In Brooklyn this week...

[Tron]

I was flown up to Brooklyn this week by a good friend to install his FTA system (and to attend the Satcon/HD World convention in Manhattan ). Yesterday after the convention (which I will cover in greater detail in a thread tomorrow), I did the site survey for his setup. It will be on the roof of a five story building about a mile or so east of the East River. From what I can tell, he has a good line of sight. True South is 74w (will use ONN), I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not in New Orleans and that most of the satellites we watch are well west of here

Now for the fun part. The dish and motor will be mounted on an old water tank frame on the roof, and if all goes as planned, I think you will enjoy the pictures of how we accomplish the mount. Will update this thread with our progress...

 

[jayelem]

Sounds sweet , his LOS probably can go from 15.0 - 148.0 . if he's that high up.

 

[Tron]

Sounds sweet , his LOS probably can go from 15.0 - 148.0 . if he's that high up.

I'm not as concerned about his western LOS as I am about his eastern LOS. There is a 25-story apartment building off to his southeast which appears like it might block his view of Hispasat and possibly 43w as well. We'll see today, I'm preparing to go up there and install the motor and dish shortly

 

[Tron]

A Dish Grows in Brooklyn....

Well, its up and working, and he can get Hispasat! I had also been concerned about G-10R, considering its low elevation from NYC, but that worked out as well. But it wasn't easy....

We had to figure out a practical way to mount a pole to the I-frame girders on the roof that had been used to support a water tank. My friend came up with an elegant solution, using perforated metal frame bars (the kind that are used for wall-mounted shelves) to construct a frame mounted to the I-girders that would support a pole.

As I proceeded to install the pole foot on this frame, the screws stripped, and the pole included with the Geosat dish was unusable. We came up with a 'Plan B', which was to use 2 3/8" fencing materials to mount the motor and dish to the frame. After a quick trip to Home Depot, this idea proved successful, and more sturdy than the original mounting pole would have been. I soon had the motor and dish mounted on the pole, and was ready to begin the aiming process.

Things began to become frustrating, however, when I powered up the receiver to aim the assembly. I used USALS to move the dish to AMC-5, and chose the New York Network transponder for aiming purposes. This particular receiver (the Geosat DVR-1000) has no blind scan capability. That in itself wouldn't pose much of a problem, but I found the signal meter to be very sluggish in reaction time. It is VERY difficult to aim a dish with a sluggish meter. The wind on the six-story-high roof was picking up, the sun had set long ago, and it was getting rather chilly up there. Since I was leaving the next day, we had to finish the job that night.

After an unprecedented amount of time spent slowly panning the motor assembly east to west and back (and getting nothing), I realized that there was quite a bit of slack in the motor shaft. There are many threads concerning that problem here in the forum, but I'd never experienced it with my two motors. This time, unfortunately, the problem presented itself. Once I nudged the motor shaft east, I immediately got a signal. To make a long story short, I reset the motor a bit more to the east and was bang on the arc, 30w to 123w. We finally left the roof at 3:15 a.m.

Murphy's Law proved true once again, and I now have more of an appreciation for the troubles people go through during many motor installations. Yesterday morning certainly pushed my patience to the limits, and underscored the absolute importance of patience in this hobby.

The picture shows the frame that we devised to mount the pole, although the foot and pole shown were replaced by 2 3/8" fence post when the pole screws stripped.

 

[Anole]

I've heard of translucent dishes, but . . .
I really love the invisible dish in the 2nd picture! - :up
Nice choice of LNB, too.


Good story of perseverance over pain.
Glad to hear you got the whole thing fine tuned at the last minute.
Liked your creativity with the bracketry.

 

[Wescopc]

Murphy's Law proved true once again, and I now have more of an appreciation for the troubles people go through during many motor installations. Yesterday morning certainly pushed my patience to the limits, and underscored the absolute importance of patience in this hobby.

Thanks Tron for sharing your travails with us. It underscores why many (most?) pro-installers don't want to talk about motors! !sadroll
Bob