Can a Primestar dish go bad?

[Mr Tony]

Stupid question...Can a Primestar dish go bad?

I took down the one on G10 today and replaced it. The one that was up there has the hole drilled in the arm for a C-band setup so I wanted to use that for C-band (possibly). Put up the other P* dish (got this a couple months ago) and hooked up the same LNB (Sadoun dual)...peaked and can only get 45 on G10 with max of 50

grrrrrr

put the old dish back up and get 65-70 quality on G10 with same LNB

The dish is in good shape other than a crack on the back of the dish (on the "lip"). Arm is fine and tight. Both dishes are the same (40x30 AKA the 84e) so I dont know what the heck it could be

anybody seen this happen? I cant do the lay flat test as the dish is oblong and deep

 

[gabshere]

how long is the arm ? compare the arms of the two you have .... if it has the wrong arm it will get poor signal

i have one of the bigger 1 meter dishes with three or four cracks in the lip but still gets good signals.

 

[Mr Tony]

same arm size.

The dish I rescued was a stock 84e complete with the old 2 port (one V one H) LNB

other than the crack on the one lip the dishes are identical

 

[gabshere]

well only way to narrow it down to the lnb or the dish is to try the bad (signal) lnb on the good dish or the good signal lnb on the bad dish ( depends on which you have setup currently)

i can only think it would be the lnb cause those dishes are tough

 

[Mr Tony]

it was the same LNB...Sadoun dual

The old P* LNB reads the same on that "bad" dish as the Sadoun one does. I'll look tomorrow at the dish and see why its doing that. Maybe the arm is off kilter or something

 

[gabshere]

or the arm is slightly bent (but tweaking it by adjusting the elevation slightly would have fixed that) unless it has a slight twist (but the arms are fairly strong too)

 

[Mr Tony]

yeah thats what I'm trying to figure out. The dish is stable. The arm doesnt move

I'll check tomorrow and take pics

 

[DREAMFOX1]

Sounds like a bent arm or a bad lnbf holder.

 

[Mr Tony]

it aint the holder. Thats mounted "ghetto" style since its a non stock LNB. Like I say same LNB gets 70 on the Primestar that was there before (which is back up now)

 

[primestar31]

Some of the 84E Primestar dishes that we have around here (michigan) have a built-in offset of around 4-5 degrees. Like a c-band declination offset. I don't know why, but I've seen it more than once, and I have a lot of different Primestar dishes. Try aiming that one at least 4 degrees HIGHER than your first one.

 

[satcom1]

Primestar out of round test/Elliptical dish

I read somplace that if you lay the P*E down "birdbath" style and fill it with water until it spills over the vertical axis you should be able to see if the horizontals are warped. !sadroll

If it is, your backyard looks like you need a birdbath.