The devil is hairlipped tonight
because ~~
I ~~ got that BIG dish assembled, put up and ~~ working ~~ today....
I told you guys I would do it. I said I would make it work even if it hairlipped the devil.
So I'm sitting here watching MeTV and it's coming in really, really, really strong and clear.
It was NOT easy. I spent the past few weeks cleaning all the metal parts with acid (something called ospho) and wire brushes on a drill then painting everything several coats.
I cut the pole down. I watched Dad do the first one back some weeks ago so I figured I could do that. And I did. I borrowed his saw and I cut it down all by myself and didn't even get hurt doing it. I just took my time and when it got close I took the saw away and pushed the top part off and let it fall.
Dad welded the ring properly and brought it back. I bolted it onto the dish, that was pretty hard to get that ring in place by myself. My back is telling me right now that I went a little over my limits.
I dragged the dish out to the pole and bolted the big heavy bottom part to the dish ring. Then I mounted the motor to it so that it can't tip side to side.
At this point I was stuck because it's waaaaay too heavy for me to lift up onto the pole. Yeah, I did try. No, I could not.
So I called my dad and he said he had a meeting to go to this evening and could stop over on his way.
Mom and Dad popped in a few hours later, my dad and I were able to lift the dish onto the top of the pole. With two of us, it wasn't a big deal at all. Mainly my dad lifted and I steadied it while he tipped it just so until it fell down onto the pole. It took less than 2 minutes. Done deal.
Mom and dad left and I went in to cool off awhile.
A few hours later I took my little meter and went outside. I took a wild guess and turned the lnb to about the position it had been in on the other dish when I had been able to find MeTV and tightened it down. It was a wild guess, I was hoping to get anything, I didn’t care what, I just wanted it to give me an indication that I was in the general area.
I took the tip-o-meter thing and set the angle to 30 degrees exactly. The other setting, you can’t change easily. There are three bolt holes and I could see it used to be on the middle hole so I set it on that. It’s one of the x-clanation settings. I still don’t get that stuff. But whatever.
So turn the dish in the general direction of 87 AMC 3, hook the meter up and wait while it booted. I expected “NO SIGNAL”. Um, NOPE...... FIRST THING that pops onto the screen is NASA. Something to do with the space station. WOA.. Really??
So I turn the dish a little on the pole east and west for the best signal and tighten those bolts.
I’m thinking that’s gonna be it, just like the little dish where I could get NASA and nothing else.
I almost didn’t do it but at the last second I decided to check and see what else I could get. I hit blind scan and bingo, MeTV and thisTV show up in the found channels along with a lot of other stuff. Woa........
Not bad for first shot, wild guess with no tweaking.....
ThisTV shows a weak signal though and doesn’t come in, yet. I’ll get it later.
I’m sure that when I go out and put some real effort into it and carefully tweak it, I can get all the good stuff on AMC 3.
I don’t have the motor situation figured out just yet so I just ran the lnb of the big dish into the discque 8x1 switch for now. Actually all the dishes are plugged into the discque switch for now because I don’t have the motors running, yet.
I knew that little dish was a lost cause. So I’m going to aim it at probably 99 Galaxy 16, I think I saw one of the church channels there runs Green Acres and a few other oldies. I’ll just park it there, tweak it as best as I can and leave it the heck alone.
Also. During the past week or so, I sat down and looked over the motor situation for the ku dish that I’ve been wanting to do something with for more than a year. I looked and looked and decided I was going to do something, anything, somehow, someway with it.
I got out the digital measuring gadget and tried to find something I could use to adapted it’s tube to the pole clamp on the back of a dish. I though maybe some pvc pipe might work, it was close but not right. Then I checked the inside of a fence post and found out it was just right. But there was the problem of that lip on the motor tube. Heck with that! I took a saw and cut that lip off then sawed off a short piece of fence post and slid it onto the tube. Perfect fit... I drilled a hole through both of them and bolted it so it couldn’t slide off. I took a ku dish and flipped the pole mount on it upside down then bolted it to the motor. And bingo, that worked just fine...
I bolted the motor to a pole and took the meter out and played around until I got a good signal on 91 Galaxy 17 ku. I found all sorts of interesting things there that pop in and out. Unlisted goodies. Best luck finding things in the morning and early afternoon.
I did not make the motor work on it. I just aimed it at the satellite and wired the lnb directly to the main switch with all the others. I’ll worry about it later.
I have a little switch I bought last year for 22k, I think it’s an encoder. I have no idea how to make it work. Yet.
My goal is to have the encoda switch between the big dish and the ku dishes.
I don’t know how to explain it so I’ll try to illustrate it.
I understand that I can’t put the motor after the switch, that it has to be before the switch or it will burn the switch out. So I’ll run the wire to the motor, from the motor to switch and then a wire from the lnb to the switch. And the big dish won’t be on a discque switch. The encoder switch will switch over to the Gbox and the Gbox will be able to move the big dish.
Now I have no idea how to set all that up. I can connect all the wires up, that’s easy. But I don’t know how to make the pc understand what I want it to do. Yet.
I’ll figure it out, one of these days. I’ll keep reading and scratching my head and trying and trying until I get it.
I knew that little 6‘ dish was too beat up to ever work right. I had waaaay too much trouble with it, what with me being a beginner and all and it being damaged from my clumsy assembly and handling methods. I knew there was no point in continuing to frustrate and aggravate myself over that thing so I just quit on it and put my efforts into the big dish.
And on the very first try with no tweaking at all, I got my channels... THAT, is good. If I had that much success straight off with it then with some effort I should be able to do far better and get ALL the goodies. I’ll work on tweaking it over the next few days.
And I’ll keep at it on the other stuff, the motor controllers, until I figure them out too.
I can’t help it, I’m too hard headed not to.
So there...
I did it.
I said I would and I did....
Meh.............
:up Now relax and watch some TV! 
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