Finally!
- Thread starter Dee_Ann
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 418
- Views 52K
- Status
Dee, I don't know if this will help or not. But it's from a bit of personal experience I will say this. Walk away. Yep, Walk away, for as long as it takes to "clear the head". I've been an electronics tech for a long time. And when there's, what seems to be, insurmountable problems, it many times, takes a new perspective to attack the problem. Sometimes it's as simple as attacking it from the opposite direction. I've done it, too many time to count. But for now, I think the best thing to do, is just take a break. Come back when the angst and frustration are gone. Patience is an ally when learning something new. Rushing towards the finish line seldom results in satisfying success. Who won the race? The hare or the tortoise? When you return, we'll be here to offer all our knowledge and support.
In the meantime, don't trash the 6 ft'r. It's a great tool to "learn the ropes" on. A lot easier to than a 10 ft'r, Just take a break. Just forget about the big dish, for now. Rest, Relax, and clear the head.
In the meantime, don't trash the 6 ft'r. It's a great tool to "learn the ropes" on. A lot easier to than a 10 ft'r, Just take a break. Just forget about the big dish, for now. Rest, Relax, and clear the head.
I remember this old thread, http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-ai...9-primestar-84e-bsc621-2-lnbf-experiment.html Will Dee follow Satcom1's direction? I don't think so. Dee read that old thread and then go back and try again it should work.
Dee
I know, you didn't ask anyone for advice, just keep sharing your saga plot, but since everyone is eager to give advice, I take the risk too. As FaT Air said, take a brake, go to a movie - probably haven't being for awhile, only watching old shows.
Concentrate on selling your old meter - you already have the new one. Then go back and think, why you had the TV pics on both sats, and then they disappeared? Was it strong wind that moved the dish or LNB overnight? May be you need to take care of some basics first, as Sergei suggested? If your dish were deformed too much, you wouldn't have the pics to begin with - right? But you did! Also, your LNB looks pointed aside of the dish center - take care of that. If you feel its badly mounted - it can possibly be improved, you don't have to be confined to CN designer's solution - right? Improve it yourself or ask your dad's advice on that. Whatever you do - don't rush to trim your remaining trees just yet. 
I know, you didn't ask anyone for advice, just keep sharing your saga plot, but since everyone is eager to give advice, I take the risk too. As FaT Air said, take a brake, go to a movie - probably haven't being for awhile, only watching old shows.
Concentrate on selling your old meter - you already have the new one. Then go back and think, why you had the TV pics on both sats, and then they disappeared? Was it strong wind that moved the dish or LNB overnight? May be you need to take care of some basics first, as Sergei suggested? If your dish were deformed too much, you wouldn't have the pics to begin with - right? But you did! Also, your LNB looks pointed aside of the dish center - take care of that. If you feel its badly mounted - it can possibly be improved, you don't have to be confined to CN designer's solution - right? Improve it yourself or ask your dad's advice on that. Whatever you do - don't rush to trim your remaining trees just yet.
Last edited:
A couple of years ago I lost some channels here and there on the same satellite on my 4DTV sub. I was thinking and tinkering with the lnbf alignment but still no luck. It turned out with some help on Satellite Guys that my BUD was off the arc just enough that the random channels were lost. In your photos it does look like the lnbf alignment could be the main problem.
Dee, take a break from it all as was suggested and come back refreshed. Think over the helpful threads that are posted and hopefully the solution comes to you.
Your saga has been helping others too! Your "show" should be considered a how to and not some crazy reality show that fizzled!
Sure my projects do not go right either but...
Do not make a mountain out of a mole hill... and do NOT make that dish a scrap pile!! :shocked
Dee, take a break from it all as was suggested and come back refreshed. Think over the helpful threads that are posted and hopefully the solution comes to you.
Your saga has been helping others too! Your "show" should be considered a how to and not some crazy reality show that fizzled!
Sure my projects do not go right either but...
Do not make a mountain out of a mole hill... and do NOT make that dish a scrap pile!! :shocked
Well for what its worth, I have the same dish and the more I tweek it the more I get. I was green just like you dee but I stuck it out and I'm getting the whole arc from 58 to 122. I just this morning got the 105 nbc signals to come in. Keep trying and yes its tough but do one thing at a time. I'm proof it can be done as this was my first sat install myself.id never even done a ku dish before
OH NOOOO Having alittle trouble with getting RTV on AMC3 tonight! I might need to hit the dish with a sledge hammer and buy a bigger dish.Just kidding but with this hobby there are bound to be times when not all is going well and some corrections are in order! its just part of the deal.A perfect life might be nice! but for me that would be kinda boring.
My 8' WS International dish aimed at AMC3 currently is unable to receive the RTV channels, THIS and MeTV due to a storm that moved it slightly out of alignment about two weeks ago. However, I'm not giving up and will probably be out there this weekend performing adjustments.
Dee, I suggest you do the same and get your MeTV back.
Dee, I suggest you do the same and get your MeTV back.
I'm now so addicted to this stupid thread so much I can't let a day go by without checking to see what the next event is...
May be Dee Ann needs to open a Paypal account, so the addicted sat guys can send some donations to help her keep going with this challenge, and give some moral boost? So far only her dad was willing to share expenses of this saga. Yah, watching FTA is free, but to carry on with such project is not really, and it takes a lot of courage from the show runner (or stopper).
I told her two (?) years ago when she started with Ku, to . . .
- drag out all the hardware she had
- photograph and post it
- we'd tell her the best pieces to use for herself
- and the good ones other FTAers would love to have
- then she could sell, trade, or give away all the remaining junk.
In fact, the idea was, "come get an item you like, and you carry away a portion of the junk".
That way, she gets the place cleaned out by slave...uhhh... FTA laborers! -
I'd stick a Ku on a motor for her, in trade for one of those spare Primestars!
( she's got more out in the shed! )
But I'm not gonna drive half way 'cross the country to do it. -
- drag out all the hardware she had
- photograph and post it
- we'd tell her the best pieces to use for herself
- and the good ones other FTAers would love to have
- then she could sell, trade, or give away all the remaining junk.
In fact, the idea was, "come get an item you like, and you carry away a portion of the junk".
That way, she gets the place cleaned out by slave...uhhh... FTA laborers! -
I'd stick a Ku on a motor for her, in trade for one of those spare Primestars!
( she's got more out in the shed! )
But I'm not gonna drive half way 'cross the country to do it. -
May be Dee Ann needs to open a Paypal account, so the addicted sat guys can send some donations to help her keep going with this challenge, and give some moral boost? So far only her dad was willing to share expenses of this saga. Yah, watching FTA is free, but to carry on with such project is not really, and it takes a lot of courage from the show runner (or stopper).
Perhaps we can get one or two of the gold sponsors of
SatelliteGuys to help continue the production!
I am not sure if this is the end of season cliffhanger or the actors
want more money and they briefly halted production?!?!?!
May be Dee Ann needs to open a Paypal account, so the addicted sat guys can send some donations to help her keep going with this challenge, and give some moral boost? So far only her dad was willing to share expenses of this saga. Yah, watching FTA is free, but to carry on with such project is not really, and it takes a lot of courage from the show runner (or stopper).
yeah, send some money over here too....
hand outs and the feeling of entitlement is ruining our society. people need to work for the things they want!
Work?? You sound like my wife whenever I mention a new "must have item" that is FTA related...
Work?? You sound like my wife whenever I mention a new "must have item" that is FTA related...
this hobby is not for everyone.
said it before and will say it again: Sounds like she needs to subscribe to the DN welcome pack (or something similar). She spent enough on this soon to be abandoned project to have paid for it for quite a while.
That's what a hobby IS. Spending money you don't need to, but WANT to for whatever reason. Why shouldn't she try to do these things? Everybody needs to do certain things for learning purposes. Maybe she'll ultimately fail, and completely give up, or maybe she'll ultimately eventually learn and WIN. Either way, she's at least tried and she must have learned something. Even if that something is that she's decided she'd rather not continue anymore.
Personally, I'd think the worst thing that could happen to a person, is to get to the end of your life, and have all those "if ONLY I had done this, or tried that......" kind of thoughts...
As a technician myself, I've noticed over the years that it's all to easy for people to overly complicate EVERYTHING in their minds. So much so, that they paralyze themselves with analysis. Once that happens, unless you can break out of that sort of thinking, you are screwed. ESPECIALLY when the "analysis" involves you not knowing how it's supposed to work in the first place. Your mind will just churn, and constantly throw out the wrong conclusions, even if they seem right to you. I learned the "trick" a long time ago. When trying to fix something, you simply need to break every process or device down mentally into a series of interconnected "black boxes". Prioritize them, and then make sure each interconnected "black box" is working properly.
Take for instance installing a C band dish. Obviously, you need to dig a hole, and cement in a pole FIRST. That pole must be placed deep enough, and perfectly level all the way. It must be in a place that can "see" the sats without blockage. That's the FIRST "back box" in our process. You then proceed out from there. IF every succeeding "black box" is handled the same way, and you make sure it's as perfect as you can get it before going to the next one, you can't help but be successful at the end.
That's where I think Dee Ann's biggest fault lies. She has too many preconceptions in the way she thinks it should work. She also seems to be thinking of this as one BIG giant whole, and her brain can't seem to wrap around it. That's because she doesn't yet know exactly (in her mind) how each separate but connected "black box" is supposed to work. I think we are completely overwhelming her with "data" for "data's" sake. She's trying to cross the finish line, but her shoes are untied...
I had to step away from this nightmare for a few days or so.
I've shifted my sleeping schedule to normal hours for a few weeks, up during the day, sleep at night.
When I threw my hands up in the air some days ago, I don't remember, maybe a week ago, I had reached the snapping point.
I had previously found both Me and this channels and for one night, they both came in at the same time and the signal was not perfect but pretty acceptable for casual watching. OK, fine. So the next day I went out to try and tweak it in a little more, a little better. And I lost BOTH channels then and couldn't get them back!
That was it. I said to h*ll with it and threw all the tools, meter, everything into a box and decided I would stick to RTV and Larry the Cable Guy for a few weeks.
Later that night, as I was going through the channels, meTV was back. Oh joy.
The next morning, GONE. Later through the day it would begin to try and come back. By sunset it was coming in just fine. But this tv was gone again. It hasn't come back since.
Whatever.....
I can't watch me tv in the morning but that doesn't matter because I'm sleeping through the shows that I would like to be watching. In the afternoon, sometimes, I can get Hawaii 5.0, some days it comes in fine, some days, like today, not at all. But by sunset, stuff comes in just fine, and this is without me touching anything. No adjusting the dish, no touching the gbox, nothing. For some reason I can't get that satellite in the daylight hours.
And the shows that I like on this tv, start at 3am but I'm sleeping through those too so it's not bothering me that much.
During my time off I worked on my other hobbies, my roses and my wind chimes. I make wind chimes for myself, just because I like to. So I focused on that and to heck with the bleepin satellites!
Then yesterday I decided to get it in gear and start working on the BIG dish. So I worked on a very large wind chime project and then when I reached a stopping point I set that aside and worked a few hours on the big dish.
I had to loosen all the bolts up so I could get all the rest of the bolts into the ribs, they weren't lining up before. The problem though is that the thing is so darn big. So I built a sling out of a tow rope, tied it to a tree and used it to let me lean waaaaaaaaay over so I could reach the bolts in the center of the dish without leaning on the dish and mashing it up.
I got all the bolts in then flipped it over. THAT was fun.. NOT.
Several of the screen panels had been popped out by my dog when she was chasing squirrels and cats so I had to sit down and fix all those. That's not too hard to do if you are patient and take your time.
Then the next thing I did was attempt to replace the brim/ridge/edge cap thing that goes around the edge and holds the screens in place and also appears to strengthen the whole thing.
NONE of the holes would line up. I spent a good hour trying to fit the four pieces to the edge and line the hole up and I’ll be darned if I can figure out how they went.
I finally gave up on that and got my new drill and a little drill bit and drilled new holes and screwed the bleepin things back. I thought I was so smart......
Then I realized that I hadn’t tightened the bolts that hold the panels together and there were gaps between them! Gaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! So I had to unscrew the edge things, tighten the bolts all up then put the edge things back on, drill new holes and put the screws in again.
I finally got all four edge things screwed into place and only lost one screw into the grass. The stupid things are stainless steel so magnets won’t pick them up! Why can’t the make stainless steel that magnets will pick up? That’s dumb!
So after that, I called it a day and went inside. And as usual, me TV was working, I could watch 9:30pm on...
Today, I went back out and finished my giant wind chime project (my neighbors just love me!) and after that I decided to see what I could do next on the BIG dish. So I propped it up on a saw horse (believe it or not, the whole thing weighs almost nothing, in comparison to a bag of dog food which is my lifting limit), it’s just clumsy to handle with the high winds we are having. I can tell that this thing really does catch the wind like a sail despite the mesh holes in it.
So I put the center piece in that you bolt the lnb arm into. THAT was very, very difficult to do because the bolts would spin around when I would try to tighten them from underneath.
After a good hour of getting nowhere with that I dug through the tools my dad gave me and I found a pair of pliers that locks on stuff. So I tightened the pliers and locked them on the bolts on the top then went under the thing and tightened them with a little wrench and socket. I had to crawl out and move the pliers for each bolt then go back under, over and over for all eight bolts.
That was no fun at all.
But now the dish feels SOLID and STRONG. There’s no flimsy anything to it. It’s almost twice as big as the little 6 foot dish but it feels 100 times stronger and more solid.
I feel confident that this is going to be the answer to my misery.
So after I got done with that I placed the ring on the back of it. Two of the clamp tracks rusted away. My dad is going to come over and put some new clamps on it then temporarily weld them so he can take the whole thing home and weld them properly with his big welding machine. He has a little one to bring over here for sticking the clamps on but it’s not good enough to do big welding. Fine with me.
Dad has a lot of stuff going on this week so there’s no chance he’ll be able to do the big welding on it until next week. We also still have to cut down the pole as it’s way too tall. I’m hoping that if we cut the pole down to 4 feet tall that it will be high enough to keep the thing off the ground. I don’t know, I have no idea how to guess at it without it being all put together.
I also need to bury the wire from the switch box where it comes out of the ground and over to new pole. That’s not too hard to do.
I’m going to have to get either my dad or my friend’s BF to help me put the beast on the pole next week..
As to the little dish, I am absolutely and totally convinced that it is warped because of my mishandling it and that it will never work properly. I’ll find another satellite that has something worthwhile on it and leave it sitting there. The big dish is going on the gbox and it will be the one I will watch me and this tv on. And of course I will be able to move it around too if I need. I think that I will also be able to get RTV on it as well. Maybe one day I will buy another 6‘ dish to replace the one I bent up and ruined and then it might work right. But this one, is just too messed up. I don’t have the patiences or experience to fix this thing so for now it’s going to be parked on another satellite.
One of my problems is I’m a red head and that means I’m a bit of a hot head. I get frustrated easily and quickly with things. This is not conducive to success. Tomorrow I am going to the Buddhist temple to spend a few hours hanging out with a friend there and the head monk, I need to get back on the path with my meditation, it really helps but I haven’t been working on it for the past few months. I’m going to spend some time in the gardens there tomorrow, check out the roses, the lotuses and snag some bamboo to plant. A few hours away from here in a peaceful setting will go a long way to calming my anger with this very, very frustrating project.
One way or the other, I’ll get my channels.
I can’t believe I’m even messing with this stuff! Surely I have lost my mind!
I need a new, less stressful hobby. Like, um, watching TV!
I've shifted my sleeping schedule to normal hours for a few weeks, up during the day, sleep at night.
When I threw my hands up in the air some days ago, I don't remember, maybe a week ago, I had reached the snapping point.
I had previously found both Me and this channels and for one night, they both came in at the same time and the signal was not perfect but pretty acceptable for casual watching. OK, fine. So the next day I went out to try and tweak it in a little more, a little better. And I lost BOTH channels then and couldn't get them back!
That was it. I said to h*ll with it and threw all the tools, meter, everything into a box and decided I would stick to RTV and Larry the Cable Guy for a few weeks.
Later that night, as I was going through the channels, meTV was back. Oh joy.
The next morning, GONE. Later through the day it would begin to try and come back. By sunset it was coming in just fine. But this tv was gone again. It hasn't come back since.
Whatever.....
I can't watch me tv in the morning but that doesn't matter because I'm sleeping through the shows that I would like to be watching. In the afternoon, sometimes, I can get Hawaii 5.0, some days it comes in fine, some days, like today, not at all. But by sunset, stuff comes in just fine, and this is without me touching anything. No adjusting the dish, no touching the gbox, nothing. For some reason I can't get that satellite in the daylight hours.
And the shows that I like on this tv, start at 3am but I'm sleeping through those too so it's not bothering me that much.
During my time off I worked on my other hobbies, my roses and my wind chimes. I make wind chimes for myself, just because I like to. So I focused on that and to heck with the bleepin satellites!
Then yesterday I decided to get it in gear and start working on the BIG dish. So I worked on a very large wind chime project and then when I reached a stopping point I set that aside and worked a few hours on the big dish.
I had to loosen all the bolts up so I could get all the rest of the bolts into the ribs, they weren't lining up before. The problem though is that the thing is so darn big. So I built a sling out of a tow rope, tied it to a tree and used it to let me lean waaaaaaaaay over so I could reach the bolts in the center of the dish without leaning on the dish and mashing it up.
I got all the bolts in then flipped it over. THAT was fun.. NOT.
Several of the screen panels had been popped out by my dog when she was chasing squirrels and cats so I had to sit down and fix all those. That's not too hard to do if you are patient and take your time.
Then the next thing I did was attempt to replace the brim/ridge/edge cap thing that goes around the edge and holds the screens in place and also appears to strengthen the whole thing.
NONE of the holes would line up. I spent a good hour trying to fit the four pieces to the edge and line the hole up and I’ll be darned if I can figure out how they went.
I finally gave up on that and got my new drill and a little drill bit and drilled new holes and screwed the bleepin things back. I thought I was so smart......
Then I realized that I hadn’t tightened the bolts that hold the panels together and there were gaps between them! Gaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! So I had to unscrew the edge things, tighten the bolts all up then put the edge things back on, drill new holes and put the screws in again.
I finally got all four edge things screwed into place and only lost one screw into the grass. The stupid things are stainless steel so magnets won’t pick them up! Why can’t the make stainless steel that magnets will pick up? That’s dumb!
So after that, I called it a day and went inside. And as usual, me TV was working, I could watch 9:30pm on...
Today, I went back out and finished my giant wind chime project (my neighbors just love me!) and after that I decided to see what I could do next on the BIG dish. So I propped it up on a saw horse (believe it or not, the whole thing weighs almost nothing, in comparison to a bag of dog food which is my lifting limit), it’s just clumsy to handle with the high winds we are having. I can tell that this thing really does catch the wind like a sail despite the mesh holes in it.
So I put the center piece in that you bolt the lnb arm into. THAT was very, very difficult to do because the bolts would spin around when I would try to tighten them from underneath.
After a good hour of getting nowhere with that I dug through the tools my dad gave me and I found a pair of pliers that locks on stuff. So I tightened the pliers and locked them on the bolts on the top then went under the thing and tightened them with a little wrench and socket. I had to crawl out and move the pliers for each bolt then go back under, over and over for all eight bolts.
That was no fun at all.
But now the dish feels SOLID and STRONG. There’s no flimsy anything to it. It’s almost twice as big as the little 6 foot dish but it feels 100 times stronger and more solid.
I feel confident that this is going to be the answer to my misery.
So after I got done with that I placed the ring on the back of it. Two of the clamp tracks rusted away. My dad is going to come over and put some new clamps on it then temporarily weld them so he can take the whole thing home and weld them properly with his big welding machine. He has a little one to bring over here for sticking the clamps on but it’s not good enough to do big welding. Fine with me.
Dad has a lot of stuff going on this week so there’s no chance he’ll be able to do the big welding on it until next week. We also still have to cut down the pole as it’s way too tall. I’m hoping that if we cut the pole down to 4 feet tall that it will be high enough to keep the thing off the ground. I don’t know, I have no idea how to guess at it without it being all put together.
I also need to bury the wire from the switch box where it comes out of the ground and over to new pole. That’s not too hard to do.
I’m going to have to get either my dad or my friend’s BF to help me put the beast on the pole next week..
As to the little dish, I am absolutely and totally convinced that it is warped because of my mishandling it and that it will never work properly. I’ll find another satellite that has something worthwhile on it and leave it sitting there. The big dish is going on the gbox and it will be the one I will watch me and this tv on. And of course I will be able to move it around too if I need. I think that I will also be able to get RTV on it as well. Maybe one day I will buy another 6‘ dish to replace the one I bent up and ruined and then it might work right. But this one, is just too messed up. I don’t have the patiences or experience to fix this thing so for now it’s going to be parked on another satellite.
One of my problems is I’m a red head and that means I’m a bit of a hot head. I get frustrated easily and quickly with things. This is not conducive to success. Tomorrow I am going to the Buddhist temple to spend a few hours hanging out with a friend there and the head monk, I need to get back on the path with my meditation, it really helps but I haven’t been working on it for the past few months. I’m going to spend some time in the gardens there tomorrow, check out the roses, the lotuses and snag some bamboo to plant. A few hours away from here in a peaceful setting will go a long way to calming my anger with this very, very frustrating project.
One way or the other, I’ll get my channels.
I can’t believe I’m even messing with this stuff! Surely I have lost my mind!
I need a new, less stressful hobby. Like, um, watching TV!
Attachments
- Status
Similar threads
- TFLEV
- TFLEV
- TWiT Tech Podcast Network
- TWiT Tech Podcast Network
- TWiT Tech Podcast Network
- TWiT Tech Podcast Network
- Article
- The Middle-Aged Hack
- The Middle Aged Hack
