Why do you need such large dishes for Dishnet. An 18" works well here with more than ample signal! That what I used recently when 61.5 was ITC.
Moving. Need advice on planning new dish farm.
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Yeah, where I am a basement = underground swimming pool. The water table is just a few feet down, when you dig holes here they fill with water so you have to do it during a drought and be prepared to bail it out.
There’s no crawlspace, the house is on a 24” slab.
The window thing is definitely an option. That’s pretty cool, thanks, I will look into that.
No HOA, thank goodness. I hate those NAZI idiots. I would never live in such a place because I don’t let people tell me what I can or can’t do. I march to my own drumbeat.
Why big dishes? Because I have them. Because I can. And I despise rain fade. Which never happens when you use a dish 3x larger than what they fix you up with.
I have friends that have those little dinky dishes and they are always whining that they lose the picture when it gets a little rainy out.
I have a neighbor that has a Dish 1000+ and there is a Dish tech over there at least once a month and every single time it’s like he’s there ALL DAY.. He’ll spend a few hours on the roof twiddling with the dish then 4+ hours inside doing who knows what. It’s an old couple and they are at the complete mercy of Dish. If I had that many problems I would tell Dish to come get the stupid thing.
Since I do my own dishes I have zero problems with mine. It almost never goes out. There’s quirks about the system I don’t like but it’s not anything to do with it working or not, just things I don’t like. Like the mandatory daily disk check. Annoying. But I put a very small disk in it rather than the 2tb disk that it trashed and now the daily check only takes a few minutes rather than the two hours each day it took before.
Mind you, I’m not complaining here, just giving an example. But as for reception, I have zero complaints. I would like to have THREE 1.2m dishes and if I can get my hands on two more Prodelin 1.2m dishes, I’ll do exactly that.
My 10’ BUD, I love it. We had some severe storms the other day and I lost Dish for like 5 minutes during the worst of it. It was coming down like 4 inches in half an hour. Big flooding problems.
During the few minutes my Dish signal went out I flipped over and watch MeTV on the Bud (101) and it was 100% perfect. The torrential rain had zero effect on this signal.
As for stacking the dishes on fewer poles, that’s a really cool idea but I want to keep them below the fence line as much as possible. The neighborhood is very upscale, upper middle-class and the house/yard are very, very nice. I want to maintain a nice appearance. Putting everything behind a wood fence will do that except for the BUD. To counter that, I’m going to plant bamboo along the front of the fence to hide anything that sticks up above the fence so from the street it’s not visible.
One thing that I looked at is where the first and second floor meet. The first story is brick but the second story is covered in shingles, it’s like a French Provincial style I guess. The second story is clad in plywood and that’s covered with stylized shingles. There is a cable internet wire coming through the second story wall just above the bricks. I imagine I could do the same thing with the satellite wires then run them through conduit down into a waterproof switch box. From there I want to run conduit to each pole, underground. I want to put the conduit in before the poles are cemented in so that the conduit will run through the cement and come up right next to the pole. That way it will be protected from lawn mowers and weedwhackers.
That’s a pretty crude drawing but I never said I’m an artist.
But I figure you get the idea.One inch conduit running to each dish, buried then poured into the cement so it comes out of the cement right next to the pole.
I would put curved elbows on the conduit rather than 90 degree elbows so the wire would be easy to push/pull through it.
Also, put strings in the conduit before I put it in the ground so I can pull the wire through.
On the tops of each conduit, a couple of curved elbows to it’s like a candy cane where water can not get in.
And stuff some wadded up nylon window screen in the ends to keep bugs out.
With one inch there should be enough room to get at least two wires in there if I had to.
Also I plan to put in high quality, shielded wires for the BUD motors. Maybe in separate conduits.
Doing it like this should give me a system with no wires above ground and where they come out of the ground they will be protected from damage.
I’m thinking I should probably put a cement cap around the wire conduit just in case. Or something to armor it from damage, I may continue with the current yard service that takes care of the place now so I want to make it impossible for their helpers to bumble it up and break my conduit & cut my wires.
I have several months to plan this all out so I’m not in a rush to get it done.
I’ve heard the saying measure twice, cut once. I need to measure 20 times. I really have to plan it out very carefully and do it right the first time. If I plant a pole in the wrong place I’ve got a BIG problem.
It’s a bit stressful trying to figure this out in my head but it will be nice to have it done right and looking professional. What a relief from this haphazard redneck random placement I have going on here.
Some of the poles where put here by my ex and I can’t imagine what manner of logic he employed (if any at all) when putting them up other than “This looks like a good spot” and that it was closest to the ice chest. Arrrrrgh!! That’s what I was left with, a redneck mess. And just learning, I didn’t know what I was doing and just went along with the program for several years.
If I were to stay here I would have someone come with a tractor and rip ALL these poles out so I could start completely over from scratch. I’ve learned a lot of what NOT to do.
Maybe today I’ll get over there and get some photos and more precise measurements. I need to get some PVC and makes those jigs or whatever you call them, the mock-up things so I can check that stuff will actually fit in there or not. I need to make one for each dish I plan to have and put them all in place at the same time. Another problem I have to avoid is dishes overlapping one another. I have several of them doing that now because they are too close to each other and some of them are partially blocking other dishes. Not cool. Must avoid that too.
As long as you do not have any HOA restrictions....I would put up a 30 or 40 foot Rohn 25G tower, and attach it to the house, and make sure you put concrete to spec. Then put all of your KU dishes on it above the roof line. Just a thought.
Can’t do that. It would look bad considering the neighborhood. I have to abandon my redneck ways and redneck days.
While there is no HOA it’s a very nice place and I want to keep up appearances as they say.
I could get away with putting a 30’ tower with a really large OTA ATSC antenna, no worries about that. But covering it with dishes, nope.
Besides, the dishes are large and heavy and this is hurricane alley. I want to keep them low to the ground on heavy gauge posts buried deep in excessive amounts of cement.
My goal is to keep as much of it below the fence line as possible. I’m going to have a minimum of 7 dishes and the smallest is one meter.
I’ve got
I don’t intend to put ALL of them up but most of them. I’m figuring on at least 7, maybe 8 and if I can fit it, nine dishes.
The only way to hide the two big dishes is plant bamboo along the fence line facing the street.
The name of the game is to not drive down property value in the area by looking all redneckish.
While there is no HOA it’s a very nice place and I want to keep up appearances as they say.
I could get away with putting a 30’ tower with a really large OTA ATSC antenna, no worries about that. But covering it with dishes, nope.
Besides, the dishes are large and heavy and this is hurricane alley. I want to keep them low to the ground on heavy gauge posts buried deep in excessive amounts of cement.
My goal is to keep as much of it below the fence line as possible. I’m going to have a minimum of 7 dishes and the smallest is one meter.
I’ve got
- one - 10’ BUD (black mesh)
- one - 6’ Prodelin KU offset solid fiberglass
- two - 1.2 meter Prodelin KU offset fiberglass
- six - 1 meter KU offset (various makes)
I don’t intend to put ALL of them up but most of them. I’m figuring on at least 7, maybe 8 and if I can fit it, nine dishes.
The only way to hide the two big dishes is plant bamboo along the fence line facing the street.
The name of the game is to not drive down property value in the area by looking all redneckish.
hey Dee Dee....Joe will help with the dish project we talked about a few days ago...When it turns cooler ( under 80) lets go see
Mrs King ... Of course the wet weather has to stop before we can swim out there..I told him one is his IF he brings the muscle.
If we can get 1 each back to town then its a success..Will call you later when it get drier out there..i stopped by the other day and
the dishes are really out of site now.. but they still belong to us, she says Ok ..waiting on us...good luck moving..
Mrs King ... Of course the wet weather has to stop before we can swim out there..I told him one is his IF he brings the muscle.
If we can get 1 each back to town then its a success..Will call you later when it get drier out there..i stopped by the other day and
the dishes are really out of site now.. but they still belong to us, she says Ok ..waiting on us...good luck moving..
how far from the current location are ya moving to? Same town or vicinity?
Reason I ask is I know we've discussed OTA options for ya at the current spot. One note I know you wanted to get ThisTV from Lake Charles, LA (KPLC). Well FYI they (well the owners Raycom) dropped it in August for the new station "Grit" (I know we've talked about Grit and Escape here)
OH NO!!!!!!! WTH?????
After I read this I jumped over and did a deep scan for ATSC and I found KPLC 7.x channels and they are still airing ThisTV as of this moment.
Maybe they are planning on dropping it?
I did some screen grabs. The signal drops out every few seconds, like a kid playing with a light switch. The picture freezes and pixelates frequently so it’s just not viewable.
I see they still have that huge, nasty, eyesore of a watermark on the lower left quarter of the screen. That’s just FOUL and immature of them. Like a dog marking it’s territory.
I turned my antenna towards the tower according to the TVfool chart. In the past one of my neighbors had a big oak tree that was in the way but they had it cut down earlier this year so that helps.
But what I really need is a bigger antenna. I have a few mismatched, low budget antennas that are combined into one wire. The VHF antenna my dad gave me was originally sold from Radio Shack as an FM radio antenna. The box was clearly marked FM radio antenna and TV was not printed on it anywhere. But my dad told me it would work anyway. And it does, more or less. It wouldn’t pick up UHF so I had to put a separate antenna for that then a special signal combiner. I also put a powered amplifier on it too. The amplifier made a HUGE difference..
But the bottom line is, I really need a large, proper antenna and not this cluster of stuff I’ve rigged up from mismatched stuff.
When I move there is an antenna pole there now but it’s all old school stuff with the flat wires and the antenna is all messed up with bent and missing elements so the first thing is to replace it.
I’m planning on a new antenna, the biggest, best that I can find and my motor and amplifier. All new wire with this 3ghz RG-6Q of course.
Oh yeah, I’m only moving about 10 miles away, to Nederland. There’s no trees there, the line of sight is so much cleaner than here. Also I don’t think there are any refineries in the way like there are here.
I think with a proper antenna I’ll have a lot better luck than I do here. At the new place, the pole is a lot higher than mine is here so that will help, it’s about 3 feet above a two story house. And as I recall, people have said that my metal roof could be messing with me here. My antenna is about 5 feet above the roof but they said it could be reflecting the signal in weird ways that mess with the antenna working right. The new place has a traditional shingle roof.
I’m hoping that I’ll be able to pick up Houston better. I can get Houston here but it’s unreliable. Trees, metal roof, sketchy antenna none of which helps.
Probably won’t be moving until spring. Have to wait for the current resident to move out, paper work, etc.. It’s a big deal and won’t be happening overnight.
Which is good because it gives me time to plan all this out. Moving, for me is going to be tough because I don’t have a truck and I’m disabled so I’ve got to figure all that out too.
I may have to ask a favor of a few friends. I hate doing that but I don’t have too many options.
Howdy...
Well as much as I really wanted to get that giant dish out there I won’t have anywhere I could put it. At best I could take it apart and store it, just to say I have it I suppose.
Or if something happens and I have to move again, which I doubt. I’m pretty much 100% certain this will be the last place I ever live.
And there’s just no room. It’s such a tiny little yard, only a third the size of my current yard. Barely 2,000sqft vs 6,300sqft..
I’m trying to figure out how to place the dishes I have now within the confines of a 14’ x 30’ space on the side of the new house, boxed in on three sides by a 6’ wood fence and one side of the house.
The actual back yard is sooooo small. My dogs won’t even have room to break into a full run. And after I plant all my gardening it will be even smaller. I couldn’t put one of those big dishes up if I wanted to. I wish I could. But maybe the option you mentioned, getting the feed horns, I could go for that. There were a few other odds and ends out there that I could use as well that I’m sure would be considered junk to anyone else.
I’ll chat with you about it sometime, don’t want to go into too many details here.
Thanks..
Don't forget to call before you dig in case there are underground utilities. especially power lines. It should be easy to find a number in the place your moving to.
Raycom made the deal but apparently didnt tell the affiliates (from what I've read) but as noted above the current deal with ThisTV needs to expire first. So it could be a little bit before the change is made.
yeah you need a VHF specified antenna. I personally have recommended this one to ya a couple times
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.as...enna--(Y10713)&c=TV Antennas&sku=716079000994
Its the one I used when I had my house to pick up a VHF station 72 miles away.
Or the little brother MIGHT work but not be as stable
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.as...ls-713-(Y5713)&c=TV Antennas&sku=716079000987
I love that line. Why? Because you can
If you have the dishes available why not use them. When I had Dish sure the "stock" dish worked fine but I used a 36" dish for 129W (the HD stuff) because as a FTA'er I wanted to max out the meter
Oh yes indeed I will !! Some of the holes will be 6 feet deep by 18 inches around. And there are definitely buried water lines, gas lines, phone, cable TV, etc.. No buried power lines, that I am certain of but lots of other stuff is. We have some number in Texas like 1-800-DIG-HOLE or something like that, it’s the law, you have to call before you dig any deeper than a foot. They send someone out to put paint marks on the ground where anything is buried. I think they use different color paint depending on what it is. They send a thing in the mail to EVERYONE once a month about digging because there are so many buried pipelines here. You could blow up half the planet if you’re not careful around here. (heavy duty refinery area)
Raycom made the deal but apparently didnt tell the affiliates (from what I've read) but as noted above the current deal with ThisTV needs to expire first. So it could be a little bit before the change is made.
yeah you need a VHF specified antenna. I personally have recommended this one to ya a couple times
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?mc=03&p=Y10-7-13&d=Antennacraft-by-RadioShack-Y10713-HighbandBroadband-VHF-TV-Antenna--(Y10713)&c=TV Antennas&sku=716079000994
Its the one I used when I had my house to pick up a VHF station 72 miles away.
Or the little brother MIGHT work but not be as stable
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?mc=03&p=Y5-7-13&d=Antennacraft-by-RadioShack-Y5713-HighbandBroadband-VHF-Yagi-TV-Antenna-for-Channels-713-(Y5713)&c=TV Antennas&sku=716079000987
I love that line. Why? Because you can
If you have the dishes available why not use them. When I had Dish sure the “stock" dish worked fine but I used a 36" dish for 129W (the HD stuff) because as a FTA'er I wanted to max out the meter
Amen to that!
As for a new antenna, this is one that I’m looking at. http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.as...nna-(HD8200XL)&c=TV Antennas&sku=700112818356
If I can find an even better one, I’ll definitely consider it. I am open to suggestions for sure. I don’t mind spending the money to get the best.
I’m tired of all the half a** stuff I’ve been using for all these years.
Last night I was picking up a lot of stuff from Houston, here at my house with my sketchy antenna system.
I could pick up Antenna TV but it’s unreliable. Also I was able to get ThisTV from Houston, also unreliably.
Most of the stations in Houston were coming in but none reliably enough to be watchable. Lots of pixelations, lots of long freezes..
I am certain that with a better antenna I could get Houston pretty reliably, considering that I can sort of get it with my shabby FM radio antenna.
At the new place I’m pretty sure the antenna there will be much higher than mine and no trees or refineries in the way so line of sight will be much better.
I’m hoping that I’ll have really good luck with OTA there. I plan to spend the money to get first rate, top quality stuff.
OOOPSY.........
Yeah, looks like I forgot and let my membership lapse so I lost some features and stuff. I can’t renew my membership until next week though.. I get my “allowance” once a month.
I cleaned out my inbox. I think. Since they changed things now it says “conversations” rather than private messages and the controls are different. It said my inbox was 1,064 % full.
The only way I could make room was to delete EVERYTHING which I didn’t want to do. Oh well. Aw crud! I just discovered that I could do a three month subscription for $7, which I was able to cover today.
And now I’ve wiped out all my messages..
*smack my head* DOOF!!That’s a total bummer..
But for folks that like westerns I guess this is a big win for them.Personally I’m not much of a western fan though I did sort of like the very first original Gunsmoke shows, the 30 minute ones. Or Marshall Dillon or whatever they were called then.
I have taken to watching the Lone Ranger in the morning (mega-corny) and Roy Rogers (also mega-corny) but I could take em or leave em. I just watch them out of boredom, there’s not a lot on during that time slot.
One thing I really dislike about KPLC is that giant, gaudy watermark they put on the screen. It’s extremely distracting and just plain ugly.
I think once I get a proper antenna I’ll be able to get it solid and reliably from Houston. According to TV Fool, I’m 96 miles from KPRC’s antenna.
As you can see here, the signal jumps all over the place. It’s very flakey, I just can’t use it as is.
I don’t know how to interpret this pretty little graphic. I saw in the chart above that KPRC is listed as “tropo” which I don’t know what that means exactly
but I’m thinking it has something to do with the troposphere. That’s my best guess and the limit of my knowledge.
I just hope that a mongo-giant antenna will overcome this problem. It seems like I’m almost there but not quite..
So close, but so far......
I put in the address of my new house and got some different info. Almost all of the Houston channels went from “tropo” to “2Edge” which is also a term I don’t know about.
Moving puts me about three miles east of here, a little closer to Houston.
I found a compass thing in google images, downloaded it then imported it into google earth as an overlay.
I placed it over my house with the center of it dead on where my antenna is. Then I set the transparency so I can see through it.
The red circles are all BIG oak trees. The red lines are most of the local OTA transmit towers. Two of them are blocked by an oak tree in my front yard but the signal is strong enough along with my amplifier to mostly get through the tree, it’s usually not a problem. The blue circle is a huge oak tree that my neighbor recently cut down this summer that was causing me grief with KVHP but is no longer a problem for me.
The yellow line is to KPRC and KIAH (This and Antenna) which are both on the same tower it seems. And of course there is a huge oak tree smack dead in the way, right in my backyard.
The flippin trunk of the tree is dead in the way...
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/siting.html
Well I found this about trees. With all these trees so close to my antenna it’s amazing I get any TV at all.
I placed it over my house with the center of it dead on where my antenna is. Then I set the transparency so I can see through it.
The red circles are all BIG oak trees. The red lines are most of the local OTA transmit towers. Two of them are blocked by an oak tree in my front yard but the signal is strong enough along with my amplifier to mostly get through the tree, it’s usually not a problem. The blue circle is a huge oak tree that my neighbor recently cut down this summer that was causing me grief with KVHP but is no longer a problem for me.
The yellow line is to KPRC and KIAH (This and Antenna) which are both on the same tower it seems. And of course there is a huge oak tree smack dead in the way, right in my backyard.
The flippin trunk of the tree is dead in the way...
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/siting.html
Well I found this about trees. With all these trees so close to my antenna it’s amazing I get any TV at all.
I have a massive oak in my yard (~5 foot in diameter at the trunk) between my dish and some of the weaker towers in the city. I also don't have my antenna oriented towards these weaker signals because I want to make sure I get fox which is in another city and is shaded by some mountains. You get some attenuation from the trees but I wouldn't expect that to kill a good signal. As close as you are to those towers I would guess that you have an antenna issue. I mean a decent sized tree is 10-15db loss right? You are on flat ground. I suspect other factors have to be at play here. I wish that just one place I have an antenna had that flat of a profile. Of course I probably wouldn't live there because I have always been miserable in the flat lands.
Most of the local channels come in pretty well but I can’t get KPLC worth a flip. I’ve long wanted to set fire to these trees..
Before I got an amplifier reception was very poor on pretty much all channels. Just way too many oak trees. And I’m sort of nested in a bunch of refineries. I can walk out my front door and SEE the cracking towers. Same in the backyard.
They are so close that the high pitched whine from their turbines are deafening. There is no peace and quiet outdoors, at all, ever. Always the roar and whine of giant machines.
Anyway.. I only have to suffer the trees a few more months. Where I’m moving to, there are no trees in the way.
There’s an existing antenna but I’ll probably take it down and move it to the other corner of the house so it’s further away from the power lines (it’s scary, scary close to a power line!) and in the process, make it taller.
Most likely, I’ll end up putting in a 40 foot tower and be done with the nonsense.
http://www.palcoelectronics.com/pe300.aspx
It says call for pricing but they have taller towers listed around $1,000 so I’m figuring this would be less than that.
Well worth it to me. The trick would be finding a place where it could tip down.
And rigging some sort of pulley system because this chick ain’t climbing 40 feet up in the air, no way, no how!
Biggest antenna, best rotor, no more nonsense..
It says call for pricing but they have taller towers listed around $1,000 so I’m figuring this would be less than that.
Well worth it to me. The trick would be finding a place where it could tip down.
And rigging some sort of pulley system because this chick ain’t climbing 40 feet up in the air, no way, no how!
Biggest antenna, best rotor, no more nonsense..
I'm pretty big on the rig something up to work thing. Having climbed many towers and used commercially build tilts I would suggest that rigging is not the word I would use. I don't know how comfortable I would be with a homebrew tower that close to my house. If it were in the middle of a field twice the distance as it was high from my house and power lines sure thing. Wing it. I'd be afraid of the liability living in a neighborhood. Don't get me wrong, a properly installed tilt over is a beautiful thing. I liked anything I didn't have to climb. I remember we had one monopole that was a crank up and tilt. We used it for an ABB100 setup in a delta for the HF radio net that was part of the statewide EMCOMM for the PA Guard. I can't remember the manufacturer right now. Could be more expensive than what you are looking at. Not sure. I didn't work too much with anything that small and it has been a while since I did that work. From what I have seen on HRO it looks like smaller tilts go for around 3k+.
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