Finally some success with My Makeshift Primestar

[osu1991]

Well I have spent the last few weeks of my spare time wiring a new house for my sister and some rewiring of my own. I finally decided with the cooler weather and seeing all the football feeds it was time to put the 7 1/2 ftr back up, but rain today stopped that idea, so I thought I would mess with the Primestar 84e I have that has a 75e arm on it.

My previous attempt with this dish was frustrating as I was right on the threshold of locking a signal on 123w. I could get KTWO( ABC) at about 66% quality and that was it Well I started at 97 and worked my way around the arc to see what I could get. It seems I can get everything within about 4degrees in either direction of my True South and then I start having problems. The Coolsat 6000's threshold seems to be right at 64-65% quality and as I move further from the south I come close but just can't get enough to lock. After a lot of tweaking I finally got 11720 on 123 at 66 to 67% quality but that is about it. I get a couple of scrambled but the other TP are all right at 60-61 and won't lock. I will have to order some lnbs so I can play around with this dish. The weather forecast is looking nice for the next week, unfortunately my sister will close and be moving into her new house at the end of this week. So hopefully I can get the big dish back up in the next couple of weeks.

The pictures below are of the wiring cabinets I installed and have been working on, weeknights for the past 2 weeks at my sisters home and mine. The first three are the video and data lines at her house and the last two are the cabinets I have had installed and just never got around to cleaning up the installation in mine. There is 4000 ft of QS RG6, 3000 ft of cat6 and about 600 ft of speaker wire plus 4 75ft hdmi cables in her house. Each room is set up for hdmi,component and ethernet distribution of anything they may want to do. I am really jealous of their southern exposure. It is perfect for as many dishes as one could want and can see the entire arc.

edit pictures are a little blurry because all I had was my pda at the time and it was late and I couldn't see straight by that time!

 

[gabshere]

the arm for the 84e is 22 1/2 inches from bottom end to top end ( where lnb mounts)

I will have to order some lnbs so I can play around with this dish.

I have tried several lnbf on it the QPH031 only preformed moderatly i suspect its due to the feedhorn matched for the dish. also tried a BSC321s and it also preformed average. when i say average meaning i have a hughes lnb matched to the feedhorn and both listed above posted signals in the same range ( which both of those lnbfs should have out preformed the older hughes which is in the .7 or .8 noise range.

maybe someone with a QPF will chime in with some better results on signal gains
but i suspect to gain enough signal you might have to go with a slightly larger dish

my signal here in arkansas is 92% and Quality is at 72% with cloudy & light rain on my coolsat 5000 & motorized primestar 84e so there is a little room for improvment

oh and nice setup on the wiring cabinets. i wouldn't know what to do with so many connections

 

[osu1991]

Thanks , this is my first attempt with smaller ku dishes for myself. I went straight to the big dish and didn't try the small dish until I got the Coolsat last month and needed another dish. This time of year business always picks up so I will have to be a little more diligent in snagging a few more dishes.

The wiring is probably overkill for most people but it never fails that I would want to watch something in a room that I couldn't get the right signal to. I haven't had that problem now in a while. Unfortunately I can't easily run any hdmi cables in the walls of my house, so DRM still gets me sometimes.

 

[Anole]

False Advertizing

. . . hrmmmmm. . .

A thread about "success with my makeshift Primestar",
. . . and pictures . . .
yet no pictures of Primestars!

This will never do ! -

Now if it'd said, "big wiring cabinets all over my house", that would have been truth in advertizing.

Or, as a little old lady once said in a commercial, many decades ago, "Where's the beef?" ! -

 

[osu1991]

OK , Photos you say?

The rain has finally stopped and I snapped a few pictures before I left the office. I planted this pole outside the back door of my office, it is inside a small fenced area for my Jack Russell to run around when he comes to work with me. I will need to paint the dish before I take it home or anywhere else, as it was being used as a no trespassing sign when I rescued what was left of it. It was still holding steady at 66% when i left, but it was hard to work when I knew that was out there begging me to play

I also measured the 75e arm and found it is 3 inches shorter than the 84e. Thanks gabshere for the measurement.

 

[Mr Tony]

very nice dish (even with the no trespassing sign)

 

[BarneyBean]

Thats a multipurpose dish, you can watch TV and keep people out of your yard at the same time

 

[satcom1]

Only if their standing on their heads!

 

[gabshere]

I also measured the 75e arm and found it is 3 inches shorter than the 84e. Thanks gabshere for the measurement.

my measurment is of the arm only ( off the dish ) it would be a few inches shorter mounted on the dish so i will give you that measurment tomorrow

 

[osu1991]

I actually took the measurement with the arm off. From the bottom edge to the top edge, I turned the arm upside down and measured end to end on the flat surface

 

[gabshere]

oh ok well sounds like its a bit short
hopefully i will be able to make a new arm

or make a small extension / adapter

problem with the extension / adapter is that it has to allow the feedhorn to freely look at the dish so it would involve removing the holder adding three inch extension and then the lnbf holder. so it might be easier to make a whole new arm.

 

[osu1991]

Hopefully I can find a little time to look closer at it this weekend.

I am thinking the arm is hollow, so if I can mold something to fit where it attaches to the dish and extend thru the hollow arm to support the arm and lnbf, then I wouldn't have to do anything to alter the arm itself

 

[gabshere]

i've been unable to build a arm due to some things that have come up .... but i hope to get one made soon....

in the meantime you should be able to zip tie a 2x4 block of wood cut to hold the lnbf just slightly higher than the original holder and lower the elevation 2 - 5 degrees and get by

 

[osu1991]

I actually started on that, but got swamped and am still swamped with work. I was getting close to zeroing in on the sweet spot. I had 64% quality on all the transponders on 123w, but couldn't get any higher when I got pulled away for work. I made a sleeve out of some 1x1 I had laying around from another project, but I stumbled upon the website for Impackt Distributing and they were selling refurb Primestar dishes along with other satellite equipment. I emailed about parts for the primestar / channelmaster dishes and I ended up ordering an arm for the 84e for 15.00. It is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

Unfortunately I have 3 other packages all showing scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I will be out of town all day. Got to get someone over here to wait on them for me or I may have a stack of boxes sitting on my front porch.


I found a 1m and a 1.2m channel master dishes today,with trees and bushes overgrowing them at an old building in the middle of nowhere, looked like an old convenience store possibly. I left a couple of cards on the door and the mailbox.

 

[osu1991]

Success!! Got my 84e arm in the mail today from Impakt. The holiday delayed shipping a couple of days, but I am pleased with my first order from them. Put the arm on and adjusted the elevation a tad and my quality jumped from 66% to 89% on 123w. Now I can't leave the office because I want to play some tonight. This will have to come home this weekend or I won't get any work done during the day.