My eastern horizon has always been blocked by woods in the back 1/3 of the yard; my existing 12' Orbitron (professionally installed 18 years ago) can't see past 30W. In fact, over the years, the trees have grown to the point that it's completely blocked during summer tree leaf-out.
So I got a few trash trees taken out along the eastern edge of the property, past the woods line; conferred with Mike Kohl on a system, and received everything I needed last week - a nice Patriot 85-E dish, a Fortec Star positioner, and a Pansat PT-5600 LNBF. My Fence Guy had already done the hard work of installing the pole - so on Sunday morning, I was ready to install.
With absolutely no experience to guide me - and the minimal documentation that comes with the motor and (especially) the dish, supplemented by resources on the net - I'm happy to say the installation was a success. The learning experience was equal parts frustration and reward, as all good learning experiences are.
I now have perfect reception at 30W, including all the channels from the Arabic world, the great Cuban and Spanish stuff, and especially the weak SCPC channels from Argentina. I am about to integrate the new dish with my existing Vantage 1100, and scan for DVB-S2 signals - the Uruguayan mux is calling my name.
And the best surprise of all for me was that I found I have no problem at all getting a good signal on Telstar 12 at 15W. USALS wouldn't move the dish there, but I noticed that I could manually move the dish down that far (and further) with the buttons on the motor - so I took a chance setting that position with DiSEqC 1.2 and it worked just fine. I'm really happy to have Trace TV and the Angolan station TPA.
As a bonus, I spotted a couple of signals on NSS7 at 22W, too - Myanmar TV4 was there on Sunday (but not last night), and I also saw a pre-feed of this week's Steven Colbert's shows from Iraq. Not sure how much traffic is there on a regular basis.
Next project - a BUD install with circular feed to look at the same part of the arc. I can do it!
nc-jay
So I got a few trash trees taken out along the eastern edge of the property, past the woods line; conferred with Mike Kohl on a system, and received everything I needed last week - a nice Patriot 85-E dish, a Fortec Star positioner, and a Pansat PT-5600 LNBF. My Fence Guy had already done the hard work of installing the pole - so on Sunday morning, I was ready to install.
With absolutely no experience to guide me - and the minimal documentation that comes with the motor and (especially) the dish, supplemented by resources on the net - I'm happy to say the installation was a success. The learning experience was equal parts frustration and reward, as all good learning experiences are.
I now have perfect reception at 30W, including all the channels from the Arabic world, the great Cuban and Spanish stuff, and especially the weak SCPC channels from Argentina. I am about to integrate the new dish with my existing Vantage 1100, and scan for DVB-S2 signals - the Uruguayan mux is calling my name.
And the best surprise of all for me was that I found I have no problem at all getting a good signal on Telstar 12 at 15W. USALS wouldn't move the dish there, but I noticed that I could manually move the dish down that far (and further) with the buttons on the motor - so I took a chance setting that position with DiSEqC 1.2 and it worked just fine. I'm really happy to have Trace TV and the Angolan station TPA.
As a bonus, I spotted a couple of signals on NSS7 at 22W, too - Myanmar TV4 was there on Sunday (but not last night), and I also saw a pre-feed of this week's Steven Colbert's shows from Iraq. Not sure how much traffic is there on a regular basis.
Next project - a BUD install with circular feed to look at the same part of the arc. I can do it!
nc-jay
