Channel Master 1m project

[rsa2000]

So work was throwing away a Channel Master 1m dish and the non-penetrating roof mount... Told me to take it to the dumpster so I rescued it. After owning it almost a year I stumbled on a Sonicview 360 premier at a flea for $20 new in the box and thought maybe its time for some FTA fun. The dish was used for WSI Pilot Brief weather so the LNB is a fixed polarity. After only a few days of manually twisting the lnb and moving the dish to different sats I had enough! I ordered a GeoSatPro SL1PLL and a SG6100 today.

I have read the posts of others building mounts to put these beasts on a motor and think I can pull this off. Hopefully the 6100 can pull it around the arc if I shave off that heavy bracket. If I succeed it will be time for a
MicroHD. The Sonicview has locked up 3 times, once I had to update the firmware to get it back working. If it loses power I loose all my transponder and sat renames. What a pain! Atleast it works enough to get started and I didn't over pay.

Other thing is the dish is oxidizing and touching it leaves white powdery paint on my hands. I want to try and paint it to make it less of an eye sore. Would going with a flat charcoal or gray rustoleum work ok? I don't want to use any kind of paint that might degrade performance.

Pic's will come when I start the mods. Sorry for the half page post!

 

[T4Runner]

I use flat gray primer on mine, but you will need to scrub it first with a cleaner.



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[xtgold]

the channel master 1m I have is fiberglass.
I have seen the mount for mine removed and mounted upside down for motor use.

 

[rsa2000]

Ya it a fiberglass reflector. The mount is pretty heavy so it will probly have to go for the sake of motor life. I have seen many pics of the homebrew mounts here on the forums and shouldn't be too hard to make something lightweight.

 

[xtgold]

the upside down version works but it was too heavy for my motor,sg2100 clone

 

[Anole]

You've obviously done your homework on FTA, LNBF s, and motorized mounts.
?We have numerous stories on refurbishing the molded dishes, too.
Channel Master 8' & 10' BUDs might be something to search on.
.

 

[T4Runner]

Ya it a fiberglass reflector. The mount is pretty heavy so it will probly have to go for the sake of motor life. I have seen many pics of the homebrew mounts here on the forums and shouldn't be too hard to make something lightweight.

I think this is a good decision in the long run. I have a STAB120 that is several years old now and the "slop factor" in the gears is getting worse because the dish is so heavy. I have it locked on a sat currently (72W) and not even using it. They are heavy, sturdy, commercial dishes.


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[rsa2000]

Had the day off since I worked all weekend. Instead of doing yard work I chose to work on my mount. I had found a post somewhere on these forums that had a nice .pdf for the primestar mount. The plans had by Ziplock on them. (Thanks Ziplock!) I followed it and everything worked out except the bolt hole spacing on the dish ended up wider that the plans had. Lucky for me the left over angle bracket split 4 ways into 2 bolt holes. The mount is very adjustable left and right so centering it up will be very easy. Ill shorten the threaded bars once I make sure and get the elevation set. Im not off again this weekend and my motor wont be here for another day or two so I am stalled until then. After I get everything up and going I'll remove the old flaky WSI sticker and repaint. For now its back on the old mount so I can play around til my parts arrive.

The old beast. The extensions X4
.

 

[T4Runner]

I'm not understanding how you're going to set the elev.? You are going to have a lot of adjustment depending upon your Latitude. The one thing I do really like about the dish bracket you're getting rid of, is the elevation adjustment. There is nothing like it. It is so easy to set a wrench on that vertical bolt adjustment and tweak the dish up and down to fine tune Quality. Hope this works to your satisfaction. A lot of us are watching!


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[danristheman]

I have the same dish 2 of them they are great dishes.

Dan rose

 

[rsa2000]

After jumping a few hurdles I have it up and on the motor. Seems to be tracking well. I'll upload the pics later today.
Now I am facing another obstacle... I either have an issue with my stb or the motor itself. I am using a Sonicview 360 Premier with a SG6100 Monster. I can manually go east and west with the stb. I can find sats. The problem is USALS doesn't seem to be working and I cant save positions. If I save then go to another sat manually when I try to go to a stored position it just goes all te way east... or west... without stopping. Also sometimes the LCD on the motor goes blank like it has lost track of here its at. If i power down the stb and restart the numbers return. I am hoping its the Sonicview and not my new motor! Even better if it's operator error. I was having problems with the Sonicview locking up alot and updated to 1.19-P firmware. Maybe I need a different version? 1.19 was latest I could find on the web.

 

[primestar31]

You don't save positions with USALS, it auto-magically finds them by itself. HOWEVER, you must insert your latitude and longitude in the receiver menu somewhere, so it knows where you are located. You should also run the motor manually to it's '0' (zero" line) in the middle, and reset it there after setting lat and long.

 

[rsa2000]

Yeah I have set 0 and my lat/long info. I think my STB is flaky and isn't communicating with the motor half the time. I have no switches just straight coax run to the sat. Hopefully it's the STB and I didn't get a bad motor and a MicroHD will solve most of my issues. I will add that before I mounted the motor I bench tested it and the lcd number readout went blank a few times then also on a 6ft rg6. I am going to try to find some different version firmware and try.

 

[rsa2000]

And here's my mount. I am going to cut the all-thread off it really worked pretty well. The nuts on the dish side can be loosened way out then the weight of the dish sits on the outer nuts. Just have to make sure and turn both sides the same amount to keep the dish aligned. I left the upper mount nuts loose so it could move without binding. Peak signal then tighten all down. It seems to track the arc quite well, once i get my motor/ receiver issue lined out i'll make fine adjustments.

 

[FaT Air]

Dang, now with these great pictures, I'll have to get that motor and mount up one of my ChannelMaster 1.2m. May just forget about a polar mount for it. (that's been 'in the works' for 3 or so yrs)