Got my Primestar dish up (finally) :)

[Mr Tony]

Well I decided to put my Primestar dish up today. Now the only mast I had was a Dish500 mast so I couldn't use the 2 3/8" holder for the P*

So I found an old bracket for a 24" dish and sawed the arm off. Got some longer bolts and ran over to my dad's (he's the handyman...not me)

Cut a 12" x 12" piece of plywood and drilled a few holes. Insert bolts and voila....lighter bracket

I wanted to get IA8 for now so I slapped the dish up. I'm using the existing Primestar LNB and hooked a cable to V side and skewed properly

Then the fun began...gee, I figured...I know where IA8 is so this will be 10 minutes tops......wrong

Aimed where I thought....nothing
Aimed agian...nothing

Now the bracket for the dish had a real goofy elevation marking. It didnt have any markings on the elevation scale. It had it above and a piece of metal like an arrow and you lined it up that way...well, the metal piece is gone. So I have to wing it

Couldn't get it to work. Then I remembered something PSB said...use a DBS LNB
Grabbed a DBS LNB and slapped that on and in 10 seconds had 91 screaming in. I was aiming waaaaaay too high. Needed 38...was aiming at, oh 60

slapped KU LNB back and....nothing

Then I remembered one of my "tip of the Iceberg"...don't know where you are? Blind scan
So I blind scanned and got about 20 channels....I knew I was on IA6
moved east and reblind scanned....and got a few but I was on AMC3 now
nudged west and still nothing on ABC news channel (the 2 active TP's)

now I'm really mad so I blind scan again and I get the H transponders when I scanned V....I had the cable hooked to the V side of the LNB and it was skewed right.

So I took the Primestar LNB off and slapped on my Fortec LNB, skewed right, set 22K on and............nothing Then the "D'OH" set in.....LO 10750 (whoops...should be 10600). Set that and BAM...95 on the ABC News feed

so what should be 20 minutes was 2+ hours....but I'm up and running
(now I know why some of you guys get frustrated when aiming a dish)

so now I have to figure out why the P* LNB is screwed up

pictures of rigged bracket tomorrow

 

[PSB]

I am looking forward to these pictures

 

[voomvoom]

Good job Tony, we new you could do it.

Al

 

[iafirebuff]

Sounds like a project! Anxious for pics!

 

[Mr Tony]

I'm still trying to figure out why the P* LNB is screwy. I had it hooked to the V output, yet I was getting H transponders and it showed vertical (???)

skew was right...(counterclockwise 5 degrees)

 

[voomvoom]

Are you sure about the skew, as far as the lnb is concerned. Try moving the lnb 90 degrees one way or the other. Didn't you have another lnb you had to do that or something like that.

Al

 

[Mr Tony]

Yeah I had one LNB that was 90 degrees off

On this one there is a little notch on the LNB that lines up with 0 and I twisted it to -5 and I got H transponders that showed V.

I'm going to look at it more and see why its doing that.

 

[Stats8]

Ice, when I was hooking up my primestar LNBF, I was using a 3x4 switch, it has only voltages listed not h,v.
I searched in here for correct voltage for h,v, and hooked it up accordingly.
Well, turned out it had to be reversed, don't know why?
Are you using a 40x30 primestar?

 

[Mr Tony]

yep the 40x30 primestar

On the LNB there is a "V" and a "H"

I'm going to try it again but this time I have to climb on the roof to swap out LNB

 

[Stats8]

Oh, oh roof install, that makes it tough, I was going to suggest moving the lnbf back 1" by drilling another hole in the support arm, and experiment with the vertical position also, I moved mine down 1/2".
It doubled my signal with the lnbf.
But being its on the roof kinda nulls that idea

 

[Mr Tony]

I'm not worried about the roof part. Its only 10 feet up off the deck

Are you sure about the skew, as far as the lnb is concerned. Try moving the lnb 90 degrees one way or the other. Didn't you have another lnb you had to do that or something like that.

Al

BINGO...you were right Al. I had removed the LNB portion a while back to try a different LNB with the same flange. Well when I put the P* LNB back on, I installed it with both coaxes the same level. Undid the 4 screws and turned it 90 degrees so the coaxes were up and down and boom. Now its working fine

 

[dashaund]

Glad to see other people are having headaches with this stuff...thought it was just me.

 

[Mr Tony]

Glad to see other people are having headaches with this stuff...thought it was just me.

oh no. Not just you

 

[iafirebuff]

I am the king of FTA first time problems

 

[Mr Tony]

Here's some pictures of the modified P* dish fitting on a 1 5/8" mast

On the 3rd picture, you can see part of the bracket sawed (the top portion). The 24" dish I use to have was attached to a motor and to get the motor to fit properly I had to hacksaw part of the bracket and "fold" it down

Lat picture shows how much room I have before it hits my StarChoice dish. I can see IA6 before it touches the SC dish

 

[PSB]

Nice pictures! Good idea! So IA-6 @ 93ºw is as far east as you can go with it?

 

[Mr Tony]

IA6 is as far east as I can go before it hits the SC dish. If I put the P* dish in front of the SC dish, I could see from AMC4 west. I don't know har far west I can go because the pole is a little small and the dish may hit the roof

Its at IA8 right now. Was going to climb on roof to take pictures of the front but roof is really hot.

 

[voomvoom]

That's Great Tony, glad it was something simple, seems like it almost always is.

Al

 

[MikeI]

My IA 6 lnb is like that Tony. I don't know why. Vertical gets the horizontal channels and the horizontal output gets vertical. Tweaking/turning the lnb does nothing. With one of those zinwell switches on there, I don't worry about it anymore. I just reversed the cables into the inputs.

 

[drhydro]

Mike,
Rotate your LNB 90 degrees, should take care of the problem. When I set up my first dish (winegard 76 cm) I had the same problem.