My New Dish Farm

[mr_rye89]

Impressive. The mountains work against me here. Not sure I can get anything east of 58w........

I'm up to 5 dishes now, so I pretty well have a farm.

 

[cyberham]

Lowest ever received here is 8W in the east (15.4 deg) and 125W in the west (11.2 deg) both with fixed dishes. I suspect I could receive lower if not for trees on the horizon.

 

[iBoston]

wow. are you on a mountain?

Well, i am surrounded by lake superior, and I am on a hill, but it helps that i am on 100+ acres and if there is a tree in the way, its nothing a chainsaw won't fix.

 

[c-spand]

Awesome.

 

[iBoston]

I had a fixed dish on 91w. I miss my classic ARTS and now that they took away the FTA fox stuff, I am going to relocate that dish now i believe to 101w. I will see how well it does. It's a 9 footer, and 101w has always caused me issues in terms of picking up all the signals. We shall see how it does on this solid 9' ....

 

[iBoston]

Okay, i have moved my 91w fixed to 101w fixed. I am so very happy. Hopefully, the great signal will be the same all year, but i am getting everything on 101w. Awesome! I got my Classic Arts Showcase back.. Yea!

I also have a second LNBF on it which is already set for +6 degrees. Without even doing any testing, I went ahead and did a blind scan which pulled in 107.3w.. I may or may not leave the 2nd lnbf there.. I could try for 105w. - It pulled in all the DVBs signals.

This is gonna take me a few days to sort out and decide.

 

[clucas]

Are your two scalars touching each other for the 6 degrees span?

 

[iBoston]

Are your two scalars touching each other for the 6 degrees span?

Its a special scalar designed for 2 lnbfs.

 

[mr3p]

Are you using one of these? I could never understand how it is supposed to attach to 4 arms

 

[clucas]

I use one of those on my 10 footer where I get 180 on the main and 177W on the offset. That’s why I wondered the setup for iBoston. I removed one of my four support arms, spread out the remaining three and drilled new holes in the dish frame to attach them.

 

[iBoston]

I removed one of my arms, everything else fit normal. What is the minimum degree you can get on a 9 footer you think? I wonder if you could get away with 2 degree separation? ie getting 101 and 103w , And the scalar picture above is pretty much what i have.

 

[mr3p]

I'm confused why they didn't design the dual lnb scalar to accommodate four arms. If I decided to get one, I'd probably just drill in new holes in scalar as I suspect four arms helps maintain symmetric geometry of reflector.

 

[Titanium]

The 90 degree spacing of the 4 arm design usually prevents the offset feed from proper horizontal axis alignment. The proper position would only be a few degrees above the horizontal axis line. When I have installed this type of 2nd feed mount scalar, I have simply shortened and relocated the 4th arm to the outside of the offset portion of the conical. Less than perfect, but it works.

For a button hook, 3 or 4 leg design, I prefer to cut two scalar rings to allow them to sit closer, then bolt them together.

 

[clucas]

iBoston, Just thinking here but I would say you can’t tell what degree spacing you can achieve just by dish size. The more shallow (or flatter) the dish is, the more you have to separate the LNB’s for the same 6 degree spaced satellite, say 99 and 105. I’m sure there are physical limitations to the depth of a dish. If I am not correct maybe someone else will chime in.

On my three leg mount they are each placed 120 degrees apart to keep the symmetry and LNBF’s centered.

 

[iBoston]

Well, crap, my 120cm is lying on the storage container. We had a thunderstorm roll through and heavy winds. It broke my welds, and the dish went down. Luckily, it doesn't appear to be any damage besides that fact. So, i have lost 91w KU Linear/Circular until i can repair that damage.. Ugh.

 

[iBoston]

A mid job done update. I think it was a blessing after all that the 120cm collapsed. I had that Cband dish next to the 120cm. It was in the way of me moving the dish West of 103w. It was pointed at 101w, and was getting classic arts showcase only during certain hours of the day! I swear 101w is my worst performing satellite. So, i am playing musical chairs with my 3 fixed cband dishes. Moving all three.

I relocated the 8' 101w to 131w which i can do now thanks to a thunderstorm knocking down my 120cm. I had to remove the non-functioning motor off the 8' cband dish, and manually rotate the arm to de-tract it. Then i put it back in which put it in the right height angle to be able to adjust to 131w. Being that is my smallest cband dish, i figured it was perfect for 131w and i was right, I'm getting a strong signal on the Alaskan Mux.

Next....

I'm relocating the 12' to 101w. - This took me a bit of time, because it was tuned to a specific satellite, it was NOT arc tracking. I moved the dish to top of arc, and did an initial alignment allowing me to track the arc. My top of arc is 89w. Then i moved west and somehow missed 101w twice. (ugh) But, i finally caught it, but funny, i still cannot get classic arts. But, i have 2db higher on many TP's. I believe the problem is in the lnbf skew as it was rotated quite a bit. So, i suspect that will resolve the Classic Arts Showcase TP. Crossing my fingers.

Then i have to re-align my 9'

Then i have to fine tune my 10' (as its lost its magic over the last couple years)

Busy Busy Busy, but if it all works out, it will be worth it. I am hoping my 101w issues will be ALL GONE with my 12'

 

[iBoston]

Well, i had a bit of a rude awaking last night. My son wakes me up at 1:30AM and says the cops are here. I look outside and see drones and sheriff and dogs walking around.... ?!?!!!? I must admit it gave me an adrenaline rush. Turns out a lady across the street went missing and they were pulling out all the steps trying to finder her... They were searching my property for hours. I didn't get back to sleep until 4am. Needless to say, i am tired today, but i did manage to pull out my ladder and adjust the skew and nudge the dish.

I am NOW getting the two signals i kept loosing. Newsy and Classic Arts. Time will tell, as before the signal was intermittent. So, i'm gonna keep an eye on these through out the day to make sure it stays LOCKED.

They still haven't found the lady and they are back on my property a bit this morning, and plan on bring in a team of people and helicopter... Apparently she has Dementia. It stayed warm last night, so i hope they find her in okay condition.

 

[iBoston]

Good news, the lady was found and is in good condition and back at home. I also got a great nights sleep last night. Went to bed at like 8pm

I will also report that I watched those problematic TPs all day without incident. 101w might be licked...

 

[iBoston]

I just realized last night i lost about 3db on 125KU. I think when the 120cm crashed down, i think it bumped against my 90cm pointed at 125. Anyway, i climbed up the storage container and made the minor adjustment to get it back to snuff. I was unable to pull down Montana. Fixed now.

As for my musical chairs that i did with the three fixed Cband dishes, I am really so happy.. Its been about 4 days and there have been no hiccups or glitches or loss of signal on any of my fixed birds.

Since i have 4 tuners on my STB, i thought i should utilize it more and give me some more options. 1 is motor and fixed, 2 is USALS and now 3 is also all fixed. This allows me to record one channel, and watch another. - To do this, i had an existing manual ABC switch, where only AB was used. A was the office, and B was the guest room. Both are really guest rooms so to speak. So, that way, since i only have mostly 4 tuner multi-switches, this allowed me to choose where to direct my 4th tuner, between the office or the guest room. Well, now i utilize C to duplicate a 2nd input into my receiver. Being we only have people over a couple weeks a year, it was a mostly wasted tuner port. Now i can swap it to C and then have those extra options on my main tuner.

Now i must turn my attention to my motorized 10' button hook. It is off fine tuned, and i think im gonna have to pull out string and get serious about this.

 

[iBoston]

Lost my Radio station yesterday. Satellite receiver would no longer boot. It was the crappiest oldest STB i had. I spent about 60 minutes seeing if it was salvageable. It was penetrated by WASPS. I didn't realize there was holes big enough for those things to get into it.

I pulled out a spare junk STB out of the junk drawer. and deleted all the channels on it, and then it took me a bit of time how to figure out how to get the Muzak channels to work on it. There is no way to manually add a channel. Luckily, you could modify the PIDS of an existing one. I was able to then scan in the TP and then swap out the AUDIO pid to the music channel i wanted. I then made sure i deleted all other channels on the STB. I then did a power cycle on it to verify it would auto start with the correct radio channel. - All checked out, and thankfully i had the phono-plug adapter cord to Audio Video RCA. It is a RCA left/right plugs that hook into the FM transmitter.

Went back outside and patched it into the radio cubby in the wood storage shed and I have my radio station back. It is a double edge sword when these happen. On the negative side, no one likes when S%^t stops working, but on the positive side, its nice to re-familiarize yourself and it's always nice to be able to use junk equipment that you really had no other purpose for, and be able to re-purpose it and give it value. Plus - you didn't have to shell out any new money.

The whole family has learned to love this home-made radio station. We ALL listen to it, almost every day, while sitting on the couch relaxing, exercising, going out on walks, mowing the lawn, tractoring etc etc.