Birdview With no Scalar Ring Plate...

[KhunJoe]

I have a Birdview 8.5’ solid dish but no scalar ring plate, does anyone know where I might be able to get one?
I would like to use this dish for KU FTA only and am thinking of mounting a LNBF Collar at the focal point and mounting a Invacom SNF-031 with the ADF-120 adjustable feedhorn.
Would appreciate any al all comments and suggestions.
Thanks,
Khun Joe

 

[Anole]

California Birdviewing

Congratulations on finding a Birdview in San Diego.
Do tell us more. Post a picture, if ya like.
I'm near LA, and the trail to a Birdview is pretty cold. (Can't find one)

Do you have the six mounting rods that hold the scalar?
If so, rigging up something shouldn't be too difficult.
If not, well, that raises the challenge level.

It's possible one of the guys here has a spare scalar.
But there was a conversion to put a Chaparral on the Birdview (I've read), and by seeing how that was made, you might get some ideas.

I'm curious why you would throw away the ability to get C-band on that dish in the future?
Refurbishing it to get both bands wouldn't be any more difficult than just Ku.
And what is there on Ku-band that you think you need an 8½ foot dish to get?

There are a number of threads in the BUD section of the forum here, describing how the members have rebuilt the dishes.
How is your motor , gear train, and magnet wheel?

 

[SatPhreak]

If you are going KU only with the feed horn you were talking about, you should only need this C Ku Prime Focus Dishes LNBF Holder. The ADF-120 will clamp right into it and no scaler ring will be needed.

 

[KhunJoe]

I live out in the country in the mountains east of San Diego and about 6 months ago I discovered a Birdview lying in a neighbors junk pile, it had a 4’ juniper bush growing thru the hole in the center of the dish, and was covered with other pieces of scrap metal, when I explained to my neighbor that I would like to have it to watch satellite TV and offered to buy it from him he gave it to me. It’s in pretty good shape considering it is 22 yrs old (the date marked on the flange of the LNB was 0686). The bat wings were rusty in places, the grease on the worm gear for the H to H was hard as a rock, and 3 of the 6 struts to the scalar ring were broken, but other than that it was in pretty good shape. Over the last 6 months I have been slowly refurbishing it, I built an adapter so to reduce the pole mount from 6” to 4” Pole, had the bat wings sand blasted and power coated, rebuilt the H to H mechanism, made 6 new struts for the scalar ring and then took the scalar ring to a machine shop and asked them to bore out the center hole of the scalar ring big enough to accommodate a co-rotor feed horn. But the machine shop screw up and in addition to boring out the center they also machined off all of the scalar rings (!), so I now have the scalar ring plate with no scalar rings. My plan is to bore out the center of the plate with large enough diameter hole so I can try different feedhorn / LNBs which I can bolt into place, for example, Chaparral feed horns, BSC621, etc., I could also install a mounting bracket for a 40 mm feedhorn like the ADF-120 with one of the Invacom LNBs. I would like to find another original Birdview Scalar ring or Birdview conversion kit scalar ring plate but right now it looks like my best bet to bore out the scalar ring plate I have. I know he Co-rotor Scalar is about 6.5” in dia but don’t know the size of any others, does anyone have any suggestions or advice regarding this option. For example the best diameter hole size? I am interested in C-band as well as KU but so far have only experience on KU band.

 

[dougbrown]

have you checked with Skyvision? they used to have alot of odd birdview parts.

 

[Anole]

I had hoped one of our Birdview owners would have chimed in by now...

Without pictures, I think all you need to do now, is take a regular C-band scalar and sandwich it to the face of your now-flat Birdview scalar.
There are two possible approaches:
- machine off the back side of the new scalar so it's flat
- bore out Birdview to take the back side of a scalar (only about 3", not 6")

The BSC-621 hasn't gotten a good reputation on this forum by a lot of people.
At least not for Ku-band operation.
How well it would mate up to a Birdview is an unknown.
Our most experienced Birdview owner, Linuxman, has posted a number of threads in the BUD section of the forum over the last couple of years.
I'd suggest reviewing his work.

From reading all his comments, my impression is that the CK-1 dual-band LNBF worked well .
He's got exceptional patience and skill, so how he'd have done with a BSC-621 is an unknown.
Some of the Chaparral corotor and orthomode models worked slightly better.
You'll have to read his threads for more details.

 

[stogie5150]

Mine was already done when I went and got it from swampman so I cannot tell you what they did. If you want some pics of mine I can certainly do that for you.

My Birdview is NOT aimed and in operation right now, but I am planning on using the SatAv CK-1 LNB with mine. Linuxman said he had results within 5% of a Co-rotor on the same dish.