1 5/8" --> 2 3/8" PVC adaptor construction

[Shawn95GT]

Inspired by Stephan, I decided to give building an adaptor for my P* dish on a SG2100 from PVC.

Home Depot has 2' lengths of the schedule 40 PVC for dirt cheap. I got 1x 1 1/2" and 1x 2" for under $3 tax and all.

I cut two sections about 6" long (I eyeballed it) from each pipe and then cut a slit the length of the section of pipe using my air cut-off wheel.

Attached are the pics of where I'm at with it right now. I need to take the 2" pipe off and cut the slit a little bit wider so it can cinch down on the 1 1/2" pipe.

The 2" Schedule 40 PVC looks to be almost perfectly 2 3/8" on it's O.D.!

 

[Shawn95GT]

Opening the slot up to 3/16" or so did the trick. I'll try and mount it up tonight .

 

[PopcornNMore]

I am right behind you on this project. Tonight I picked up a 2 3/8" pole, 240 lbs. of cement, a mixing tub and a couple pieces of rebar. Now it is time to dig a hole.

I take it from your pictures that you did away with your idea of mounting a Dish Network mount to the back of your P* dish? This seemed like a good idea and would have greatly reduced the weight of the dish onto your H-H mount.

I believe I will just go ahead and install one of my 1.2M Channel Master dishes first and not use the P* dish as of yet. I would love to install several dishes, but I am married.

Keep up the good work, you are coming up with a lot of good ideas.

 

[Shawn95GT]

I am right behind you on this project. Tonight I picked up a 2 3/8" pole, 240 lbs. of cement, a mixing tub and a couple pieces of rebar. Now it is time to dig a hole.

Sounds like yours will be hurricane proof! I still have the singgle bag holding mine up. I think it'll be ok. It's 18" in the ground and 80# of cement down there. My dish is shielded from wind but if for whatever reason it goes over I'll do 3-4 bags and do it up right next time .

I take it from your pictures that you did away with your idea of mounting a Dish Network mount to the back of your P* dish? This seemed like a good idea and would have greatly reduced the weight of the dish onto your H-H mount.

I don't know If I buy that. The P* mount isn't THAT heavy. Once I took it off of the pole I decided to give it another chance. Putting that mount on also gave me a chance to get up and running with the cool sat right away because it just-so-happened that my pole was the exact same size as the P* one. It is also a lot sturdier than the baby P* bolted to the face of a Dish500.

I'll keep the Dish 500 around as plan B

I believe I will just go ahead and install one of my 1.2M Channel Master dishes first and not use the P* dish as of yet. I would love to install several dishes, but I am married.

Keep up the good work, you are coming up with a lot of good ideas.

I'm not married but engauged.. but I feel the same pressures. She already hates the dish in the back yard. Wait till I step up to a 1M or bigger dish :dev

I'll be interested to see the difference in performance you see with the 1.2M vs the Primestar. Is your P* the 84E (the big one)?

 

[PopcornNMore]

I may do the same thing and use the P* dish first just to get it setup and then switch to the SG2100 H-H mount and 1.2M dish.

Using my DirecTV Phase III dish (approx. 22" X 18") with the Coolsat 4000 Pro receiver I was able to pick up 4 Miami Florida channels from Echostar 7 with a quality level in the high 80's. This was from within my master bedroom looking out a window. You should have seen the look on my wife's face.

My P* dishes are StarChoice dishes made by Channel Master No. 3041221 and measures approx. 36" X 28". Is this the same size as yours? Is yours also made by Channel Master?

My 1.2M dishes are also made by Channel Master. I want to try adapting the StarChoice dish mount to work with this 1.2M dish. This will be my next project after I get my pole mounted.

Yes, I am making it hurricane proof. The hole will be 3 feet deep and about 18" in diameter. I will also be filling the inside of the pole with cement to the very top for added stability.

 

[Shawn95GT]

That sounds like a VERY similar dish. Mine is by ChannelMaster and about that size (maybe a tad shorter). It seems to be working out quite nice with the SG2100 .

 

[Shawn95GT]

Using the PVC mount I've got the P* tracking the arc beautifully.

When I first tried to put the P* mount on, I tightened it all the way down and it literally just fell off. I took the p* mount out to the garage and fired up the out air cut-off wheel again and cut off about 1/8" from the stop that makes it so you can't over tighten the clamp. This gave enough to hold it fairly steady.

I did notice while dialing the dish into the arc that if I tried hard enough (and it wasn't very hard to do) I could move the dish in relation to the motor . It still isn't tight enough.

I think I'm going todrill a hole all the way through the p* mount / PVC / SG2100 and send a bolt through the whole thing so it can't move. This will keep it nice while I'm using the P* Dish and so long as I don't dork the exiting hole I shouldn't hurt the motor any for any other dish I might decide to put on that motor.

 

[Stefan]

"When I first tried to put the P* mount on, I tightened it all the way down and it literally just fell off. I took the p* mount out to the garage and fired up the out air cut-off wheel again and cut off about 1/8" from the stop that makes it so you can't over tighten the clamp. This gave enough to hold it fairly steady."

Yes, this is the secret to getting it to work well. That and making sure the slit you cut in the larger 2" pipe is wide enough to allow it to compress enough. I thought I had mentioned this breifly in another post around here somewhere but I'm not sure. Anyway, I think you might need to cut more than 1/8" off of the stop. Then it should tighten up better. You can see where I cut this in the third pic attached to my post in this previous thread.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=66273

Anyway, if you cut that down a bit more I think you'll finds this will allow it to tighten enough that it doesn't slip or at least mine doesn't seem to. If that alone doesn't stop it then perhaps you need to resort to somehow using bolts as you described.

As for the primestar mount being too heavy, I don't think that's really a problem with the mounts for these smaller oval dishes so much as it is for the larger 1.0 and 1.2M dishes. The mounts for the 1.0 and 1.2 meter dishes are much heavier as the part that mates up to the dish is larger and also the mount seems to be constructed of much thicker steel. Also, while the 1.0M dish mounts were made to fit the same size 2 3/8" pole as these, I believe the 1.2M mounts may have been made to accomadate a larger 3" pole. So, for 1.0 and 1.2M primestar dishes there may be be better approaches that this. I believe the method Spyder mentioned may work better for the mounts on those primestar dishes.