Bad weekend sat wise. :-(

[B.J.]

All last week, I had my BUD sitting on one of the sat where I expected to find a preseason NFL game on Saturday, because I've been having occasional problems moving the dish, and rain was expected with the tropical storm coming up the coast. When I started searching for the game, my aging Drake 1824 went absolutely beserk when I tried to nudge the aim just a bit to peak a signal, and the darn thing went all the way to the eastern horizon, and JAMMED there, while the receiver was saying that it was at the western limit. I couldn't get the thing to move either way. Connected a battery, but couldn't get it to move, even with a battery charger connected.
So I gave up on C-band and tried to find a Ku feed. Had problems trying to find one I saw posted, so I went out, and tried to take the coax off my SG2100. Big mistake. The darn fitting basically unscrewed instead of the coax coming off. :rant:
So now, I had completely lost C-band, and had lost most of Ku (I still had a fixed dish aimed at AMC21).

Yesterday, I took a car battery out to the dish, and got the C-band dish back, however I'm reluctant to connect it to the Drake since it seems to want to go beserk. I may switch to my Monty 50/55 .

I brought the SG2100 inside to look at it, and took it apart. I was happy to see, that apparently nothing got ripped out of the insides. I *LOOKS* like the outside just screws in and pushes contact agains the inside part of the fitting, although I'm not positive. The big problem now, is that I'm having a hard time getting the fitting in there tight, because the hole is too small for any of my sockets. I think I have an idea though. I'll report back tomorrow.

 

[Blindowl1234]

As they say when it rains it pours.....Everytime I think of trying something different, tweaking this or that....I think twice. Something so easy seems to cause something to go wrong that takes hours to fix. Good luck geting things back together. Blind

 

[TimLones111]

As they say when it rains it pours.....Everytime I think of trying something different, tweaking this or that....I think twice. Something so easy seems to cause something to go wrong that takes hours to fix. Good luck geting things back together. Blind

Exactly why I dont want to even attempt to "peak" my dish outside..It took a friend and I 4 hours to get a Ku signal anywhere..i am afraid that if I move the dish at all, I'll lose everything again..Ive been pretty lucky..The motor has worked pretty flawlessly over the spring and summer..

 

[brentb636]

"I brought the SG2100 inside to look at it, and took it apart. I was happy to see, that apparently nothing got ripped out of the insides. I *LOOKS* like the outside just screws in and pushes contact agains the inside part of the fitting, although I'm not positive. The big problem now, is that I'm having a hard time getting the fitting in there tight, because the hole is too small for any of my sockets. I think I have an idea though. I'll report back tomorrow."
I had the identical issue only about 3 weeks ago with my SG2100. It seems the barrel connector just threads into the cheesy bracket and pulls out without much help. I threaded my connector back in, then put a NUT inside the case , as well as outside the case, and tightened the outside nut down. The inside nut becomes a strain relief, so hopefully it doesn't happen again. Here's the tool I used, it's a "security" wrench for cable system.
Good luck, BJ.

 

[Mr Tony]

Dang BJ...that sucks.

 

[Mr Tony]

As they say when it rains it pours.....Everytime I think of trying something different, tweaking this or that....I think twice. Something so easy seems to cause something to go wrong that takes hours to fix. Good luck geting things back together. Blind

that only seems to happen when its minus 10 out or plus 90 out and lots of humidity

when its really nice out it usually takes just a little bit of time

 

[B.J.]

...
I had the identical issue only about 3 weeks ago with my SG2100. It seems the barrel connector just threads into the cheesy bracket and pulls out without much help. I threaded my connector back in, then put a NUT inside the case , as well as outside the case, and tightened the outside nut down. The inside nut becomes a strain relief, so hopefully it doesn't happen again. Here's the tool I used, it's a "security" wrench for cable system.
Good luck, BJ.

Thanks. I ground down a cheap socket to fit inside the hole, but it wasn't deep enough to clear the barrel connector. I tried to drill out the socket on my drill press, but the darn socket was too hard for my drill to cut. So I put a couple washers underneath the nut. It's on there very securely now, and I don't think that you need a nut inside, because the outside nut will pull the inside up against the case. Unfortunately, I seem to not be making contact, so I think I'm going to have to take off the other side to be able to work on the connector, and get it to make contact before putting them in the holes. But I'm going to play with it a bit first before going that route. The motor does seem to be able to turn though, as I powered it up, and it moves east and west via the buttons, but it's the LNB connector that I messed up, and no power seems to be coming out of that.

 

[B.J.]

Wow.... I actually got the thing working again!!

The connector that had come off wasn't making contact, and to work with it easier, I took the other one off enough to loosen the nut so that I could pull the whole circuit board off the case. I then played with screwing the bad one in, checking with an ohm-meter for continuity, bending the wire inside the connector a bit, screwing the thing in again, check for continuity, etc. I finally got it to make contact. Tightened it up put it back on the case, used my washers and ground down socket wrench to secure it. Put the case back together. I had marked the elevation settings, so I just put them back where they were, put it back on the pole, put the TV on a known station, and moved the whole mount on the pole until I heard audio from the channel come in. Was then able to move from sat to sat fine. First time a repair like that went so smoothly!
I was initially worried, because I unscrewed 4 screws that were behind a label that said that if I removed that label the warranty was void. I didn't care about the warranty, but I figured that if they had a label like that, that I needed to unscrew those screws to get it apart. Turns out I didn't need to touch those screws. They were attached to two little blocks of metal at the back of the motor shaft. I was afraid that they were some kind of adjustment, but I just tightened them all up again, and everything seems to work fine.

Now.... on to seeing if I can get C-band working again. Then once that is going, I have to get my main computer running again. Forgot to mention that I also lost that last week. It's the computer that has my Twinhan, Broadlogic, TT-3200, and Air2PC cards in it.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Hi B.J.

Man, sorry to hear that your equipment went awry on you there! Good thing you are getting most of it back to normal, though. Sounds like a bit of Murphy's Law was at hand! LOL Well, at least you know how to recover and repair it all, even if it isn't a pleasurable task.

It seems that we all get bit by the gremlins and Murphy from one time to another, but, I suppose that is all part of the hobby. Everytime something nasty happens, it is only an opportunity to learn something new. At least that is how I attempt to view such situations - with a few added curse words! LOL

RADAR

 

[B.J.]

Hi B.J.

Man, sorry to hear that your equipment went awry on you there! Good thing you are getting most of it back to normal, though. Sounds like a bit of Murphy's Law was at hand! LOL Well, at least you know how to recover and repair it all, even if it isn't a pleasurable task.

It seems that we all get bit by the gremlins and Murphy from one time to another, but, I suppose that is all part of the hobby. Everytime something nasty happens, it is only an opportunity to learn something new. At least that is how I attempt to view such situations - with a few added curse words! LOL

RADAR

Yeah, I'm used to problems like this, and as you say treat them as learning experiences. This one was particularly annoying though, because I've gone for about 15 years missing only 2 games of a particular NFL team, but now thanks to this (and a storm the previous week), I've missed 2 games in a row. Hopefully though, I think I'm back on line on C-band too. Programmed in first sat on the Monty 50/55. Seems to work pretty well, except for the remote. I guess I'll have to find a JP1 device for it.

 

[pedrogarcia]

BJ - Glad to hear you are up and running. Thanks for sharing the solution with us, I'm just about to venture into a motorised dish

 

[Tron]

I was initially worried, because I unscrewed 4 screws that were behind a label that said that if I removed that label the warranty was void. I didn't care about the warranty, but I figured that if they had a label like that, that I needed to unscrew those screws to get it apart. Turns out I didn't need to touch those screws. They were attached to two little blocks of metal at the back of the motor shaft. I was afraid that they were some kind of adjustment, but I just tightened them all up again, and everything seems to work fine.

Those are the screws that adjust backlash, or slack, on an SG-2100. You should probably check to make sure that there isn't any slack in the motor shaft, and that the adjustment isn't TOO tight and causing strain on the motor.

EDIT: Attached a .PDF document from DMSI (no longer on their website last time I checked) that contains instructions on the SG-2100 backlash adjustment.

 

[B.J.]

Those are the screws that adjust backlash, or slack, on an SG-2100. You should probably check to make sure that there isn't any slack in the motor shaft, and that the adjustment isn't TOO tight and causing strain on the motor.

EDIT: Attached a .PDF document from DMSI (no longer on their website last time I checked) that contains instructions on the SG-2100 backlash adjustment.

Thanks. When I saw what the screws attached to, I was afraid that they might be something like that, and was half expecting the motor to not turn because I had it too tight, however it seems to turn fine, although perhaps a bit slower. I didn't check the power consumption though. I'll have to do that. Anyway, thanks for the pdf file. I wish I had that before I put it back together.

 

[Tron]

Glad I was able to help. DMSI, at one time, issued the .PDF file to "fix" the backlash, or slack, issue with the SG-2100s. Now, the file has disappeared from their website... Perhaps they don't want people trying the adjustment themselves. In any case, a large number of SG-2100s have the backlash issue, so the instructions are quite useful...