Another Newbie Success Story

[JohninSD]

I've been playing around with this stuff for about 4 months now. Started off with a Sonicview 8000HD and a terrestrial antenna to get OTA channels. Bought the SV from Shop4FTA - shipped quickly, received in good order. Had to upload version 4.43 of the firmware to get the VHF channels to work, never have got channel 30 to scan in - that's the local PBS affiliate. It's virtual channel 15, real channel 30. THe SV hesitates at the right freq (569 MHZ) but won't lock the channel. Turns out it doesn't really matter but I'm still curious about why it won't work.

The next step was to add a dish so I could get Create TV from the AMC 21 satellite so I ordered a WS9036 dish and a WSI DMX521 LNBF from Galaxy Marketing. Again the items were shipped quickly and arrived in fine shape. I mounted the dish to the patio cover on my house using the mount that came with it. My patio is on the south side of the house looking out over a canyon so this seemed like the best place to mount the dish. After a few hours of playing around I got AMC 21 tweaked in nicely, picking up several channels of PBS. The SV menu did not list the AMC 21 satellite so I had to enter it manually. This is one place where Sonicview could do better - it let me name the satellite but has no way of entering the longitude. No big deal with a fixed dish but the next step was to add a motor.

I ordered a DG380 motor from Sadoun - again it was shipped quickly and arrived in good shape. I removed the dish from the mount and re-checked the mount for plumb - it was off a bit so I spent some time on it, bending things here and there and adding a few washers in strategic places to get the mount as near plumb as I could. Next I mounted the motor on the mount and went to bolt the dish to it - the motor shaft is larger than the mount so I needed to use longer bolts than the dish had come with. After a trip to the hardware store I completed this step and connected the cables.

The nearest to due South satellite for me is SatMex 5 at 116.8 W - I'm at 117.2 W so this is pretty close. I used this satellite and the standard alignment methods found in various places on the web and did the alignment - now I have satellites from 97 W to 125 W working nicely.

I'm thinking the next step might be to replace the single LNBF with an Invacom Quad - I see some interesting channels listed on Lyngsat as having circular polarization and this seems like the simplest way to add this capability. The other option might be to see if I can use the circular LNBF I have leftover after canceling my sub to DirecTV - they wanted me to send back the receivers but said to just keep the dish and LNBF. Anyone done this? Seems like with the 1 meter dish I wouldn't have to get the circular LNBF exactly in the focus - or would I?

 

[1ADAM12]

Welcome.

I have trouble in my area with OTA PBS channels and have to use AMC21. The FCC reallly screwed propogation field strength levels badly. Commercial guys have had some relief but PBS is too timid to go up against them.

Really nice work getting things set up so well.

I chose to side mount a circular lnbf on my motorised dish using a 6 degree offset so that when I'm on AMC21 going to ION or NASA is just a switch away.

 

[phlatwound]

Congrats on your success. :up

Don't know what channels you saw on Lyngsat but there is not a whole lot of circular stuff that is in the clear, and sometimes Lyngsat is either out of date or just plain wrong..

 

[rdehaven]

Congrats and welcome to a fellow San Diegan. Go Chargers!

The nearest to due South satellite for me is SatMex 5 at 116.8 W - I'm at 117.2 W so this is pretty close. I used this satellite and the standard alignment methods found in various places on the web and did the alignment - now I have satellites from 97 W to 125 W working nicely.

 

[Tron]

I'm thinking the next step might be to replace the single LNBF with an Invacom Quad - I see some interesting channels listed on Lyngsat as having circular polarization and this seems like the simplest way to add this capability. The other option might be to see if I can use the circular LNBF I have leftover after canceling my sub to DirecTV - they wanted me to send back the receivers but said to just keep the dish and LNBF. Anyone done this? Seems like with the 1 meter dish I wouldn't have to get the circular LNBF exactly in the focus - or would I?

The Invacom Quad would be the best way to do this, as the Quad will allow both circular and linear signals from the same orbital position at the same time (both share the same feedhorn, which is mounted at boresight). If you strap a DBS (DirecTV or Dish) LNBF next to your existing linear LNBF, you will be dealing with a difference of a few degrees (if your dish is pointed at, say, 97W on the linear, the offset DBS circular LNBF will be hitting a few degrees east or west, depending on which side of the boresight you mount the DBS LNBF). Another thing to consider is that only the oldest DirecTV LNBFs (from the old, original single-satellite dishes) will work well for this, as the newer multi-satellite ones have three feedhorns and a switch in a single unit.