Need Orbitron Mount Pics.

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coinmaster32

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Sep 25, 2010
916
14
USA
Keep a mount?

I have a rusty yet trusty mount off a 10 foot channel master mesh dish.

I think I should pitch it, or should I keep it?
 
Much like bragging you made a gazebo out of a BUD, I think you should ask if anyone wants it , first.
Maybe show a few pictures.
We're here to help each other, and that might help out someone here. - :rolleyes:

Oh, and where is "somewhere" ?
 
keep or like posted above

if you don't use it for dish stuff it can still be used for solar stuff

but if you hunt dishes some day you might find a dish that needs a good mount , you can always clean it up and have it ready .
 
I guess I'm in the same boat. Yesterday, I took my 10' Orbitron AND my 6' Winegard to the dump. However, I kept a few of the mesh panels from the Orbitron, and I kept the Ajax spinclination mount, and the much less massive mount from the Winegard, just in case someone has a use for it. I've taken many of the bolts out, but will save them for a while.
 
I never scrap anything without coming here to see if someone can use it first. I have been on the giving and the receiving end of many transactions because of this.

C-band dish parts, especially for the older and more obscure dishes and mounts, aren't being made anymore, so what you may have may be priceless to someone who doesn't have it and NEEDS it.

You help someone it will come back to ya. I believe that. :up
 
I guess I'm in the same boat. Yesterday, I took my 10' Orbitron AND my 6' Winegard to the dump. However, I kept a few of the mesh panels from the Orbitron, and I kept the Ajax spinclination mount, and the much less massive mount from the Winegard, just in case someone has a use for it. I've taken many of the bolts out, but will save them for a while.

Hope you took it to a scrap metal recycle because they'll pay good money for the aluminum. I made over 600 dollars last year just taking in all the dishes that I had gotten. This winter with the leaves gone it will be time to look for more.
 
Hope you took it to a scrap metal recycle because they'll pay good money for the aluminum. I made over 600 dollars last year just taking in all the dishes that I had gotten. This winter with the leaves gone it will be time to look for more.

I don't know what the price of aluminum is, but I think I would have spent more in gas than I'd get for the metal, plus I'm not sure my trailer would have made the 60 some mile round trip to the nearest metal yard. I had a hard enough time with the 16 mile round trip to our local dump. The roads here are so bumpy that it was like driving across railroad tracks the whole way, and the dish panels were jumping up and down in the trailer, and you could hear the hitch rattling a mile away. I had to stop and put the turn signal lights back on. Plus the dump sells the metal, which results in a savings for the town in the long run.
 
I don't know what the price of aluminum is, but I think I would have spent more in gas than I'd get for the metal, plus I'm not sure my trailer would have made the 60 some mile round trip to the nearest metal yard. I had a hard enough time with the 16 mile round trip to our local dump. The roads here are so bumpy that it was like driving across railroad tracks the whole way, and the dish panels were jumping up and down in the trailer, and you could hear the hitch rattling a mile away. I had to stop and put the turn signal lights back on. Plus the dump sells the metal, which results in a savings for the town in the long run.

I took all the dishes apart and kept most of the mesh, arms and mounting hardware for other projects so far got about 8 mounts still left that I rob pieces of metal from as you never know when you might need a piece of steel. I had two loads with metal stacked and secured that was almost over the top of my 94 Toyota pickup cab. And with the price per pond at around 80 cent at the time it was worth the 50 mile round trip drive. Of all the dishes I just love to get the 10 foot Winegard dishes, good heavy metal. Now the mounts are another story as they are a pain in the back.
 
Declination in the blind.

I got a orbitron sx 10 dish thats in pretty good shape. It has the "splinclination" on it. however the scale is missing, and while taking apart the mount, I accidentally moved the declination off a few degrees.

Can I just peak the dish on a few sats with the elevation, then adjust the declination by rotating the dish, peaking it on a few sats?
 
Replacing Mesh.

I have a orbitron SX-10 I got recently.

There is hard plastic that run along the length of the sections that hold the mesh in place, unlike any dish I've ever seen.

Well one of these sections, the mesh has come undone in a one foot spot.

I tried lifting the plastic trim but it must be glued in with industrial adhesive because it will barely come out prying with a screw driver, it took me about 2 minutes to pry a one inch section up, the trim is about 60 inches long, do that math, thats 2 hours. Surely there has to be a better way.
 
I got a orbitron sx 10 dish thats in pretty good shape. It has the "splinclination" on it. however the scale is missing, and while taking apart the mount, I accidentally moved the declination off a few degrees.

Can I just peak the dish on a few sats with the elevation, then adjust the declination by rotating the dish, peaking it on a few sats?

It's not easy to peak by just rotating the dish, because rotating the dish doesn't only change the declination, it also changes the polarization and also changes the longitude along the arc that the dish is aimed at. So the only way to peak by rotating the dish is to make a change, then, after each change, peak via the motor along the arc and also peak the polarization. Also, if the elevation was peaked before rotating the dish, then you'd also need to make sure that your elevation is correct to. If you are forced to try adjusting declination in the blind on this mount, it is very complicated. This is one of several reasons that my Orbitron just made it's final trip to the town's (actually next town over that we're contracting) metal yard/dump.

It's much better to try to set your declination and then never touch it again.

I assume that there isn't any scale. If you have the dish off the mount, looking at it from behind, try to determine the point on the bent pipe coming out the back of the dish where the hub is pointing down, not left or right. You might be able to determine this by measuring from the hub to the edge of the dish or to the edge of the circular center ring or something like that. It would be the point where that measurement is smallest.
If the dish is on the mount, if it is not obvious, you might be able to determine that position since it will be when the dish is lowest, so the bottom edge of the dish will be closest to the ground (when the mount is turned to true south, ie at it's highest point via motor). Once you locate this point, put a mark there, along the bottom of the pipe, close to where the pipe joins the circular plate.
On the hub on the mount that this pipe goes into, at it's lowest point, ie 6 oclock position. This mark will correspond to a declination of 8 degrees (neg). Also put a mark to the west (assuming in east) side of that hub 90 deg away from the other mark, ie at the 9 oclock position looking from the front of the dish. This will correspond to zero degrees declination. Now, you need to interpolate between these two marks to create a scale from 0 to 8 deg. What I did, was to use some stick on tape ruler material, figure out the total distance around that quarter section of the hub, and divide that by 8, and made my own scale showing declination degrees on the hub.
Once I had that scale, I just rotated the dish, so that the mark on the dish pipe lined up with the appropriate declination angle on the scale that I had created. I then never touched this declination adjustment for over a decade, when I accidently rotated the dish while trying to manhandle the whole mount on the pole, found that my original marks on the pipe were no longer there, and I was having a hard time telling where the low point of the dish rotation was, and on trying to adjust declination, I got it all out of adjustment.
For some reason, when the dish was new, it was pretty obvious which point on the angled pipe was the low end, but when the thing was all rusty, and the dish was a bit warped, it wasn't easy to tell. I finally put a pipe through the hole in the circular plate, and attached that to the center throat of my feedhorn, and this pipe stuck out the back behind the dish, so I could put my digital level on it to determine the actual aim of the dish. Ie, if the rotation axis of the mount has previously been adjusted, then if you adjust this angle to the actual elevation of your true south sat, then this will set your declination.
Also, if you can get a small angle meter and place it on the circular plate, between the pipe and the circular group of bolts, and have that angle meter vertical, you can measure 90 minus the elevation of your true south sat, however while that seemed to work for me when the dish was new, over the years, that back plate was no longer flat, so the angle meter no longer sat flat.

Anyway, when I first got my spinclination, some 14 years ago, I thought it was great, because once I got that home made scale on there, it was the most accurate way of setting declination possible. However after the marks that aligned to that scale went away, I came to really hate that spinclination thing.

Part of my "hate" of the mount though, was the fact that my aging mind couldn't get a handle on the darn thing anymore, particularly when I started thinking about the fact that when the mount itself is at it's highest point, ie normally at it's true south position, the dish itself won't be aiming south, but instead will be aiming some angle about 8 minus your declination to the west of true south, so I had a hard time deciding upon whether I should be acually rotating the mount past it's true south position, and using that as the point for positioning the scale on the hub. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around that question.

Anyway, I'm sure I probably confused you more than you were already confused, but hopefully I may have given you a few ideas of how to approach the problem. I've tried all of the approaches described at one time or another.
 
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thanks for the clarity

I've read very little about those dishes, and never seen one.
Always wondered exactly how the spinning related to the declination.
Thanks, B.J. for the description.

Not at all what I expected. - :eek:
Quarter turn, eh?
And here I imagined it was one full rotation per degree, or something like that. - :rolleyes:

However after the marks that aligned to that scale went away, I came to really hate that spinclination thing.
I guess one couldn't rely on paint marks to last.
But I recall discovering an amusing toy in my Dad's tool box when I was a kid.
It was a set of metal stamps.
One letter each, on a 3" long rod of steel.
Place it where you want the letter, and strike with hammer.
Permanent mark on the metal. - :up
Probably too late for now, but maybe some other Orbitron user will grasp that straw. ;)
 
Well If I do end up rotating the dish, I can always get on a ladder and rotate the feed.
 
I guess one couldn't rely on paint marks to last.
But I recall discovering an amusing toy in my Dad's tool box when I was a kid.
It was a set of metal stamps.
One letter each, on a 3" long rod of steel.
Place it where you want the letter, and strike with hammer.
Permanent mark on the metal. - :up
Probably too late for now, but maybe some other Orbitron user will grasp that straw. ;)
Machinist's 1/8" letter & number stamps are what I used to make the markings more lasting.
I was very lucky that the tape was intact on the SX-10 I picked in Montebello. I used a single center punch mark for each 2* & double marks for each 10* of latitude. Then carefully peeled what was left of the scale off, glued it to some graph paper & scanned it to pdf. Make note the scale is offset from zero by 1* to the right in the pdf. It didn't lay down quite right when I glue sticked it. That shouldn't bother the people east of the Rockies.;)
The pics show the scale while on the mount & punched into the surface afterward.
The zero mark is even with the centerline of the arm, equidistant from the centers of the pivot bolts. You could make a template from the pdf by printing on 8 1/2" x 11" paper.
The dish backplate mark on the tube lines up with the centerline of one rib. The mouth of the tube should be facing away from you when the declination set mark is closest to you. See the pics of the backplate.
The last pic shows the length of the polar mount lever arm. I'm thinking I just might extend the arm by 3-3 1/2" to gain a little more positioning accuracy(more counts per degree). :D
Hope this helps.
 

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  • Orbitron SX-10 Declination Scale.pdf
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Orbitron made by channel master?

Were oribtron dishes made by channel master? I've found striking similarities. This was on a 10 foot mesh.

1. The ribs are the same size.
2. The mounts fit each other on the back of the ribs.
3. The button hook's hole pattern is the same.
 
Need manual for orbitron SX-10.

So far I've found 3 diffrent orbitron sx-10s. One has ribs that bolt to a center plate and frame work that goes around the side.

The other 2 are sectioned panels like a sami or a unimesh dish. One has plastic trim that goes down the ribs that hold the mesh, while the other has screws.

The orbitron manual that iceberg posted covers the frame work rib style dish.

I am looking for the one with a sectioned reflector.
 
Parts is parts. Got a 10' Prime focus fiberglass dish last summer (HEAVY), dish was beat up but had a beautiful mount. I am adapting it to a 6' CM offset that was acquired with a fixed mount for a friend. Parts are good.
 
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