder matches the LNB bracket (conduit hanger) pretty well -
Next time, I'll drape a yellow, or orange towel over the ladder, if it's going to be in the shot.

 

[turbosat]

pics of the project

Here's a little improvement over the first incarnation of my D500 project.
I used a simple little drawer slide with some creative bending on this one, the final lnb angle is a ltitle off in the pic, needed some tweaking to hold the lnbf closer to the angle of the original twin lnbf. That brought the dish elevation down about 20degrees lol, at first all the sats were about 20degrees higher than advertised for my location. Ran out of time so I didn't get to try it west of 105 today, but I did find everything east up to 79-AMC5 (gets NYN very well, but a big walnut tree has everything east of 79 blocked out). And on AMC9, strong signals, even got RTN at 70/70 . Just kidding, lol, all I got on AMC9 was the color bars.
I had a set of eyes watching most of the time I was out there, hiding on the bottom of my primestar-on-polar mount project, which is right next to the D500.

 

[phlatwound]

Nice inventing there, you and your supervisor are doing some fine work. :up

 

[turbosat]

Thats been an educational project, I had no idea a dish that small would pick up so many fta channels. I scanned in newsfeeds on 79 , the NYN channels are stable, even the Ktel channel.
But that dish sees so much of the sky, I can't pick up anything past 79 going east, due to a tree,, and the wide-open signals coming off that !@! circular satellite at 77. I guess I could've used another receiver though, due to that traxis3500 picking up circular signals if you're near DBS satellite.

 

[mikelib]

500 Dish

Thats been an educational project, I had no idea a dish that small would pick up so many fta channels. I scanned in newsfeeds on 79 , the NYN channels are stable, even the Ktel channel.

But that dish sees so much of the sky, I can't pick up anything past 79 going east, due to a tree,, and the wide-open signals coming off that !@! circular satellite at 77. I guess I could've used another receiver though, due to that traxis3500 picking up circular signals if you're near DBS satellite.

Turbosat,
If you have good LOS for 72 W you should be able to get the mux with strong SQ on your 500 Dish. Here are pics with the dish connected to a Fortec star Dynamic and looped thru to a Coolsat 5K.
Mikelib

 

[turbosat]

Thats great pics Mike, but I couldn't get past the circular signals with that Traxis-it seems to suck them in if you're within 10degrees of a circular bird. I'll try again tomorrow since I got the grass cut today lol. Looks like your lnb is skewed for 123 to me in those pics, if you're in NJ.

edit: I swapped out a cable to that little dish this evening, and am watching Russia Today on it inside tonite. I think it scanned in 107 channels on 97 this time, so its getting better!