Had a "DUH" moment tonight

[Mr Tony]

I know most of us had a "DUH" moment when working on your dish setup...well here is mine

As posted in the main area, I reaimed the 4 footer and now have 121 C-Band and 125 KU. Since there was one cable out there and I didnt feel like running another one I hooked up a 22k switch outside. Anyways...went to hook up the cable that came into the house for it.

Hooked it to port 4 of diseqc. Turned on azbox. Set up port 1,2,3 just fine. Port 4 had 0 signal....uh oh....bad port I guess
Went down in the drop ceiling (my basement has a drop ceiling and everything is there and then the cables are run up through the floor into the living room) and swapped out diseqc.....tried again...same result....0 signal on port 4 (not 0 quality....0 signal which means nothing coming into the port)
Went back downstairs and Hooked up cable directly to the receiver in the basement....worked fine on both 0K and 22K....dang two diseqcs bad?
Swapped it to a old DMSI switch (the old style)...went upstairs...0 signal...grrrrrrr
Went back downstairs and went to swap ports 3 & 4. Phone rang and as I was talking on the phone I thought to myself....wait a minute. The cable going on that diseqc up through the floor is grey. That goes to the other receiver to blind scan C-Band and the fixed dish at 105. The one going to the azbox is black

YOU'RE HOOKING THE CABLE TO THE WRONG DISEQC SWITCH!!!!

Hung up the phone and hooked the cable for 121/125 to the other diseqc and went upstairs...oh my it works

Well I had to mention my duh moment. Usually I'd start tearing apart cables and switches to get it to work. I guess the rule is check all connections and make sure its the RIGHT one

 

[Apprentice]

Sounds like something I would do but not figure it out for 3 or 4 days

 

[Wescopc]

We ALL have had those moments - I went to point a dish that a customer had moved without even looking I hooked my meter to the LNB. No quality, no love, no joy! Went to put on a new LNB - then I noticed that the customer had removed the LNB and when he re-installed it - he placed in in the holder such that the feed horn was facing away from the dish! I hadn't even noticed - red face.
Bob

 

[Anole]

This color trick, is why I have multiple colors of CAT5 cable around the house.
Besides dark blue, light blue, white, black, dark gray, and light gray cables...
I also have multiple colors of silicon boots over the connectors.

So, a light blue cable with a green boot in THIS room is the same in the OTHER room!
With just a few colors of boots, you can make up unique cables with a lot of color combinations.

Too bad we don't have color boots for our RG6, eh?
And as for coax color, at least you have two!
All I have is white. -

 

[Blindowl1234]

Yeah I set all the Cband stuff in my Sathawk to the wrong frequency 5750 lol...I can't remember all the other stupid things I've done with my setup...I've even went so far as to label all my cables and at times I still can't figure out what goes where...blind

 

[brentb636]

I use multicolored electrical tape to identify my RG-6 cables, but as you might guess, it's still possible to screw them up ! No system is foolproof when I'm on the job !

 

[Mr Tony]

I have the cables color coded with different colored zipties. It was just that I goofed up with the diseqcs.
One goes to the azbox
the other is for my "test" setups and to blind scan C-Band

so now its possible that port 4 on a couple diseqc switches isnt bad (because I was hooking it up to the wrong one)

 

[Corrado]

With 6 dishes running and multiple LNBFs, switches and receivers, I ran into this repeatedly. Usually about 30 seconds before some program I wanted to watch started. Finally, I labeled my cables with what it went to. The printed tape labels look pro too.

 

[Phottoman]

I had to laugh, sorry Ice, but you brought up something I had done at least three times. I finally got smart, with all the dishes I have now, and the LNBs are being changed out to dual feeds for the bedroom and living-room, I bought a couple of boxes of "Painters Opaque Paint Markers" so I can paint stripes on the ends of cables, and painted "B" on one switch and "L" on the other (Bedroom and Living-room) so I now know what goes where.

Wal*mart, under $2.00 per box, five paint sticks in a box, multi colors. Oh, and they seem to hold up to Arizona heat and winters.

Photto

 

[Mr Tony]

Well I kinda did it again....hooked up a receiver to the grey cable to blind scan 87W C-Band (since the azbox doesnt have blind scan)...selected port 1 for C-Band and got 0 quality and 20 signal...ugh possible bad switch?

Went down and checked the switch....looked good....looked again...instead of using ports 1-3 I had used 2-4. The label had fallen off of the switch so it looks the same until you really look and see the glue on the back.

Well at least I didnt switch it 3 times. Moved the cable to the right port and it worked fine

 

[Dishman Dan]

Hey Ice!

Maybe "Phottoette" has some different colored lipstick that will stay on the cables for ya!!!

 

[Mr Tony]

I ended up using a perm marker and writing on the switch