I finally got the first Bullseye II installed today.
But not without some problems in the beginning. That's the way it is with everything I do. Well that's what makes it interesting.
The first thing was my handy-dandy home-made satellite meter.
The brand new VBox V that DMSI sent me to replace the VBox III which quit on me not long ago wouldn't even move the dish, even by pushing the buttons on the front. It would just shut itself off when you push the button on the remote or the front. I guess they put in an overload circuit to keep from burning up their cheap transformers. The note in the box said the transformer was burned up in the VBox III and the motor I had it hooked up to was too old. Hooked up the GBox to the same motor and it had no trouble. As a matter of fact, the GBox runs that motor all the time and I don't know how many times it has run it from full East to full West while I have been tuning that dish for the last two months. The VBox II I have had for two years is running my solid Birdview, and it has no complaints nor have I ever had any problems with it. That was supposed to be one of the dedicated components of the home-made tuner.
The next component problem I ran into was with the used Vortex 3500 I bought from a fellow forum member. It was described to me by the seller as being able to do everything a Pansat 3500 would do including control a servo motor. Well it does control the servo motor, but won't run a disecq 1.2 motor, nor the GBox which is essentially a diseqc 1.2 motor. I am pretty sure it will do USALS, but not 1.2. I have sent the seller a PM yesterday around NOON, and have not had a response from him yet.
I finally un-hooked the GBox and the Pansat 3500 at the TV, took them to the roof, and got the dish moved all the way over to the West so I could install the Bullseye II. Got it on, and moved to the first bird, nothing. moved to the second, nothing, so then began the process of eliminating wires and switches to see where the problem was.
Turns out when putting in all the new wires, I had gotten the center wire of the coax off-center when installing into the grounding block at the dish which created a dead short. Fried my diseqc switch. First one I have fried in over a year and a half.
But after that it was a matter of trying each wire independently by-passing the multi-switch, LNB power booster, and then putting it all back together. I finally got around to making some tuning adjustments around 11:00 today. Started yesterday morning. I wanted to tune without the LNB power boosters so that I wouldn't have any outside influence on the signal.
Got it all done, fired up the power boosters, and everything worked. I do think the powered multi-switches will work better for this. It will eliminate one more connection. I actually saw a slight drop in signal loss on a couple of TPs on a couple of satellites.
I have ordered two powered multi-switches from Skywalker and will pick them up in the morning.
The performance is outstanding on both Ku and C-Band. I would rank it right up there with my patent infringing original Co-Rotor. The only thing that would make it any better is the skew control over the couple of satellites that require it.
Linuxman is really really happy today.
But not without some problems in the beginning. That's the way it is with everything I do. Well that's what makes it interesting.
The first thing was my handy-dandy home-made satellite meter.
The brand new VBox V that DMSI sent me to replace the VBox III which quit on me not long ago wouldn't even move the dish, even by pushing the buttons on the front. It would just shut itself off when you push the button on the remote or the front. I guess they put in an overload circuit to keep from burning up their cheap transformers. The note in the box said the transformer was burned up in the VBox III and the motor I had it hooked up to was too old. Hooked up the GBox to the same motor and it had no trouble. As a matter of fact, the GBox runs that motor all the time and I don't know how many times it has run it from full East to full West while I have been tuning that dish for the last two months. The VBox II I have had for two years is running my solid Birdview, and it has no complaints nor have I ever had any problems with it.
That was supposed to be one of the dedicated components of the home-made tuner.The next component problem I ran into was with the used Vortex 3500 I bought from a fellow forum member. It was described to me by the seller as being able to do everything a Pansat 3500 would do including control a servo motor. Well it does control the servo motor, but won't run a disecq 1.2 motor, nor the GBox which is essentially a diseqc 1.2 motor. I am pretty sure it will do USALS, but not 1.2. I have sent the seller a PM yesterday around NOON, and have not had a response from him yet.
I finally un-hooked the GBox and the Pansat 3500 at the TV, took them to the roof, and got the dish moved all the way over to the West so I could install the Bullseye II. Got it on, and moved to the first bird, nothing. moved to the second, nothing, so then began the process of eliminating wires and switches to see where the problem was.
Turns out when putting in all the new wires, I had gotten the center wire of the coax off-center when installing into the grounding block at the dish which created a dead short. Fried my diseqc switch. First one I have fried in over a year and a half.
But after that it was a matter of trying each wire independently by-passing the multi-switch, LNB power booster, and then putting it all back together. I finally got around to making some tuning adjustments around 11:00 today. Started yesterday morning. I wanted to tune without the LNB power boosters so that I wouldn't have any outside influence on the signal.
Got it all done, fired up the power boosters, and everything worked. I do think the powered multi-switches will work better for this. It will eliminate one more connection. I actually saw a slight drop in signal loss on a couple of TPs on a couple of satellites.
I have ordered two powered multi-switches from Skywalker and will pick them up in the morning.
The performance is outstanding on both Ku and C-Band. I would rank it right up there with my patent infringing original Co-Rotor. The only thing that would make it any better is the skew control over the couple of satellites that require it.
Linuxman is really really happy today.
