Understand Poor Man's SuperDish

[Stargazer]

I have an old Bob Jones University satellite dish with lnbf in which works. I also have some Dish 500's with legacy twins, dual lnbf's, sw-21 switches, and an sw-42 switch, along with some PrimeStar dishes with the lnbf's. I pointed the BJU satellite dish to 105 and get signals as high as 90%. Can I use an sw-21 switch to cascade a legacy Dish 500 twin to the BJU dish pointing at 105 to receive 105, 110, and 119 on the same receiver? Can I use the sw-42 switch on a PrimeStar dish pointing at 105 to work in conjunction with a Dish 500? If so how would I go about this and what are my options with what I have using an sw-21 switch or an sw-42 switch.

 

[Stargazer]

It is only picking up odd transponders on 105 with the BJU dish even when I dont have the sw-21 switch connected and have only have that one dish connected to the receiver. I did a switch test.

 

[HokieEngineer]

That means the lnb on your 105 dish doesnt switch polarity. Go on ebay and get a dual polarity fss ku lnb. It switches from horizontal to vertical depending on what voltage the receiver sends, +14 or +18v. I had an old one too that only got the odd transponders too. I think I paid like $5 shipped for a new lnb. Make sure you get one that does horizontal/vertical not circular...

 

[Stargazer]

What type of switch do I need to get the PrimeStar lnbf's to work since it has Horizontal and Vertical polarities?

 

[HokieEngineer]

Works with the normal e* switches... When I had mine setup, I had a twin dish 500 lnb hooked into port1 of a sw21, and my 105 lnb into port2.

Pretty much any combo will work, you just cant have two sw21s in the setup, since only the first will communicate.

 

[Yahkin]

What type of switch do I need to get the PrimeStar lnbf's to work since it has Horizontal and Vertical polarities?

Does the BJ sat have 2 outputs?

Does the Primestar have 2 outputs?

If the sat has 2 outputs, then one is H and the other is V. You can use an SW64 or SW44 to combine them. Those 2 switches lock the polarity, so they will work with the primestar LNB. The 42's and 21's will not do the trick.

My suggestion is to use a SW64, and hook the Dual LNBFs from the 500 into the top 4 ports (1A,1B,2A,2B), and then put the H feed from the primestar into 3A, and the V feed into 3B. (Note: You will not be able to use your 500 twins with the 64 or 44)

The above is what I am running.

 

[Stargazer]

Darn, I have no 64 or 44 switch. Can I just connect up one wire to the Primestar lnbf on the polarity I want to use (only getting half the transponders in)? What would the horizontal polarity give me, the even or odd transponders? When I used the BJ dish (that has only one output) it was giving me only odd transponders.

I read a while back where someone that was using the PrimeStar lnbf on a PrimeStar dish for FTA and got some type of switch at Radio Shack or some other electronic store to get the polarities to switch on its own but do not know what type of switch was used.

 

[Stargazer]

And I found out that the locals in my area, are in fact up, Channel 3 - NBC - WSAZ, Channel 8, ABC - WCHS, Channel 11, FOX - WVAH, Not up -> Channel 13 - CBS - WOWK, WB-30, and some PBS's. This is the Charleston/Huntington, WV DMA.

When I hooked up the BJU dish last night I got a great signal, as high as 90% on some transponders, but I could not get any channels to come in and only the SuperDish channel showed up in the program guide. It would stop in the middle of downloading EPG information from the satellite.

 

[Yahkin]

Darn, I have no 64 or 44 switch. Can I just connect up one wire to the Primestar lnbf on the polarity I want to use (only getting half the transponders in)? What would the horizontal polarity give me, the even or odd transponders? When I used the BJ dish (that has only one output) it was giving me only odd transponders.

Well, you could hook up just one side to a SW21, and it would work for the transponders on that polarity. Your locals are on TP4 and TP9. TP4 is horizontal polarity, and TP9 is Vertical. Here is the breakdown:

TP4 - Horizontal
WCHS TV 8 (ABC) Huntington WCHS 7315
WOWK TV 13 (CBS) Charleston WOWK 7316
WSAZ TV 3 (NBC) Charleston WSAZ 7317
WVAH TV 11 (Fox) Charleston WVAH 7318
WHCP TV 30 (WB) Portsmouth, OH WHCP 7319

TP9 - Vertical
WPBY TV 33 (PBS) Huntington WPBY 7321 9
WOUB TV 20 (PBS) Athens, OH WOUB 7322 9
WKAS TV 25 (PBS/KET) Ashland, KY WKAS 7324 9
WOSU TV 34 (PBS) Columbus, OH
In Lieu of WPBO TV 42 Portsmouth, OH WPBO 7325

If you are not subbed to these locals, you will get nothing but 7000 on your screen. There is no free preview of these that I know of.

I read a while back where someone that was using the PrimeStar lnbf on a PrimeStar dish for FTA and got some type of switch at Radio Shack or some other electronic store to get the polarities to switch on its own but do not know what type of switch was used.

You would just need any old multiswitch that switches ports based on a 13/18 volt split. Your reciever sends either 13 or 18 volts down to let the switch know which polarity you want.

 

[Stargazer]

Good, all the channels I want are on the horizontal polarity, not interested in the ones on the vertical one. Which transponder is channel 7000 on? I am guessing an even one that uses horizontal polarity since I could not get it to come up last night on the BJU dish. I just looked at LyngSat and it states that BJU uses a vertical polarity on 1U. It says that transponder 7, a vertical polarity, is used for channel 7000, so I wonder why I could not pick that channel up? It was blank, nothing would show up.

 

[Stargazer]

Ok, I turned the receiver on and the first thing that showed up was "Congradulations! You have a SuperDISH system pointed at 105 W.L." and I flipped it to the signal strength screen and it showed transponder 7. This is using the BJU lnbf. I found the 121 satellite before I even found 105 yesterday.

I put a PrimeStar lnbf on the dish and use the Horizontal polarity output and it works. I have a Dish 500 with legacy twin hooked to the dish 2 side of the sw-21 switch. When I did the switch test it states that only even can be found on 105 (which is expected) and 119 even and odd comes in but it does not show that 110 even and odd comes in but it does show a signal for 110 even and odd transponders on the signal strength screen. The 110 channels do not show up.

 

[Yahkin]

That's right...you have a twin. The Twin has a built in SW21, so you can not hook it to another SW21. You will get the results that you are seeing.

Your twin will not work. Here's what you need to do:

Use your dual LNB's (2 seperate LNBs on the yoke). Run 1 cable from the 119 LNB into the left Sat 1 on your SW42. Run 1 cable from the 110 LNB into the left Sat 2 on the your SW42. Then run the output of your SW42 into port 1 on the SW21. Then your Primestar Horizontal into port 2 on the SW21. Do a check switch and you should be dancing.

 

[Stargazer]

OK, I thought the twin had a built in sw-42 switch instead of two sw-21 switches.

 

[MaintMan]

SW21

I do not know what type built in switch a twin 500 has but you can use SW21 with legacy twin LNB. Cannot use with DP 500 twin. I use sw21 for 61 sat with Legacy 500 twin.

 

[Stargazer]

The twin that I tried to use was a legacy, not a DishPro twin, cascading an sw-21 to it, got 105 and 119, 110 would not come in. I am going to try an sw-42 with two dual output lnbf's cascading an sw-21 off of that or are the sw-42's not able to have an sw-21 cascaded off of it?

 

[Yahkin]

My understanding is that you CAN cascade a 21 off of a 42. Never done it though. Just have to give it a try.