My New Dish Farm

[iBoston]

I will upload pictures in the next couple days. I had two 120 cm dishes on motors. I was tired of making adjustments and dealing with the USALS motor.

I obtained 3 additional 90cm GeoSat dishes. Today, I took down one of the 120 cm dishes. I then installed and tuned and locked in 3 dishes. two 90cm and one 120cm.

I now have the following fixed dishes :

90cm - 125w and 121w (2 dual bullet lnbf's - dish pointed at 123 with 4 degree dual lnbf)
90cm - 103w and 97w ( 2 geosat pro dual lnbfs - dish pointed at 103 with 6 degree side lobe for 97w)
90cm - 87w - GeoSat dual lnbf
120cm - 30w - Invacomm Quad lnbf

All 4 dishes and 6 bird locks are dual lnbfs and will be setup on 3 different receivers/tvs. I am awaiting a few extra parts (switches etc) to finalize.

My other existing and intact 120cm USALS dish will be for testing and scanning other birds. (Invacomm Linear/Circular lnbf)

The only hard part was setting up the 120cm at 30 west. I couldn't figure out why i couldn't hone in a signal. Turns out that the dish elevation slider doesn't allow the dish to descend down enough. I had to put a wedge in where the mount slips in so that it tilts forward a few degrees. I then had extra play on the elevation to fine tune it. I am getting excellent signal quality with many tp's at over 13db.

 

[N6BY]

If you want a 4th Geosat 90 cm, I'll give you mine for just the cost of shipping.

Otherwise, I'll offer the same to any other member. Its just sitting in my garage taking up space.

 

[iBoston]

If you want a 4th Geosat 90 cm, I'll give you mine for just the cost of shipping.

Otherwise, I'll offer the same to any other member. Its just sitting in my garage taking up space.

Do you have the original box? I think fedex is the way to ship those odd shape boxes. Heck yea, ill take it!

 

[N6BY]

Do you have the original box? I think fedex is the way to ship those odd shape boxes. Heck yea, ill take it!

Don't have the original box because I picked it up in person from SatAV several years ago (it cost less without the box). But I can wrap some cardboard around the whole thing and tape the heck out of it. Please PM me your zip code and I will get you a shipping quote from FedEx.

 

[iBoston]

Once i get the last switches i need, ill clean up the wires.

 

[gpflepsen]

Nice. Are you getting reliable reception of LPBS off 87w? From my location, the LPBS is problematic on occasion with the 90cm GSP. 30w at ~9° elevation does fine on my GSP 90cm. I have a 1.6m aimed @ 87, and only rarely does the signal drop out on it.

Did you think of going with the largest dish pointing @ 87w?

 

[iBoston]

Nice. Are you getting reliable reception of LPBS off 87w? From my location, the LPBS is problematic on occasion with the 90cm GSP. 30w at ~9° elevation does fine on my GSP 90cm. I have a 1.6m aimed @ 87, and only rarely does the signal drop out on it.

Did you think of going with the largest dish pointing @ 87w?

The only channel I am having problems with is my 90cm pointed at 123 for 125/121. Montana PBS. I am going to to switch back to pointing at 125 and side lobe to 121 and see if that fixes me back up with Montana.

I am not having any issues with LPB on 87 at all.. However, its only been setup a few days. I am getting 10.3 db and it is the weakest signal for me on that bird.

I put the big dish for 30 west being it was the one that was going through the most atmosphere. I wanted to make sure i got everything rock solid, which i do.

 

[hank123]

That looks great!
I am working on the same thing.

What is your elevation on 30W?

What switches are you running? Are you going to run all feeds to all 3 boxes?
Got your 121/125 issue fixed?

 

[iBoston]

That looks great!
I am working on the same thing.

What is your elevation on 30W?

What switches are you running? Are you going to run all feeds to all 3 boxes?
Got your 121/125 issue fixed?

12 degrees for 30w.
For the KU dish farm, I am running 4 8 port diseqc 1.1 switches. (one for each STB) They then run to 4 separate 5x4 POWERED multiswitches. (one for each KU satellite)

Eagle Aspen 5x4 Satellite Multiswitch S-4140-GX 54-2150 Mhz

I had previous tried the unpowered switches, and they did NOT work for me.

I am still in the works of finishing the building of it. I have 3 rg6 lines out to the storage container. I am soon to run my 4th out there. We have 4 TV's right now. Living Room, Kitchen, Guest Room and soon to be hooked up exercise room.

Yes, the Montana issue seem to have gone away when they got rid of their double feed. I think maybe they kicked up the power when they dumped the second feed.

Since having it up and running and doing tests for about a week, i have noticed that LPB stations on 87w cause me problems only in the morning?!?! Afternoons and Evenings, no problem. ?!?!?! But, that's okay with me, being i never watch PBS in the mornings. It's always KIDS stuff.

 

[iBoston]

I'm also planning on putting a 4 degree 2nd lnbf on the 87w dish. Not sure yet if it will point to 83 or 91.

 

[FaT Air]

30W is only 6.4 degrees elevation here.
I went 'sidewinder' fashion when I had the 1.2m on it.

Now have a .7m inverted on 30W

 

[Keystone7]

Looks pretty good!

 

[iBoston]

I am happy to report, over the last few days, i have fine tuned each of the KU birds to the weakest channel(s). Ie, Montana PBS, LPB, NBC 1-4 Muxes...

I am happy to report that i am getting everything without any glitches. I also welded stabilizers onto the dishes to keep them from bouncing around in the wind. and.... I finally got all the multi switches properly hooked up. I also added 91w side lobe lnbf to my 87w dish.

So, thanks to this setup i can instantly turn to any KU channel on 30w,87w,91w,97w,103w,121w and 125w. I am also hooked up to to 4 separate rooms. Mucho Happy!

Ps. I will be putting silicone caps on all the empty available slots on the switches.

 

[danristheman]

boston what kind of switches do you have?

 

[iBoston]

boston what kind of switches do you have?

I have (4x) 5x4 powered multi switches. 2 are Aspen Eagles and 2 are perfect visions. I previously tried the un-powered units. They wouldn't work. I tried two of them. Both were useless. It might have been the 100' foot run?? The powered units work great and allow me to hook up 4 STB's.

I then have 4x 1x8 diseqc 1.1 switches. One is an Amiko and the other are Gecen. Chinese switches that seem to do the trick just fine.

Example : Living Room :
Receiver goes to a diseqc 1.0 switch. Port 1 goes to Cband dish. Port 2 goes to USALS KU. Port 3 goes to Diseqc 1.1 switch. Ports 1-4 go to the 4x power multi-switches which access all the fixed KU dishes.

Model :
Eagle Aspen 5x4 S-4140-GX
Perfect Vision 5x4 PVMS5X4
Gecen GD-81E 8x1 Diseqc 1.1
Amiko D-8/1 DiSEqC 1.1 switch

 

[iBoston]

Well, I tricked out my system a bit more. One of my 5x4's had an empty lnbf 22khz tone on available because 30w 120cm dish only has one lnbf.

A year back, I purchased a 118 LNBF (11.7-12.2 circular) that i had on my 120cm USALS dish. On my 90cm for 121w / 125w , i added a 3rd LNBF to it today. So I am happy to report i am successfully grabbing 125w,121w, and 118.7w . I then plugged the dual lnbf ports to the unused slot on my 5x4 switch.

I also successfully got all four STB systems up and running.

KU Fixed System : 30w,87w,91w,97w,103w,118.7w,121w and 125w

• Living Room (C and KU)
  
• Kitchen/Dining Room (KU only)
  
• Guest Bedroom (KU only)
  
• Exersize Room (KU only)

I am about to work on rebuilding my secondary cband.

 

[danristheman]

Iboston nice setup you have. My setup goes to 3 rooms of the apartment so mom can watch her westerns in her room without going to the living room.

 

[iBoston]

Update :

I bought some fishing tools so that i can run a line in the wall to get up to the second guest bedroom. So, this will be a test to see if i can run a line from the basement to the second floor.

Now that i got my 2nd cband system installed, I am feeling good about everything.

I love all the channels i now have access to instantly without wait. It also makes it VERY USER FRIENDLY for family that visit.

 

[turbosat]

Crazy wiring! I wonder how many of them I could've done before I threw it all down and yelled "This is Spaghetti!!!" lol

 

[spongella]

Beautiful dish farm iBoston. Those GeoSatpro dishes have nice, sturdy looking az/el mounts.