Best Way to Receive Whole Ku Arc With Fixed Dishes?

gabshere said:

i used two conduit holders off the backside of the original holder and put a 1/2 inch conduit in it and then you can use your SatAv holders from there.

if i can find a picture when i get home i will post it

EDITED to add "you can"

EDIT to add pics

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That's pretty slick George!!!

Thanks a bunch!

I managed to get outside between the rain sprinkles, and cold NW wind and engineer a new conduit rail on the Primestar 84e to be used on 89W and 83W.

I followed Gabshere's ingenious model above, and if you haven't looked at his pictures, scroll back one page and take a look.

But I chose to stick with the method that I have found to be successful on the Prodelin using the ground clamps to hang onto the conduit instead of conduit holders.

I had to pre-assemble a single LNBF on the rail and take it to the dish for measurements to find where to drill the holes to mount the rail to make it the proper height for the black holders I got from SatAV. The black holders with bolts through them have more twist adjustment than the conduit holders would have.

I am going to leave the central LNBF in place to find the best bore-sight between 89W and 83W, probably on 85, or find 85W and nudge it slightly west.

I will then pull the central LNBF off, and adjust the two for 89 and 83. The focal distance is only off from the OEM LNBF by about 1/4". If that doesn't work out, I can use a hose clamp holder and move the rail in a good bit. It is adjustable on the bolts I drilled through the support arm.

Once the center is out of the way, there will be plenty of room for adjustment towards the support arm if necessary or away as required.

I probably won't be able to work on it tomorrow. Have real work to do, and then errands after that, but Friday is supposed to be sunny and warmer anyway. I'll probably wait to take my tuner box out there and line it up.

Now that I have a plan, I'll be able to finish up the Primestars pretty quickly.

It is very nice to work on the ground 25 feet from warmth and tools. It will be easy after they are assembled to take them on the roof for final destination.

Take a look and tell me what you think?

gabshere said:

Great Job , the pipe grounding clamps are much sturdier looking than the conduit holding clamps i used .

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Thanks George!

It was your idea that gave me the inspiration. I too think the pipe clamps will hold better.

Cadsulfide wrote:

They look like birds on a wire, the symmetry is awesome!

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Thanks! They will look a little different when they are tuned in and the center LNBF is taken out.

Tron wrote:

Great Primestar mod, Linuxman! Makes me want to do a project with the 84es Stogie gave me...

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We will be waiting on your thread and pics.

Corrado wrote:

Linuxman, I love your work with the Prodelin.

It inspires me to get going further with mine when the snow melts. I can only tie up the family viewing for just so long with here. I'm awaiting my Prodelin #2 in the spring for my own use.

Any long term thoughts about water collecting in the LNBF when used on the offset dish? I've had a simple plastic sandwich bag covering the opening over mine. Thinking about the end of a plastic bottle as a retrofit to keep mother nature out.

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I saw where you had posted that. I used the bottom of a half gallon milk jug on one of mine. The "V" was just about right and I used silicon to seal it. Mine was over the whole Primestar feed-horn.

The prime focus LNBFs seem to work just fine on these offset dishes.

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It worked much better than I had expected as a firm believer in bigger dishes for C-Band, I was pleasantly surprised.

VoomVoom wrote:

I still think you should skew the dish...??

I think you should consider skewing the Primestar's too....

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I am sure the Prodelin could be skewed, but I am not the person to engineer that. The Primestars would be easier if I had a bunch of spare DirectPC dishes laying around. The Primestars with multiple LNBFs I currently have in service work great, and they aren't skewed, so I am not going down that road right now.

I think an idea for skewing the dish could be achieved, with some work? But, this it a good secondary solution, I think?

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If it wasn't working so well as is, I would consider a slanted rail, but it is a round dish, and theoretically very little would be gained by having a slanted rail versus slanting the LNBFs themselves.

I am sure one of the engineers on the forum will correct me if I am wrong.

Too cold and windy to do anything today, but I plan to get 89W and 83W tuned in tomorrow on the first dish.

More tomorrow!

The weather man lied!!

It didn't warm up to near what they had predicted, but I went out anyway and spend over two hours.

Still on the 89W-83W dish. Started out by trying to center the dish on 85W like I planned, but couldn't get 83W close enough to the center to make it work. Then tried centering the dish on 87W, but didn't like the signal on 83W.

Finally decided to center the dish on 83W, and the results were the best for the day.

I left it there, but will probably take the plastic cover off the SL2 and attach it the way I have in the past in the center, and leave the rail on for 89W and any future satellites. It won't be the first LNBF that I have taken the plastic off of, and won't be the last. I have a SL1 on the roof right now that has been naked for over a year, and it hasn't been hurt in the least.

I stopped today with 60% SQ on the RTN feeds on 83W, and had 60% SQ on ABC News on 89W. Not too bad, but I think I can do better.

As you can see by the pics below that I am not centered on 83W with the LNBF mounted the way it is. Of course fixing that will change 89W a little, but that is not a big problem. The only reason I have the LNBF on the dish is for that news feed.

I can see now that a 72W-74W will be almost impossible, so I will probably put up an extra dish to fill that slot, or put 79W and 74W on a dish and 72 with a dish on it's own. Decisions, decisions! Maybe put a DBS LBNF on one of them as a partner.

I'll figure out something to do with them.

I did learn something today though. It is my opinion that unless you are using a holder made for two LNBFs at 4 degrees spacing, you should not try to center between them. There did not seem to be enough room even at 6 degrees to have the support arm in the center and the two LNBFs on the sides. As you can see I abandoned the black holders and moved to the hose clamps again.

It won't be warm again until Monday, but may get 2 or 3 days next week with warmer weather. I'll pick back up on this dish then before moving to the next one.

Here are today's pics:

Was really too cold to go out and work on the 89w-83W dish today, but I did it anyway.

Stripped the SL2 in the center spot and attached it naked, adjusted the dish, and still only had 60% SQ on the RTN feeds. Still only 60% SQ on the 89W ABC news feeds. I did however put on an LNBf for 74W to pull in ONN which is at 45% SQ at 9 degrees out from center. I didn't think that was too bad.

I have to keep reminding myself, that this project is for easy channel switching and watching, and not for SQ contests.

Having 74W on this dish allows for 72W to have a dish by itself, and I might throw on 79W, and a dbs for 61.5. Just depends on what I think when I get to it.

I don't have pictures right now. My wife took the camera for the day, so I will post pictures tomorrow.

This dish is ready for the roof, and I will bring another one down tomorrow and start on it.

Supposed to be in the 40s tomorrow and 50s Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope to get another couple of dishes knocked out.

It will soon be time to start putting the dishes on the roof and final adjustments and to start tying them all together with the wiring and switches.

I am looking forward to the finished product.

Still too cold for me to go out and work today, but here are the pics from yesterday as promised.

I forgot to mention that I had gone back and searched for Keith Brannen's postings from days gone by which gave me the inspiration to try and pull in 74W on this dish. Thanks Keith for writing your experiences on the forum for the rest of us to follow.

As I look over the list for chosen satellites, there are only a couple remaining.

I have the GeosatPro 90CM dish with LNBFs for 101W-97W, a dish for 72W-?, and a dish for Hispasat.

The Hispasat dish is already setup, just need to change out the LNBF. I will try and setup the 101W-97W dish tomorrow, and I think I will wait until everything goes to the roof for 72W.

I need to get started building my brain box and making it water-tight. I want to get the Ku part finished before starting the non-moving C-Band part.

Here are the pics:

Keith Brannen said:

Your quite welcome, this site and people's experiments have always been informative and have given me quite a few ideas, just wish I had some extra dishes (and space to put them)! Your experiment with the Prodelin was definitely a prime example of innovation.

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Thanks! The Prodelin was a challenge for me to get the right mix of satellites that I wanted to actually view. The C-Band was the icing on the cake.

I too have also found what others have written and pictures they have posted to be excellent for idea gathering. I may not implement exactly what they have done, but have used their ideas for springboards into my own designs.

As far as the 72 dish, besides 79, you might want to try for 63 on the other side and the SCETV feeds. Unfortunately I don't have an LNB on 63, so have no idea what the signal strength is like (hopefully strong, unlike the RTN feeds on 83), but there's no harm in trying! If I ever get another dish I have been thinking of trying for a 72 and 63 combination (would then mean my 72/74 LNB could be permamently on 74), so will be interested in any results.

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I think the signal on 63W is fine, but the programming seems to be primarily PBS, with one channel dedicated to the SC State Government. I might throw on 79W even though there isn't much there as far as permanent channels, or maybe a DBS for occasional feeds from 61.5W. Just don't know, but I'll think of something.

Managed to tune in the 101W-97W dish today.

I bought a Glorystar system (receiver, dish, LNBfs, and installation kit) back in December, got sick around that time and have never finished hooking it up.

Today I put the GeosatPro 90CM dish back on the tuning mount, and tuned it in. I had never tried tuning a dish with dual LNBFs in the same bracket before, and it was a little different for me. I need to get the proper mast size for this dish. I bought the mount locally, and they were out of the proper sized mast, so I grabbed the adapter you see in the picture which isn't optimal. I also need to shim the mount up a little to get the mast plumb.

I still managed to get KUIL on 101W with a 45% SQ, and the weak TPs on 97W with 60% SQ. All others on both satellites are booming. Once I get the proper mast, and tweak the plumbness, I think the dish/LNBF combo will be excellent.

So by using the SL2 dual output LNBFs, I can use this dish with the Glorystar Receiver as it was bought for, and also use the dish for my total non-moving dish system.

I ran the wire into the building and have the GeosatPRO DSR-100c receiver operational in my showroom finally.

Love that signal meter. Behaves almost exactly like my Pansat 3500 meter, and the numbers are giant and bright on the screen with audible beeps. All necessary functionality for an old man with fading eyes.

If this receiver was fully diseqc 1.1 compatible, I might buy another couple of them.

I included a screen shot of the meter too.

Here are the pics of the 101W-97W dish and LNBF setup:

SatelliteAV said:

DiSEqC 1.1 should be an easy add. We will add this request to the development list.

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WOW!!! :up

Now that is the way a manufacturer should step up to the plate and provide the features that users want!!

SatelliteAV has always done a great job supporting the equipment they sell.

Way to go Brian!!!

From reading the review on the DVR-1100c, I see that Channel Master can be used to edit the channels.

Well after bugging Brain about it, he pointed out that I just needed to make my list in Channelmaster and to Import/Export it as a Conaxsat list. What a breeze...
Load it on a USB drive, hit Menu -> Left -> Left -> Down -> OK and push up once to go to the last thing added to the drive. Hit OK again and it loads right up.

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Can Channel Master be used on the DSR-100c as well?

If so, which cable, straight or null, and choose Conaxsat as above?

Any answers would be appreciated.

Adding diseqc 1.1 and Channel Master capabilities would put these two receivers in the top of the league.