The 12 foot Unimesh is alive!

[Comptech]

Finally got it together today and need to fine tune tomorrow. The battery in my Birdog gave up today, so tomorrow will be a tv and reciever athe the dish along with a tape measure.Now if only my POD would show up with my cable and tools and some other small issues like furniture I can get going full bore. I have it tracking the arc fairly well now, but no better than my old 8 foot channel master. Oh, did I mention my 1.2 meter Ku dish is in the Pod also?. When it all is here the 12 foot Unimesh will have a Geosat C-2 lnbf and the 1.2 will have a Invacom quad hooked to a Zinwell 4x4 swith and all will be good again.. If the 12 footer doesnt work to well I have a dual c-band feed and a pair of CalAmp mini mags waiting for it. Pictures tomorrow.

 

[turbosat]

comptech, dazzle us with some photos when you get time! I'm sure you'll get the bugs all worked out soon and be tickled with that 12 dish. I had an old rattly half broken 12' dish a year or two back, and that thing got 100% signal readings on everything, lol. A big big dish is hard to beat.

 

[Comptech]

Pictures are coming tomorrow for sure, I am proud of thid baby. Another question though. If I use the dual feed with the CalAmp LNB's I know I need a power inserter for the vertical side. I have a old D*sh SW64 switch with a inserter rated at 24 volts DC. Could I use just the inserter to solve my problem?

 

[tvropro]

12 foot Unimesh Gee thats familiar. 12 footers are harder to tune since they have a narrow beamwidth. But when you hit that sweet spot, they smoke!

 

[dashaund]

Yay Nick! Looks like we made a good "rescue" of those dishes and put them back to work! Mine is working pretty well too, just need a little fine tuning, I'm not pulling in those weaker TPs as well as I'd like too. Too bad my back went out again, may be a while before I can make it happen

 

[Comptech]

Yay Nick! Looks like we made a good "rescue" of those dishes and put them back to work! Mine is working pretty well too, just need a little fine tuning, I'm not pulling in those weaker TPs as well as I'd like too. Too bad my back went out again, may be a while before I can make it happen

Let me know when you want to tweak it and I will come over and help. I just finally got mine cabled up yesterday and am off the arc beyond 116.8 west. If it don't rain I will try to tweak it today,but first I have to finish unloading the Pod and find places for everything before I break my back walking through the house.Hope your back heals soon, Nick

 

[Cadsulfide]

Comptech;

Toss in a couple of pix of the new ranchette!

 

[Comptech]

Comptech;

Toss in a couple of pix of the new ranchette!

Will do. Finally got it aimed well today while unpacking and moving in. Sigle person operation here,so it is play with the dish, unload the pod,put stuff away,play with the dish,I think you get the idea.I will take pictures tomorrow if the weather is good and post them.Still missing my1.2 Ku though,but that will have to wait until I find a job. My HH120 finally bit the dust so I need a new motor.But the improvement from the 8 foot CM to the 12 foot unimesh will make me forget about the Ku for now. Well almost,need the Ku for the Clemson games!

 

[pro96]

Pictures can say 10000000000000000000000000000000 words ...

 

[Comptech]

A couple of Pics

Now my camera broke, but got a couple pics before it died. Don't mind the cabeling work in progress need to rent a trencher to bury PVC and the RG11,cat5 and low voltage 16 gauge wire for about 200 feet.

 

[Fizbi]

WOW!

Is that BIG or what?!

You could farm that dish out to NASA!

 

[Comptech]

Nah, just looks big, thats only a six foot ladder next to it in the second picture.The women are right,size does matter!I have been using coolsat 5000 for years and never seen the quality meter go to 99 before!

 

[turbosat]

Good work. I bet it does get some signal. Looks much better than that old piece of junk I had thrown together a couple of years back. But you feel like you've done something when you put a 12footer up by yourself, after that I think building a ferris wheel would've been easy.

 

[Comptech]

Other than the last panel at the top it wasn't too bad, lifting the mount onto the pole reminded me that I am getting old though.

 

[tvropro]

Glad to see someone else on Satguys with the same dish I have. I've had my 12XL Unimesh since 1989 and loved every minute owning it. You will notice how a 12 foot excels when you tune in weak channels. Bigger is always Better

 

[dashaund]

Awesome Nick! I would've gotten the 12 but from what I've read it's a little bit more difficult for a novice, so I went with the 10. But I'm happy with the 10! Maybe sometime I'll find another 12. I'm watching some football right now on it with my AZBox. WOW!!! Looks amazing. You don't realize how much DirecTV's HD is compressed until you watch the master feed.

 

[Comptech]

Glad to see someone else on Satguys with the same dish I have. I've had my 12XL Unimesh since 1989 and loved every minute owning it. You will notice how a 12 foot excels when you tune in weak channels. Bigger is always Better

That is just not right looking at your avatar and putting that stament in bold! But anyway your right, I went from a 6 foot to a 8foot in Florida and thought it was a great improvement. Today I checked Rick's and tried every thing listed and got everything with very high quality readings.I was going to change the feed to the dual C with the mini mags, but I am doing fine with the C2 lnbf. I will probally try it one day but how much better can you get than the high 90's in quality?

 

[Comptech]

Awesome Nick! I would've gotten the 12 but from what I've read it's a little bit more difficult for a novice, so I went with the 10. But I'm happy with the 10! Maybe sometime I'll find another 12.

It took some serious tweaking, but I think it is there. Thanks to Iceberg in the c2 lnbf thread I figured out I was going nowhere when he said the lnbf was 90 degrees out for some reason,yet the 922 thought it was right. So I set the 922 to lnbf rotated 90 degrees,put my skew mark at 3 o'clock and the whole setup works fine.Sent the dish to 135 west, got on the ladder and tweaked the lnbf and I think I am there. Thanks again for the dish find.

 

[dashaund]

Thanks again for the dish find.

No problem, it was a pleasure. I'm glad I could help a fellow FTA'er out, and I CERTAINLY appreciate all the help you've given me, and I'm sure I'll need a hand here and there in the future. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

 

[tvropro]

That is just not right looking at your avatar and putting that stament in bold! But anyway your right, I went from a 6 foot to a 8foot in Florida and thought it was a great improvement. Today I checked Rick's and tried every thing listed and got everything with very high quality readings.I was going to change the feed to the dual C with the mini mags, but I am doing fine with the C2 lnbf. I will probally try it one day but how much better can you get than the high 90's in quality?

The dish in the background of my avatar is not my dish. It's just something I came up messing with in photoshop. Click on my avatar to see my 12XL.

12 foot dishes have that extra edge, going from a 39 to 40 db gain on a 10 foot to almost 43 makes a big difference. (3db is doubling the signal) You need to look at the efficiency and gain of antennas since not all dishes are created equal. A poor designed 10 foot can be stomped on by a well designed 8 foot. But usually bigger does have more gain and works better. You probably would gain some more going the dual LNB feed vs the lnbf. You also may want to look into an ADL. The RP1C that I use make the 12 foot even kick more butt and matches very well with the Unimesh.