my latest results

[truckracer]

its been a while since i did any real changes to my system. Since I can blind scan dvb s2 signals and they are a little finicky.

I was currently running a chaparall dual c dual ku feedhorn with a zinnwell powered multiswitch modded to supply +18 to all ports.

this is on my 10' dish.

I broke out my 5 year or so old bsc 421 c band lnbf.
low and behold i gained some signal quality over the 4 lnb setup and multiswitch.

I was a little saddened since i liked my complex setup LOL.

I was using some cheap dms bsc 211 c band lnbs. Maybe some good cal amp or norsats would bring it up some.

I tweaked and tuned like crazy and in 5 minutes my lnbf was outperforming the other setup.

I will get some cal amp or norsats and retry my setups

I am thinking seriously of just running my 1 meter dish with the invacom lnbf for ku controlled by a fortec ultra diseqc motor.

keeping my 10' as c band only. i had a member on here one time tell me that using c and ku on the same big dish is a compromise at best.

my chap and 4 lnbs gave good results but i am getting better results from the lnbf!

 

[pendragon]

I've done some careful measurements on my 1.8m, 2.3m and 3.0m dishes with a single ortho feed (C only) and a dual ortho feed (C/Ku) using the same Norsat LNBs. The single ortho always does slightly better on C than the dual ortho. On top of this I was never happy with the Ku performance of the dual ortho on the 2.3m and 3.0m dishes. Everything locked, but I did as well or better on my dedicated 1.2m Ku offset.

I concluded the very low f/D on the 3.0m perf was causing it to be underscanned in the Ku band, and the surface irregularities in the 2.3m mesh were likely hurting Ku also. Ku on the dual ortho works pretty well on the 1.8m solid dish and we only use C-band on that dish for satellites like 58W where the fishing is easy, so that's where it ended up. It's a little silly to put the most expensive feed on the smallest C-band dish, but I rationalized this by modifying it to work as a universal Ku feed for the Atlantic birds. This at least gave me something I didn't have before. I've promised to do a thread on that sooner or later.

I can't say whether better LNBs will improve your dual ortho. I've only used Norsat 8115s from the beginning, and they are a dream.

 

[truckracer]

I am just going to use dedicated c and ku dishes. Solid ku dish

 

[tvropro]

I've been using dedicated dishes for each band since word go. Any dual feedhorn is a compromise. Cal Amp's is all I use on C band. Norsat is good as well.