Finally!

[Anole]

feel-good task

The BUD looks very nice.
I understand the rust and missing mounting tabs on the back.
Sounds like Dad will fix you up.
See how well off you are?
You know what you're looking at, and see that with a little work it'll be operational.
This is so much better than saying, it's rusted off and worthless. - :up

While you're waiting for him to get to the welding, how 'bout a little side project?
Something you will excel at, and feel proud about?

Go to your local hardware store or Harbor Freight, and get a couple of wire cups and wire wheels that'll fit your drill.
Use the cup on the rust on that ring behind the dish.
Just take off the surface rust, whatever is loose.
Do not feel the need to get shiny metal everywhere.
Shoot us a picture at this point - you know I had to say that!

Now, follow the instructioins and spray on two coats of this reddish colored primer:
Rust Destroyer which you can find at Home Depot.
Observe the waiting time between applications (not too soon, not too late)
I've used it and it works wonders!

Later after it's all welded and spot primed at the welds, you can put on some top coat.
I used Hammerite rust-control paint. Read about it, you might like it too.
Due to environmental restrictions, I couldn't get anything but a few cans of black, so...
I did settle for some of the RustOleum hammered products on other areas.

Use whatever you top coat you like, but the primer will bond with the rust, and keep your steel strong for as long as you last.
Should be a major concern if you have high humidity, and lots of rust problems.

 

[empiretc]

I feel confident that this is going to be the answer to my misery.

were any of the previous posts read???

I need a new, less stressful hobby. Like, um, watching TV!

http://www.satelliteguys.us/248617-finally-32.html#post2531072

$25/month

 

[PopcornNMore]

I'm glad you're back Dee. The soap opera continues and I can once again continue to check this thread for updates daily. Reading this thread is better than watching TV.

 

[Phottoman]

Well, with out sounding like I am bashing Dee-Ann, I think she may have read the previous posts, and this is probably going to be my LAST post in this thread, I feel again she is only reading and doing what SHE feels will work for her, not what we have spent countless hours trying to advise her on.

I said in a post that if she thinks that working on the 10 footer will be easier than working on the 6 footer, she is wrong. It is going to be MUCH harder to find and lock on sats because the beam area will be much smaller than what she can receive on the 6 footer, narrower beam equals MORE work to capture, but that's just my opinion and obviously doesn't mean anything to her.

Dee-Ann, complaining that the dish you have is flimsy is NOTHING. One of the ten footers I am using is so far off on the string test (have you DONE a string test on your six footer?) that the strings will NEVER meet each other, yet I am getting one sat, one channel well enough to just leave it parked there. I have room in my yard and enough dishes that it doesn't really matter to me, but at the same time, knowing what I was working with and what I wanted that dish for worked out FOR ME, but took a LOT of work to get it right.

I have to almost agree with empiretc that maybe you should stop all the work you are complaining about with this dish, because we are going to have to 'listen' to it all over again when you start working on that bigger, better (and maybe 'stupid') ten footer that probably isn't going to get you much more than you already have with the six footer.

If I hurt your feeling with this post, or any of the other posts I made in my efforts to help you, I should probably say I am sorry, but you are acting like a 10 year old kid, if it can't be done your way, it's stupid and therefor not worth even trying to correct, regardless what more experienced people have tried to say to help you.

When I was trying to help you tweak your dish by GENTLY pushing or pulling the dish to see if improvements were available, did you move the dish to get a better aim at the satellite you wanted? If you moved the dish after seeing that your signal improved, did you do the push pull again to see if you went far enough in moving the dish or possibly overshot the sweet spot in your aim?

See, Dee-Ann, when you are given advise, it IS ultimately up to you to either follow that advise or reject it, but it ~would~ have been nice if you told us WHAT you did as far as advise was concerned. Did you do as mentioned or just blow it off? We don't know, so we can only try more things for you to do in an effort TO HELP YOU get the best signal.

And complaining about your redheadedness again is totally and utterly unnecessary. It's NOT the color of your hair that determines what you do, it's your willingness or not to DO as you are advised, if you don't take advise, why should we even continue to give it.

A TV that you can SEE (not a toy that is too small to see - your words, not mine), a receiver, and a wrench AT THE DISH is all the tools that most of us here use, no fancy tools or expensive meters, maybe an angle finder, but that was back at the beginning, not needed now if you set your angles correctly, PATIENCE (which it seems you have very little of) and somewhere between an hour or three AT THE DISH following peoples hard learned advice (we went through this too, so following advice is what makes this WORK for us, and we share it openly) should have been all you needed. Not because we are male, but because we have been there and done what you have done, but we seemed to have learned enough from our mistakes to be ABLE to advise you on what to avoid.

I believe on this board I once read about a member that actually picked up C Band signals from a small dish net dish, maybe only one channel that was readable, but he accomplished what he was trying to do ONLY as an experiment to see if it could be done. Nothing he would try to pass off as actual C Band entertainment, but enough to prove that it ~could~ be done. That has only one bearing on this discussion, anything CAN work if you try hard enough instead of constantly complaining about what you did against advise that didn't work because you didn't listen or follow through with what was said to you.

Bottom line Dee-Ann, go back and tweak that dish, do it as was explained patiently to you, tell us the results and try it one more time. Then, without all the cutsey language, tell us what happens and than follow advise, or discard it, but TELL us what you do as far as the advise is concerned. Then and ONLY then, maybe we can help you.

Or ... hate to say this ... quit, stop trying, join the sheeple that subscribe to a plug and play world, pay your fees, dues or monthly bill and stop complaining about what YOU didn't follow through with that was wrong. Either learn from the advise given here, or .............. (fill in your own blank).

(exasperated) Photto

 

[Dee_Ann]

I am an idiot. I do not know what I am doing.

 

[Magic Static]

Fortunately, knowing what you are doing is not a prerequisite to having fun in a hobby. In fact most hobbies, the fun is in the learning. Don't count yourself short. You can't fool us. There is a backyard full of dishes that you put up, not noone else.

 

[Conky]

what is the most likely cause of her getting signal at night but not during the day?

 

[trinidex]

what is the most likely cause of her getting signal at night but not during the day?

Orbit position?
Sat position at different times of the day?

I recounted an experience some posts back about 99w whereby during the day signal was great and then at night the Quality would drop off for a few hours whereby it was unwatchable and then it would creep back in and settle down.

This was an issue with the scalar rings and feedhorn being misaligned to the dish. One quick adjustment with a hammer and the problem was fixed!

 

[zamar23]

what is the most likely cause of her getting signal at night but not during the day?

Sleepless...after reading all the advice and opinions here. Just remember guys, she already put a number of dishes in her backyard, no way she's going to ever quit on this hobby, until sat signals are in the air.

 

[Mr Tony]

what is the most likely cause of her getting signal at night but not during the day?

from looking at some of the pics she has posted she is barely above threshold quality wise when its locked. Due to the satellite not being in a fixed orbit (also known as wobble) the satellite probably gets further away at a time resulting in no signal. During the night its back closer and the signal goes up.

Seen this happen with folks who are on the edge of a DBS satellite.

 

[Anole]

This was an issue with the scalar rings and feedhorn being misaligned to the dish.
One quick adjustment with a hammer and the problem was fixed!

Some ways back in this very thread, I posted an answer for this problem by Corrado.
Thanks to some great night photography, we can see this still needs to be done!
before (terrible) . . . after (still needs work)
Till the scalar and LNBF are aligned, all the rest of the discussion is a waste of time.

 

[zamar23]

Dee

If you post some fresh pics of your 6ft dish mounted so that its deformation is visible, the guys here may suggest how to fix the damage you believe to have done to it during install. Also the thread Anole suggested above gives good explanation how to center LNB - just what you need.

Since picking larger dish may be a bigger challenge, you may want to finish with the smaller one before opening a new season of "Finally" with "Big Dish Story". It may indeed take a brand new thread (and another season) to make it happen, and later other sat guys would find useful info easier, if you split your multiple projects between several threads. There is plenty of useful info in your story, including many advice donations.

 

[empiretc]

332 posts- a wealth of knowledge in this thread- the response @325...

http://www.satelliteguys.us/248617-finally-33.html#post2533495

 

[Dee_Ann]

It will be a few days before I can do anything on the biggest dish, my folks are taking a weekend with friends in the country. Nothing I can do right now, maybe see about taking the rust off that ring part.

I got some food poisoning last night from some out of date yogurt and have been throwing my toenails up all night so I don't plan on getting out in the heat for a few days until I feel better. I just don't have the umpfh to do anything at all right now. So I'll just sit here, go back a dozen pages, re-read all your suggestions, info and links and try to digest it and see if I can make any sense of any of it.

I guess the rest of the week is best spent reading up and taking it easy. It's just too hot outside and I feel awful to go out back and fight with that stupid thing right now. I'll get back on it soon enough. I'm too stubborn to give up, as much as I want to give up, my stubborn streak is the driving force in my life.

Thanks guys..

 

[Dee_Ann]

I have had it with the six foot dish. It's not going to work, period.
I am not going to waste any more time on it, period. I'm taking it down and I'll give it away to someone I totally hate and despise just so I can laugh at them as they torture their own soul trying to make that POS working. Good riddance...

A few days ago I totally lost MeTV even at night. NOTHING I do will bring it back. I've tried everything. It had been where it worked ALL THE TIME, then it went back to fading out in the day time and working only at night, then it quit working at all.

Today that little meter came in. I added it onto the tripod with the little tv because the screen on the meter is too tiny for me to read even with my stronger glasses. I plug it into the little 7" tv and I can see it fairly well.

There is no point in trying to tune it in during the day, it never comes in there and at night the mosquitoes eat me alive. I fought the stupid thing tonight for about 45 minutes before the mosquitoes ran me in. And that was the end of it. I folded up my little tripod, pulled the wires down and packed it in.

I was able to find the stupid horse racing nonsense on 87 but I can not find NASA, this or me tv anymore.

So to h*** with it. WEEKS and WEEKS I've been fighting with this thing and I get nowhere with it. Every once in a while it will work for a few days then just quits even when I DO NOT TOUCH A THING! I'll power down the gbox and absolutely NOT TOUCH IT and it just fades out and goes away.

So I just have reached my limit on this garbage.

I'll find a sucker that wants this bent up, warped up, distorted, flimsy dish and I'll give it to them.

I am now going to focus my efforts and energy on the BIG dish, the 10 foot dish. It's SOLID. Very solid.

You guys say I can't do it? Watch me. I'll make that big one work but I'm not wasting any more time on the little one. I don't care anymore, I don't want it anymore. It's over for that one.

I'm going to see if I can locate another large mesh dish to replace the cheap little 6' dish.

By the way, I sat down and went through "The List" and I entered every single satellite of potential value and every transponder into the new meter. It took me -a-l-l- -d-a-y- -l-o-n-g- to enter everything into it.
There is a USB port on the meter but the booklet says in Engrish not to mess with the port and there was no software that came with it. So apparently they don't want you to do it the easy way on your pc. Manual entry is the only option.

I also would like to be able to download a copy of everything I entered into the meter in case it crashes so I don't have to do that all over again!

Also, I found replacement batteries on ebay for it, I used a digital measuring thing my dad gave me to check the size and I matched up the values of volts and stuff so I am certain this is a usable replacement battery. Just in case..

When my dad gets back next week we are going to see about welding those rusted away parts back in place and getting the beast put up. I want my flippin channels!

I really regret getting that little dish. It's been a massive headache for me and considering I'm a beginner, it was a bad choice. I think it's too small to get weak signals and it takes a pro to tune this thing in. That and not bending it all up during assembly.


edit: Wait a minute... Before I toss this bummer project, I'm wondering if I can convert it to a ku dish for PBS? I have an old c/ku combined lnb. Maybe I could just aim it at PBS 125 and leave it there and use the 10 footer as my C band dish?

 

[Pixl]

Dee,

I vote for working with the large dish too. It will have more signal gain, and there is nothing better in this business than extra signal. It will make up for other imperfections, lnb not quite right etc.
I know that Iceberg and a few others have this 6ft dish working on 87w. But 6ft being a little small for C band had better be in perfect condition. My own 6ft un-used project as an example. It is a solid, one piece microwave dish I converted to sat service. I didn't notice till I had it up and painted that it has damage to it's shape. I was able to get channels from 87w on it, but much lower signal quality than my 8ft dish and they come and go with no sense just like yours does. I have a C/Ku lnb on it. Ku is even worse, few signal at all. It just sits there un-used next to my 8ft, also a converted microwave dish that works well C and Ku.

Jim

 

[stanleyjohn]

Dee! I wish you luck with the larger dish but dont expect it to be easier to get right than the 6 footer!actually it will most likely be more of a challenge than the 6 footer.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee! I wish you luck with the larger dish but dont expect it to be easier to get right than the 6 footer!actually it will most likely be more of a challenge than the 6 footer.

Maybe so. But I have no other choice. The six foot dish is a wash. I am not experienced enough to to deal with using a minimal dish to pick up a borderline signal. And of course there is the issue that the dish is damaged. The damage is wholly MY FAULT, I handled it like an all thumbs CLOD while I was trying to assemble it and when I moved it around numerous times as it languished in my back yard on the ground for over half a year. IF the dish were in perfect condition, had I not bent it all up on numerous occasions, it might work.

As was mentioned above by Pixl, the larger dish should gather more signal and hopefully compensate for any imperfections. And looking at the large dish in it's fully assembled state, it appears to be undamaged and perfectly round, or at least to my untrained eye it does. It looks far better off than the little one.

And the part that holds the lnb is much sturdier than the flimsy, bendy tubes on the small dish. I am certain that it will STAY where I set it.

I think that I will see if I can point the six foot dish at PBS and just leave it there for that. If it won't work for PBS then I'll take it down and give it away because that's it's one and only last chance for survival here. Yes, I was a clumsy idiot and ruined the dish. I take full and total blame for that. Oh well. Next time I will know better. At least with the ten foot dish it is sturdy enough to survive my clumsiness.

I just don't understand why they don't have markings on these things like they do on the little ku dishes. And why don't they make them much stronger like the little dishes. Those little channel master brand ku dishes are bomb and hurricane proof. And they have marks so when you set the bleepin' things and the pole is level, you KNOW you are set right. There is almost no guess work with them. Heck, with a ku dish you almost can set them up without a meter if you take your time and set the marks properly. The C band dishes, it's PURE GUESS WORK AND POT LUCK.. Maybe in the day when these big dishes were all the rage the signals were stronger and easier to tune? Like now, the new digital tv signals for OTA tv are weak and harder to receive. My dad said they cut the transmitter power waaaaay down when they converted to digital and the signals are weaker and don't travel as far. Perhaps they have done the same with the newer satellite signals. I don't know.

But my efforts are now on the biggest dish. It will be sometime next week before I can try to put it up. It still needs welding done to it then I have to get help to put it on the pole. Amazingly enough it doesn't weigh much but it's huge and hard to handle.

 

[Anole]

Dee - take a look at this recent thread.
I am not saying it pertains to your recent daylight-nighttime problem, but it does beg the question:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-satellite-discussion/255501-now-its-here-now-its-gone.html

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee - take a look at this recent thread.
I am not saying it pertains to your recent daylight-nighttime problem, but it does beg the question:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-satellite-discussion/255501-now-its-here-now-its-gone.html

How interesting that someone else is having a very similar problem.. Hmmm..

Well, let me throw this on the grill, it does the same thing with my pc or with the coolsat. Either one behaves the same way and at the same times. So it's not in the tuner(s).. Both systems do the same thing at the same time but are very differently built? (pc vs coolsat)....


On the 10 foot dish.. I called my dad today and we talked about it. He told me to go over to his house (they are still out for the weekend) and go get a little bitty welding machine and bring it here. The whole thing is about the size of a kid's lunch box but weighs about 250 tons....

I've helped dad before with welding and he taught me, well, kinda, how to weld. So he told me I could stick the pieces he made to the ring so they are in the right angle and he'll come pick up the ring Monday, clean up my nasty welds, finish welding it properly and clean it all up in general.

So I got the little welder, a hood and some little welding rods from his garage and brought it all home. I had a lot of trouble figuring out the hood because it has a battery in it so that when you're not welding it's easy to see through and when you start welding it goes dark. That didn't work too well and I got blinded a few times before I figured it out.

Then the breaker kept tripping and I would have to stop and wait a few minutes for it to cool off then try again. I could only get about 5 seconds at a time on the breaker. I called Dad and he said the welder takes a BIG breaker and I had it plugged into a little 15 amp breaker. Not enough!

So I globbed up a nasty mess on the ring and the clamps enough to hold it in the correct position. This may have cut a day or two off the process and I saved my dad some trouble by doing this step myself. He said fixing what I did will be easy and not to worry about how ugly it turned out. He has a BIG welding machine at his place that will fix anything.
The little one I borrowed is just for very minor things like what I did today and isn't a real welder.

So yeah, I was feeling froggy this morning, we had a cool front come through, I opened the house up and let the north wind blow through and I got crazy with yard and house work and decided that I wanted to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING today towards getting the big dish up.

So, the little dish problem... Maybe it's the EL CHEAPO lnb I bought on ebay? I bought the cheapest (like $10 I think?) lnb I could find that doesn't have a motor on it to change the polarity. I guess it would be called auto polarity?


I found an old Chapparal lnb in the tool shed with the other junk. There was a motor on it but the motor was frozen up. I took it off to put oil in it and the gears kinda spilled all out so that's a goner. I also sorta broke a plastic thing in the lnb that connected the motor to the rods in it that rotate around. So, I stuffed some foam rubber in the hole where the motor went and put duct tape over it to hold the rods in place because the were just spinning around freely inside.

Hopefully the tape will keep the water out too though I kinda have my doubts.

So I realize that this lnb now can no longer change polarity, at all. Perhaps I can manually rotate it around to the right spot, lock it in place and leave it be. Maybe it's a better lnb even in it's broken and Mickey Moused state than the cheap Chinese lnb?

I was thinking that as a last resort I could use the ku side of it and point the 6' dish at PBS but I see they are both H and V channels there. I guess I could use it only for the V channels since it appears that the HD and S2 channels are all on V channels.

I suppose that I need to look into a proper lnb. I don't want one with a built in disque switch or one of those other kinds of switches that works on tones because they won't work with my existing stuff. So if I get an lnb that does both ku and C I would want it where the two signals go down separate wires and not combined into one wire. I can run the two wires into my 8 way switch as it has several open spots on it now.

The lnb, actually, I guess I might need two of them IF I keep the little dish, needs to also be affordable. I sure can't afford a darn $150 lnb!

The more I think about it, the more I want to blame that cheap lnb from China. Very rarely does anything of quality or value come from that country.. And dummy me, I bought two of the bleepin things!

Sunday is my ~do nothing~ day. I'm going to get up early, start the coffee pot, open the house and sit around all day enjoying the cool weather, this is probably our last cool front for at least 6 months. I don't want to waste a lovely day getting all upset and frustrated with this stupid mess when I know I won't get anywhere with it. I'll just chill and wait till next week when Dad gets that ring cleaned up. When I get it back I can actually put the big beast up, at long last!

As far as how to put the motor on it or anything else, I have no clue... No clue at all. I never saw it assembled before so I have no idea how any of it goes together. I'm just guessing and trying to apply a little common sense to it. And a little of what I've picked up through the school of hard knocks...