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Playing with a BUD tonight...

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Tron

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
May 6, 2005
6,599
33
Metro New Orleans, LA
A friend of mine went dish hunting and came home with an 8' mesh BUD! One of the panels is a bit bent about a foot from the outer edge, but I think it can be bent back into shape. What's really nice about his find is that the dish has a nearly new Chapparal C/Ku feedhorn. Mounted to it is a modern 25 degree C-band LNB and a .6 Eagle Aspen Ku LNB. Polarity is controlled by a polarotor.

He has the dish laying out in his yard, so I took the Pansat 2700 over and figured to play around a bit With the dish propped up on cinder blocks (and NO compass or angle finder with me), I was only able to find Echostar 7. I tried for it since I knew polarity on a circular bird would not make a difference (I'd have to roll the dish around to find proper polarity with a linear bird, and that on top of not knowing my elevation would have taken days). Of course, being a Ku LNB and not a DBS one, I was limited to a few of the lower frequency transponders and half the quality I would normally expect to have. Unfortunately, everything was scrambled on the transponders we picked up.

Tomorrow or the next day I am going over to help him cement the pole and mount the dish I will bring the angle finder with me this time. I kept stressing how important very, very small movements of the dish were, and how a little movement could make the difference between signal and no signal. I found this ESPECIALLY true on a BUD. Aim is EXTREMELY critical, even on 119w which I figured would be a cinch to pick up quickly. It also didn't help that there was no small TV to work outside with, and that it was very late and time was limited.

I'll update in this thread on the progress
 
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Congrats on the find

Hey Tron: Nice find for your friend...especially with you around to help him!!!!

After FTA, maybe you could fit it with a 15-17d C band LNB and get him into 4dtv too!

regards
jeff
 
Tron, be sure and bring your wagon to prop the dish up!

Do you have an analog receiver to play with and work the skew?
 
Gizzer777, I think the dish was being used for 4DTV. The homeowner who gave it to him was using it up until a couple of weeks ago (I think they are moving). I should tell my friend to ask the homeowner if he still wants the 4DTV receiver

Digiblur, I was thinking of your setup on the wagon as I was moving the dish around, I even told my friend about it I was trying to get Ku digital, probably would have been a better bet to try C-band analog first. I left one of my commercial analog receivers with him (a Blonder Tongue 6185), and when I go back I will play with that. Might be tomorrow (today, later) if I can find the time.

My friend asked if this would be harder than aiming a DirecTV dish. I couldn't help it, had to smile and chuckle...
 
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LOL... I still haven't planted my dish in the yard yet. I have moved it to a few different CBand birds back and forth in the 90 degree areas. Been watching a little of the 4:2:2 and HD feeds popping up there.

Harded than a DirecTV eh? 4 bolts and a craftsman drill and you've got it mounted. The other day I moved someones 18 inch D* dish from their roof to the side of the house. I put it up on the pole, set the elevation, eye balled the direction, and went in the house and had 80%. Who needs a meter after you've done a few? I will have to say out of all the setups I've done, DSS, CBand, KU Band, etc. My motorized 36inch dish was the most challenging, as there is almost no room for error.
 
Went back over to help today. Stopped by Lowe's on the way and got four 80 pound bags of Quickrete (for starters, will probably need more, but the back of my car was dragging on the road )

He had picked up the mounting pole from the guy's house earlier, it weighs about 250 pounds and almost crushed his SUV. Looks like Katrina actually bent the pole slightly near the bottom, and tore half of the guy's house off with it when it went. My friend is looking for an auger now to drill the hole, I advised him to go four feet. The end of the pole that is going into the ground is already crushed, so the concrete should keep the pole from twisting.

I'm not looking forward to getting that beast of a dish up on that pole once it's in the ground though....
 
Bad memories!



Geez Tron:
Ya just made me remember putting in the pole and dish on my 8 footer upteen yrs ago...uggh. Too old now!

Good luck with it!
jeff
 
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