Enter to win: Sadoun Powertech DG380 HH Motor - End 2/28/09

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Sure am, been one for 16 years now.

Great! Soon as I get my antenna back up we can hook up on 40m. Hope you like CW.
My old advanced call was AA5FU. Should have never let that one get away-hi hi.
73's

congrats DJ Rob!
 
Someone asked if we are offering any discounts on the DG380 H-H motor to registered members of Satelliteguys?

Well, for a limited time only (expires 3/25/09), you can get a $5 off if you order a new DG380 HH motor.

To add the discount to the shopping cart, go ahead and click on the motor picture below:



Then go here and add the motor to the shopping cart:
Sadoun Powertech HH Mount Motor DG380 DG-380 DiSEqC 1.2 Compatible
 
Thanks so much again Sadoun!

I got a chance to setup the DG380 motor today. I bought the optional 42mm pole so I could use my 36" GeoSat Pro dish with it.

Here's my initial thoughts:

Opening the box, I noticed right away that the motor bracket for the DG380 is almost double the thickness of a SG-6000 or SG-2100 bracket. It looks like this thing will not flex like the thinner ones. It is solid. I've attached a photo below for comparison with the bracket from the SG-6000 motor.

When I attached the motor bracket to the pole, the whole assembly felt a lot sturdier than the other motors I've tried as well. With the SG-6000 or the SG-2100, you could feel the hardware start to bend or flex as you tightened it to the pole. With the DG380, I knew when it was on there tight and I didn't feel any weakness or flexing in the hardware.

I used USALS to align the dish along with a SF95 signal meter I bought from Sadoun about 6 or 7 years ago. That meter has been a lifesaver all these years. It took me about 15 minutes total to set the motor up and have it all going.

Once settled in my man cave with beer and remote in hand, I noticed I was getting a slightly better signal than with the other motors. Having so many problems with previous motors from another company and having to swap them multiple times, I pretty much know what signal levels I usually get. With my Traxis 3500, I'm now getting an average increase of 1-3 on the signal quality. I'm assuming that is because there is a better signal pass through with this motor.

I verified I was getting a good signal on all of the sats between 72 and 129. This motor seems to be a lot faster as well!

The next thing I checked was how good I could fine tune the dish position within the receiver's menu. I noticed right away that it takes quite a few "bumps" to the east or to the west to see the signal quality meter change. The motor's packaging claims a 0.1 degree positioning resolution. I'll tell you what, it is a lot more sensitive than what I've been used to. It seems it takes about 4-5 bumps to equal one bump when I was using the SG-6000. Maybe even more. This increased resolution is going to be great as sometimes there's a weak feed that pops up that has to be fine-tuned. I found that with the other motors, one bump would just go too far sometimes.

That's my thoughts so far. I'll try to post more about it as I use it more. I think it is a great motor and well worth getting to avoid the problems that can happen with other cheaper models out there. Let me know if you have any questions. ;)
 

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Great report. Add to that, the DG380 travels 80 degrees to either side of zero position.

I am looking froward to your short term and long term experience with the motor. Enjoy.

No more HH Motor headaches for Rob. :D
 
A little over a week of having the motor up, we got a blizzard that gave us about 18" of snow in a little less than 12 hours yesterday. The motor worked perfectly in those conditions and didn't slow in the near zero temps at night. It is still exactly on all of the sats I checked with USALS - 72 degrees west through 125 degrees west :up
 
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