JUST FOUND ME A BRAND NEW 9 FOOT RADIO SHACK C BAND SYSTEM WITH EVERYTHING!!

[fta4life]

wow never seen that site before with Radio Shack!! Hard to believe how much money stuff was back then compared to now!! $400 for a vcr in 85! That would be like a grand today! Who pays a grand for a dvd or blue ray player?

Imagine if they had laptops and ipads back then! They would have been thousands.

 

[Hockeynut]

fta4life...With an H-H BUD it is time to let the chainsaw loose....Myself I have an Ajak 180 here that I will be incorporating into the system and looking forward to that..Have you thought about one of those new ASC1 positioners that will be out soon?..It should handle that motor just fine looking at the specs,then let ur micro HD move around the dish by way of Diseqc commands.

 

[ftageekyyc]

fta4life,

Don't get me started, or I'm gonna pull up my high tech rocking chair by the fire an tell some stories...

Back around 1980, my wife and I bought our first 20 inch Sanyo CRT tv for 888.00 CDN. I think our Betamax was 799.00...

Around the same time we were really impressed at the dealership I worked at when Apple dropped the price of the 5 megabyte (yes - mega, not giga) Profile hard drive from 3,595 CDN to 2,995 - boy oh boy, hard drives may just catch on...

Around 87, 20 megabyte external SCSI hard drives for the Mac Plus started flying out the door once they dropped under a grand.

And around that same time, there was a memory "drought" - I remember very clearly selling 4 - 1 mb 30 pin Simms for 650.00 each. Yes, those are the correct zeros and decimal point.

 

[Titanium]

I remember that there was a discussion at work about upgrading our Mac Plus stations to have an external hard drive. I declined the offer. How would I ever create enough letters to fill that massive 20meg $800 hard drive? Just buy me another packet of 3.5" disks and a nice llittle wooden disk file tray... LOL!!!

The IRD is probably not powering on due to dried out capacitors. Probably many, many dried out capacitors!

Capacitors are the weakest link for most electronics from that era.

 

[fta4life]

Ok guys I have a question as today is the cement pole and put dish together day. lol


Ok, this dish does not appear to be that heavy when put together, should I

A. put the dish together on the ground and once pole is ready tomorrow throw it up there by myself, I am a strong guy

or

B. Put the dish together on the pole piece by piece in the air?


What do you guys think? Also what is the lowest off the ground the pole should be for a 9' dish?

 

[toucan-man]

Don't know about that dish, but it would be pretty awkward to do it in the air with the dishes I've put up.

I had someone help me lift the dish to the pole. One gust of wind can wrestle a big dish away from you. Maybe I'm over cautious...

I think my 10' is on a 6.5' tall pole. Ideal for mowing beneath it with a hand mower, not high enough for a riding mower. Plus I hope I'll maybe have a 12' Paraclipse one day. Thimk ahead.

 

[Magic Static]

A lot of factors to consider when locating the dish. The biggest one for me is LOS. How far east can you see? Does raising the dish another 3 feet get you more satellites? I can see all the way to 55.5°W sat location with my dish on a 15' tall pole. Also helps seeing over the neighbors houses and trees.

 

[fta4life]

ok so my pole which is 6'2" should what be buried about 2' then that would leave 4'2" above ground level, does that seem like enough to have plenty of clearance from bottom of dish to the ground? Keep in mind where I live gust never get above 40-45 mph. Also in the winter it doesnt snow, it gets as low as about 24-25 and thats it.

 

[Magic Static]

Well where you live the dish elevation is about 30° which lifts the dish up fairly high in the center of the arc. Depending how far east you go you could probably go as short as 32" and still have a good field of view. Also depends on the mount. IE I switch out a 10' dish for another this year and the second one stands 14" higher on the same pole. That pole is only 42" above the roof. If you had a temporary support to put it on and make measurements you could be exactly where you want

 

[fta4life]

well here is the deal, it is sch 40 conduit, heavy duty conduit that I got from work that runs about $20 per foot and I have another 4 foot piece with a coupling so if I wanted I could add them together and have 10 foot of pole, however I am not sure how screwing the top 6 foot pipe into a coupling would work as far as support on the pole, I dont know if after a while that coupling could come loose a bit or if it would throw off how level the pole is. I think for now i will just bury 2 foot and have 50" above ground, plus it will probably be alot easier mounting the dish on at the 4 foot level as apposed to having to get up on a ladder and put it on by myself at 7 feet or so high.

 

[Magic Static]

Maybe you can assemble the dish and leave off the LNBF support structure. Then lay it face down on the ground and measure from the mount to the edge of the dish. Try and move the mount to the east most position. This would show you just how short you can be. The shorter the pole the stronger it will be and als make it easier to reach the LNB for adjustments

 

[Magic Static]

Another thing. That conduit is not very heavy material. I would fill it with concrete.

 

[fta4life]

btw forgot to mention it is steel conduit, not plastic. lol

 

[Titanium]

Conduit (steel or plastic) is not suitable. Steel conduit is easily dented and is not hardened like other materials. Schedule 40 steel pipe or well casing should be used.

I would only consider conduit as a last resort and only if the dish was small and well protected from any wind. Definitely filled and compacted with cement or it will collapse as the AZ bolts are tightened.

 

[mmewrench]

You will want to go down 3ft or more with your pole,the deeper the better, and use something to keep the pole from turning (drill a hole through the pole and put a piece of rerod through it, set in cement). I agree that you should not use the conduit. That stuff is too soft and meant to be bendable (yes even the rigid stuff). I don't think you realize how strong a 45 mph wind is when it hits a 9 ft scoop at the end of a 6 ft lever. Use structural steel pipe its cheap and plenty strong. A pole 6 ft tall with a ten ft dish is barely high enough for you lawnmower to fit under (wont fit when the dish is at the extreme end of the arc).

 

[kodaz]

Conduit (steel or plastic) is not suitable. Steel conduit is easily dented and is not hardened like other materials. Schedule 40 steel pipe or well casing should be used.

I would only consider conduit as a last resort and only if the dish was small and well protected from any wind. Definitely filled and compacted with cement or it will collapse as the AZ bolts are tightened.

I second what titanium is saying there .
I would like to just add that i work at a concrete plant for a living and can validate that concrete has marvelous compressive strength and not so good tensile strength. To rely on crete for in a conduit pole would mean validating that you had about 6 percent air, carefully vibrated mix, proper slump , decent rebar cage, and proper aggregate size for such a small hole. - and i personally would still not trust it.

 

[T4Runner]

well here is the deal, it is sch 40 conduit, heavy duty conduit that I got from work that runs about $20 per foot and I have another 4 foot piece with a coupling so if I wanted I could add them together and have 10 foot of pole, however I am not sure how screwing the top 6 foot pipe into a coupling would work as far as support on the pole, I dont know if after a while that coupling could come loose a bit or if it would throw off how level the pole is. I think for now i will just bury 2 foot and have 50" above ground, plus it will probably be alot easier mounting the dish on at the 4 foot level as apposed to having to get up on a ladder and put it on by myself at 7 feet or so high.

So... Did you move ahead with this pole installation and do it anyway? A bird in the hand is worth trying and worth the experience until you have to rip it out and start over again.


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[. Raine]

With my dish I set the pole and then put the dish together on the pole, piece by piece, it was real easy. My pole is 6' high so the edge of the dish is only a few feet off the ground, not good with my riding mower, as some other people have mentioned.

On the side of your mount is a place to attach a manual crank so you can turn the dish as you assemble it, which made it real easy for me to assemble mine on the pole off of a step ladder. I'd also suggest not using conduit, the pole for mine is real rugged. The pole the people had planted years ago, but they'd never put together or set the dish onto it.

Here's a few pictures of the pole and a picture from the manual showing the hand crank. There's also a specific tightening procedure for all the bolts to maintain the dish geometry that I would think would be hard to do on the ground.

The manual says a hole either 48'' deep by 28'' diameter, or if you can't go that deep, then 24'' deep by 36'', 3 by 3' foot square.

 

[Claude Greiner]

according to the old catalogs
799.99 for the receiver
1299.99 for the dish

so WELL over a grand

the 5 footer was about a grand...and only aimed at G5

I've posted the link a few time but here is a site that has the old catalogs
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

The 94 catalog its on pages 48 & 49
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1994/

In 95 it was "down" to 799.99 (5 foot) and 1995.00 (9 foot) because something "new" was arriving...for a whole $700.....yup DirecTV

I miss the old radio shack. Today their stores are just bull, and the only reason why people go there are to get a battery, or an over priced Av cable or to get a cell phone.

 

[. Raine]

I miss the old radio shack. Today their stores are just bull, and the only reason why people go there are to get a battery, or an over priced Av cable or to get a cell phone.

Yeah, go to Radio Shack now looking for a resistor or something and you'll be lucky if the clerk knows what you're talking about.