My C-Band Odyssey

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Taping wires together? I've got a spool of unused ribbon cable for my CBand installation that I'll probably never use.
 
Taping wires together? I've got a spool of unused ribbon cable for my CBand installation that I'll probably never use.

Let's see...you are where you are, and I am in Slidell. I begin digging a trench in about an hour. Think we could make it? :) :D;):)
 
Well its done. Wires run, conduit buried. I even ran a line over to my disecq switch on my Ku dish...I was watching some c-band tonight! All I have to do now is wait on the analog receiver I got from Ebay, that should be Tuesday according to UPS, hook that up, and I'll be good to go.
 
well most likely the toshiba is already setup with a few sats
you can move the dish with the mover your already using. and tune to digital channels
and use the toshiba to look at analog ( i think for c band analog there are only two types normal and reverse) the toshiba can control the polarity ( by changing channels) and you can watch analog & digital you would have to get up to change the channels

until your remote arrives . my setup doesn't count so i manually tune the digital channels and then surf the analog ones
i haven't tuned ku analog yet so i don't know about setting those . anyway just cause your pointed at say G10 doesn't mean the analog receiver has to say G9 it could say T1 and still receive the channels. ( it doesn't matter when manually tuning it does if the receiver is moving to a saved position.)
hopefully this isn't to confusing
 
well most likely the toshiba is already setup with a few sats
you can move the dish with the mover your already using. and tune to digital channels
and use the toshiba to look at analog ( i think for c band analog there are only two types normal and reverse) the toshiba can control the polarity ( by changing channels) and you can watch analog & digital you would have to get up to change the channels

until your remote arrives . my setup doesn't count so i manually tune the digital channels and then surf the analog ones
i haven't tuned ku analog yet so i don't know about setting those . anyway just cause your pointed at say G10 doesn't mean the analog receiver has to say G9 it could say T1 and still receive the channels. ( it doesn't matter when manually tuning it does if the receiver is moving to a saved position.)
hopefully this isn't to confusing

Uh-uh, I followed you perfectly. The old positioner I have if I needed to I could hook it up and drive the dish, in fact I may do that because there are some things I want to watch on C-band that aren't on the satellite I am on right now.... :)

That's how I did it, I used the old Uniden UST-5000 to change analog channels/polarity/skew and the MTI box to move the dish, although without the limits hooked up because we cannot figure out the wiring...:D....The Toshiba I have has four buttons on the receiver itself, channel up/down and volume up/down. Nothing else. Hopefully the TRX-1850 I have coming will solve all of that. :up
 
Can I be of help?

May I be of help?
You will need the coax to the lnb.
From the positioner there will be either two or three wires. If the pos. counter is the simple reed switch there will be a green and black wire. Connect the green to the sense connector on the rec. The black wire to the neg or ground symbol connector on the rec.
If the sensor is the electronic type, there will also be a red wire. Connect this to the 5 volt connector on the rec.
If you open the positoner cover and look inside and see a glass tube with two wirs coming out, it is a reed switch.
Next there will be three wires coming from the polarizer. Once again black to neg or ground symbol connectot on rec, white to output conn on rec, and red to 5 volt connector on rec.
Almost always the pos. and polarizer connectors are arranged in two rows on the back of the rec. The top row is most often the postioner connectiions.
Oh yes, there will be a pair of heavy wires, one white the other red. These go to the positioner motor. When you drive the dish manually look at the buttons on the remote. If you push east and the dish goes west, reverse these two heavy wires.
Also, when you openned up the pos. cover you should also see two mechanical limit switches. These are the hard limits. When you get the rec. set your limits first. Drive the dish until it hits one of the mechanical limits. Then back the dish off from it a little and then set the rec limit. Do the same for the one at the other end. That way the rec will not let the dish hit the mechanical limts. This is essential in high winds so the the dish will not push against the machanical limits of the ball screw.
Finally if you miss sats at the ends of the arc, if missing when the dish is low (facing horizon) adjust clock wise or counter clockwise, if missng at the end when the dish is facing up into the sky, adjust up and down on the back of the dish.

This is a picture of my installation. The c band dish is 36 feet off the ground.
 

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yeah i move across the arc i just have to use a known tp on the sat i'm going to it works for me until i get my motor fixed cause theres lots of digital up there and some analog :)

what type of motor & pictures .... this superjack uses pulse & ground i think my von weise uses three wires

i will have to order my parts to fix my motor soon the games start soon :)
 
Thanks,

Thanks,
One of my neighbours once said "What do you use them for? Research?" When I answered "To watch I Love Lucy 24 hours a day", they said I was nuts. I put the C band up in 1985.Here is another pic.
 

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tiredold, very nice setup! I hope you have a bucket truck to service all that if need be....:)

I like all my stuff close to the ground. In fact I am thinking of moving my D* dish to a pole mount on the ground, just for ease of service/re aiming. I put my new C-Band dish a little higher just so I could drive the lawnmower under it to keep the grass cut. The same dish went through Katrina, so it must be built pretty good. :up

As far as 'nuts and bolts' of my setup, I am thinking very seriously of going ahead and changing out my feed/lnb setup in the 7.5 to the BSC-621 so I can get voltage controlled polarity switching, and lose the servo wires. Sure would make it easer to blindscan with the FTA receivers....May do that next week, I am still recovering from yesterday, that heat takes it out of you...:(

I almost forgot, does anyone have any info on the company that made these Perfect 10 dishes? I googled it and came up snake eyes.
 
Hey Stogie,

Perfect 10 no longer makes the big dishes. If I remember correctly, they used to be out of Arkansas.

If you are looking for the specs for the 7.5 footer, I got a copy from a former distributor for them.

Here they are:

F/D Ratio .375
Gain @ 4Ghz 38.7
Gain @ 12 Ghz 45.6
Percent Efficient 60%
Focal Length 33.75

Hope that helps you out.

Edit: BTW, Great job!! :D

Fred
 
How I did it.

I used to work for a steel company that made the old signs for the Ford dealerships, the ones that had only one leg at one end. Anyway, there was one square tube, 16 inches square, half inch thick and 41 feet long left over after the contract was finished. It did not take me too long to come up with a use for it. I drilled three 36 " holes in a tirangle pattern all set six feet apart and seven feet deep. I filled the two back ones with concrete and leveled them exactly. Then I dropped the pole into the unfilled hole. Coming out from two sides of the pole are two I beams set a one foot off of the ground. Then I sat the beams on the first two holes. I put a hydraulic jack under the arm that sticks out half way up the pole and used this to plumb the pole. Then I filled the last hole with concrete and let it set. The next day I put the Prodlin ten foot dish at the top. I had to rent a crane with a 160 foot boom to reach over the house and up to the pole. This is when my neighbour asked if I was doing some kind of research. The rest of the dishes just seemed to show up one at a time.
The ladder at the bottom takes two people to lift and three to set it up. I usually bring home a scissor lift from work if I have to adjust anything.
I painted the pole Tremclad brown to match the trees. Before I put the smaller dishes on, many people would be in the backyard for an hour before they looked up and saw the c band dish. They would usually jump back a step and almost fall over. When my son was small, I hung a swing on the arm that is half way up. Nothing like a swing with 15 feet of rope.
Everybody needs a hobby.
 
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I used to work for a steel company that made the old signs for the Ford dealerships, the ones that had only one leg at one end. Anyway, there was one square tube, 16 inches square, half inch thick and 41 feet long left over after the contract was finished. It did not take me too long to come up with a use for it. I drilled three 36 " holes in a tirangle pattern all set six feet apart and seven feet deep. I filled the two back ones with concrete and leveled them exactly. Then I dropped the pole into the unfilled hole. Coming out from two sides of the pole are two I beams set a one foot off of the ground. Then I sat the beams on the first two holes. I put a hydraulic jack under the arm that sticks out half way up the pole and used this to plumb the pole. Then I filled the last hole with concrete and let it set. The next day I put the Prodlin ten foot dish at the top. I had to rent a crane with a 160 foot boom to reach over the house and up to the pole. This is when my neighbour asked if I was doing some kind of research. The rest of the dishes just seemed to show up one at a time.
The ladder at the bottom takes two people to lift and three to set it up. I usually bring home a scissor lift from work if I have to adjust anything.
I painted the pole Tremclad brown to match the trees. Before I put the smaller dishes on, many people would be in the backyard for an hour before they looked up and saw the c band dish. They would usually jump back a step and almost fall over. When my son was small, I hung a swing on the arm that is half way up. Nothing like a swing with 15 feet of rope.
Everybody needs a hobby.

And Ya'll told me MY dinky dish mount engineering was good.....this Man here has dedication. I like that. :)

Congrats, you have a dynomite setup!:up
 
Hey Stogie,

Perfect 10 no longer makes the big dishes. If I remember correctly, they used to be out of Arkansas.

If you are looking for the specs for the 7.5 footer, I got a copy from a former distributor for them.

Here they are:

F/D Ratio .375
Gain @ 4Ghz 38.7
Gain @ 12 Ghz 45.6
Percent Efficient 60%
Focal Length 33.75

Hope that helps you out.

Edit: BTW, Great job!! :D

Fred

Thanks for the info!

Now, you gonna tell me what all that means? :)
Is that better or worse than other 7.5's?
Focal length is the distance from the feed to the scalar ring, right? Or is it to the probe in the feedhorn?

How do those gain numbers stack up with other antennas? :confused:

I was watching a feed tonight on G3 and I had high 80's SQ on the Coolsat 5k. Some TP's on G10 C were in the 90's. And that is with a 25 degree Eagle Aspen LNB. That's why I am conflicted on whether to change it out with the BSC621. I just don't like dealing with changing the polarity manually, plus the inablity to use disecq and 22k switches.:cool:
 
Now, you gonna tell me what all that means?
Is that better or worse than other 7.5's?
Focal length is the distance from the feed to the scalar ring, right? Or is it to the probe in the feedhorn?

F/D Ratio is the little lines on the side of the adjustable feed-horn that you set first. The .375, I would set at .38 which is the nearest line.

The focal length is the distance from the center of the dish to 1/4" inside the wave-guide of the feed-horn (where the probe is).

How does it stack up against other 7.5 footers? Mine works pretty darn good. I would rather have an 8.5 footer and am looking for one, but until I find one, I am sticking with what I have.

Fred
 
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