HH motor on Primestar Oval??

[gordonkearse]

I was thinking about turning the bracket on the primestar dish upside down and using an hh motor to power the dish. It would seem all you need do it shim up the motor shaft to accomodate the larger pipe.

Has anyone done it?

 

[Anole]

That'd be the 84e elliptical dish. (?)
Yes, that and the DirecWay elliptical have been discussed.
Major problem is the weight of the mount + dish.
Probably better off to search the forum for old threads which describe how to mount such a dish on a relatively light weight SG 2100 motor.
In those threads, the mount is discarded, and a replacement light weight unit is built.

This is not the only info (so feel free to search), but it'll give you a start:

Primestar dish on an SG2100 motor:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/23072-primestar-dish-sg2100.html

DirtyShame pix of motorized Primestar mount:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/23072-primestar-dish-sg2100-6.html#post433312
http://www.satelliteguys.us/433312-post52.html

 

[turbosat]

Here's one pic I saved, might be one of Anole's links..better way to do the job than using that heavy mount. The trick is to build in a way to adjust your declination offset-just bolting dish to motor will not give you the proper angle to track the satellite arc.

 

[nsaspook]

I was thinking about turning the bracket on the primestar dish upside down and using an hh motor to power the dish. It would seem all you need do it shim up the motor shaft to accomodate the larger pipe.

Has anyone done it?

This is my dish mount. It's still up and running 3 years later.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/23072-primestar-dish-sg2100-8.html#post637356

 

[Anole]

Turbo has hit the heart of the problem.
Sometimes people (Turbo included) have come up with clever ways to reuse a piece of a mount from a different dish and adapt it.
That gets the job done for less weight, and has the necessary offset built in (amount not critical, as long as it's adjustable).

 

[mred]

I was thinking about turning the bracket on the primestar dish upside down and using an hh motor to power the dish. It would seem all you need do it shim up the motor shaft to accomodate the larger pipe.

Has anyone done it?

I've done exactly this with a DG 380. It's been working great for over a year. I bought a foot of clear flexible pvc tubing at the hardware store (probably 1.25" diameter) and cut pieces of it to shim the motor shaft.

 

[Larobpra]

While mine isn't an oval dish, it had the same heavy mount. Here are pics of what I did.

 

[gordonkearse]

Thank you for all the info so far!!!!!

First off, I would like to thank all you guys for all the good feedback to my inquiry about adding an hh motor to my fixed primestar.

And I wonder now why it took me so long to ask the question. I guess that only recently have lots of us gotten involved "big time" into fta. I love my big, ugly dish. I'm getting lots of great programming which I'll find hard to match even when I get a moveable ku dish going.

From what I'm reading now, the big factor is the weight. Primestars have been around over twenty years. And, yes, they're heavy. That's probably one reason why there are still so many of them left.

So what I'm looking at is finding a heavy duty hh motor. And I need one which will move lots of weight. So that will also probably mean I'll be sacrificing speed to get what I need.

I really hate to throw out my heavy duty dish bracket just to replace it with something too light! So if anyone has any ideas on which motor I need, please keep on sending in threads to this message.

Again. Thanks, fta'ers

 

[Anole]

not a lot of choices:

There are only two at the top of the heap:
- STAB HH-120
- PowerTech DG380
Of the two, the DG380 is cheaper, faster, and newer.
I've not heard anything bad about it.
Even comes with self-adjusting disc brakes. (Automatic Zero Backlash [Slack] Adjustment)