Installing a BUD tomorrow

[Change]

Tomorrow I'm putting up a 10' SAMI dish. Whee! I know my magnetic declination, I know my latitude and apex elevation, I've got a protractor and a decent compass, and I'll be picking up some ribbon cable tomorrow. Using a V-Box and a Pansat 3500, the dish will have DMSI C and Ku LNBs on it.
I'll take lots o' pictures

(Going to be using a big non-penetrating mount for the dish, basically a 5' pipe with 4 pipes that stick out of the bottom in an X pattern...not very windy around here, so it should last for a while without having to be re-aligned)

So if there are any words of advice, I'll be checking here again in about 8-9 hours before I head out

 

[Shawn95GT]

As always, make sure the pole is true .

Aside from that, take mental note of how and where you are measuing the angles for elevation / declination. I got all confused doing mine. The calculators will throw you a loop sometimes because they'll measure elevation from vertical vs from horizontal etc.

Good luck with it !

 

[dfergie]

Good luck, and as said above be sure the pole is absolutely level ...

 

[Change]

Got the pole perfectly plumb, made sure it was stable by jumping up and down on all the mount legs and checking again. The bad news is that the manufacturer gave me the wrong list of hardware needed, so I have to go back to the hardware store to exchange all the 3/8" bolts for 1/4" bolts. Curses, foiled again!

 

[Change]

Dish reflector assembled, but I can't do much else without an extra pair of hands.
Having trouble tracking down ribbon cable, I may just run two runs of RG6, a low-voltage cable pair for the motor drive, and some Cat5 for the motor pulse and servo drive/pulse wires.
Moved the mount closer to the house to shorten the cable run from ~250 feet to ~70 feet. Having some trouble getting the pole perfectly vertical in the new position, I'll have to do some scraping with a shovel to level the ground out some. It's about 0.5 to 1 degree off from vertical.

 

[tdti1]

Many big dish dealers have ribbon.
http://www.global-cm.net/
http://www.rpssat.com
http://mechtech.satforums.com/

 

[Change]

I was hoping to find something locally, I may still have someone come through with it for me. If not, I found some spools on eBay for pretty good prices.

 

[WyrTwister]

Dish reflector assembled, but I can't do much else without an extra pair of hands.
Having trouble tracking down ribbon cable, I may just run two runs of RG6, a low-voltage cable pair for the motor drive, and some Cat5 for the motor pulse and servo drive/pulse wires.
Moved the mount closer to the house to shorten the cable run from ~250 feet to ~70 feet. Having some trouble getting the pole perfectly vertical in the new position, I'll have to do some scraping with a shovel to level the ground out some. It's about 0.5 to 1 degree off from vertical.

Use some sheilded cable for the polorotor .

Wyr

 

[Shawn95GT]

I was hoping to find something locally, I may still have someone come through with it for me. If not, I found some spools on eBay for pretty good prices.

I'm using the ebay cable on mine - so far, so good. I used all of a 200' roll - lol.

 

[gizzer777]

God...Mine must be ancient!

Geez...Never thought of where to find the cable.....I pulled my Original Direct Burial cable up from my other house to use here (about 150 ft) I only remember it was HEAVY! That was back in 1992....I bought it new in 1976 along with the BUD which is also still in service! In fact since 1976, I have only replaced 2 servos, the LNB's, and Upgraded to a Co Rotor II, and the 4dtv.
Guess the underground install has never even dented the stuff!

BUDS ARE BUILT TO LAST!! BEST OF LUCK WITH YOURS!

Jeff