Cband Setup.

[goaliebob99]

So I finally got my Cband setup this weekend going. (10 foot Pinnacle) After getting HOA approval. I will post lots of pictures. So far its been straight forward. I quick created the pole last week with 3 80 lbs bags of quick crete. The pole is about 5 feet into the ground and is in solid footing. Attached the reflectors together this week making sure they snapped into place as well as screwing them. I set the elevation and declination levels on the latitude head, then attached the buttonhook to the reflector. I also set the LNB 33 and 3/16th's per manual. I split the difference as I have a Chaparral feed horn with no golden ring. I will adjust when I tune it up later on in the week. I then attached the latitude head to the pole and then the reflector. Once that was all settled, I began the process of wiring and ran out of time tonight. Wireing is going to be the easy part. In the next few days I will have to get this guy on the ARC and I should be good to go. It wasn't too bad putting it up. Just heavy.

 

[goaliebob99]

One more thing is I have to thank Magic Static. Without his help this dish would have never gotten off the ground. A big thank you! So now that it's up I have to plant some trees to camouflage it in to make the HOA happy and paint it a tan color to match either the desert or the house. I also am running all of the wiring through PVC pipe and putting the pipe underground.

 

[Magic Static]

Nice!! But it looks like you need to make a big adjustment on the scalar ring. At the desired F/D length the feed horn should protrude from the scalar almost 1 1/2" for the deep dish .278 F/D ratio. The way it is right now you won't see half of the dish. This is according to the information on the Chaparral site. Pendragon discusses this here http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/dual-orthomode-feed-on-a-deep-dish-mod.171565/

 

[Cham]

Congrats on getting your dish set up!

Yes the scaler ring to feed horn adjustment is important to getting the best signal to noise ratio from your particular dish/feedhorn combination. The settings that are calculated using your dish focal distance and ratio is the best place to start. Takes a lot of time and patience to get the setting dead-on, as each time you change your feed horn position inside the scaler, you have to re-position the scaler to maximize signal again; that is to keep the feedhorn at the focal point. If your initial setting seems to work good, try it out for a while. Eventually you might want to peak certain signals that are right on the reception edge, this is where fine-tuning will gain you an extra couple of dB to pick up those signals more reliably. It's easy to get carried away with fine-tuning these and other settings... and spend hours (and even days) of playing around with the different adjustments just to capture that extra 1dB...

Most critical basic adjustments (you likely already know this stuff):
-making sure your feedhorn is PERFECTLY centered over the dish and at the focal point (As close as you can possibly get it!)
-making sure the pole stays perfectly plumb at center and each end of the arc
-make sure you have the proper declination set for your latitude (various charts for this)
-make sure your latitude/elevation is set correctly
-make sure you are tracking the arc (search should find directions on how to do this, very helpful). If not then something above is incorrect.

At least that is what I have learned from dealing with several C and Ku installs. Knowing how the dish geometry works is very helpful, so you can picture the various angles in your head when setting things up. I actually have used the north star (Polaris) to help set up the elevation axis on some of my installs... but that means you have to be there at night! (Yes some took all day or didn't start until later in the day...)

Of course if is very rewarding to have set up your own dish and have it working!

 

[goaliebob99]

This is where I am confused because in Winegards manual for the dish it says to set it at 33 1/16. When I do that the feedhorn is way in. (like pictured) I think I may have to adjust the length of the button hook and re adjust for 33 1/3 to get that feedhorn to pop out a bit like its suppost to be. The Feedhorn hasn't been adjusted since I originally picked up the dish seven years ago.

 

[Magic Static]

Exactly. The button hook needs to be lengthened. I found on my Bullseye II I had to shorten the focal length for optimum performance on the Ku side. But with your Corotor the KU is a little different.

 

[O'Doyle]

Congrats on your dish install! Looks great! Very jealous of your clear LOS there where you live

 

[Corrado]

Good work, Thanks for the photos.

 

[Jason S]

K9Sat, that's a very nice looking setup.

 

[goaliebob99]

Thanks to everyone on the congrats with the setup! So far so good. I was able to point over at 125. Remember I haven't officially even tuned this to see if I am on the arch. I actually think I am going to leave the LNB where it is. I was able to tune in TBN, Evine and most of the encrypted services over on Gal14. The encrypted S2 services I was maxed out at 100 percent quality. with TBN in the high 80's to high 90's. On the KU side I was able to pull in PBS off of AMC21 and I was in the high 80's for quality there. (This is on an AZ Box Premium) I am very happy to see that both KU and Cband sides are working. The ASC1 has been working well so far. The only issue I am running into is that it seems like the Cband side is bleeding over on the switch. This may be a switch issue. This is the switch I am using. http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-RadioSh...5653ae&pid=100204&rk=4&rkt=29&sd=141522294869

I am wondering if maybe I need to change out this switch. Over all so far so good. I just need to hook up a spec anny to it and figure out where I am. The sad part is I left my poor man's spec anny at work and need to grab that.

 

[Cosmo Blatz]

Another congrats on getting set up and on the arc.

Amazing your HOA let you do that with a 10' dish!

What receiver are you using? In most cases, all you'd need for an A/B switch would be something like this high quality unit:

amazon.com/Amiko-Premium-D-201/dp/B00LAF9XE8/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1428342253&sr=8-11&keywords=amiko