My New Dish Farm

[iBoston]

We had 3 days of major winds... I LOST 103w/99w (my 1.2meter) It rotated or something... That is also my radio station. I had to snow blow this morning, and i got two hiccups of radio signal in a 30 minute period that told me that it is an alignment issue. I also had a solar panel lift up and flip over and rip the power cord out... And to top it off, im SICK, thanks to my son... It took everything i had to fix the solar panel, and I'm shot for the day.. So, 103w and 99w will just have to wait until I don't feel like the floor of a taxi cab... Luckily, i have a DW news IP stream i can watch.

Hopefully, there aren't other issues...

 

[FTA4PA]

We had 3 days of major winds... I LOST 103w/99w (my 1.2meter) It rotated or something... That is also my radio station. I had to snow blow this morning, and i got two hiccups of radio signal in a 30 minute period that told me that it is an alignment issue. I also had a solar panel lift up and flip over and rip the power cord out... And to top it off, im SICK, thanks to my son... It took everything i had to fix the solar panel, and I'm shot for the day.. So, 103w and 99w will just have to wait until I don't feel like the floor of a taxi cab... Luckily, i have a DW news IP stream i can watch.

Hopefully, there aren't other issues...

Sorry to hear it! Hope you feel better soon.

 

[iBoston]

Still sick, but with it being 64 degrees outside and aspirin doing its job, i took a meter up to the storage container and manually rotated the dish through brute force (didn't take much) until i heard the signal come back in strong. Literally spent less than 30 seconds.. The only thing i cannot get is the PBS stuff on 99w. Good enough for now. Ill wait until im all better before i do a proper fine tune and re-weld of a broken support arm.

I just wanted my DW back and my radio back.

 

[iBoston]

Okay, i feel much much better today.. I'm over the hump. I got outside, and fine tuned the main dish, and gained an additional 1dB and then re-adjusted the side-car lnbf for 99.5 and gained an additional .5 dB that way, and am now pulling in the PBS mux there, which i know is a hard mux to lock.

Man oh man, does it take a LONG time to lock the FSIE (11995 v 2/3 1075) mux... It is taking 5+ seconds to lock it...

The hardest part is getting the welder up there. I then painted where i welded and any rust spots that were on the dish.

99w - 11995 12.5dB
99w - 11770 11.5dB
99w - 12096 8.25dB
99w - 12140 9.25dB

103w - 12143 16dB
103w - 12079 13.5dB
103w - 12120 14.25dB
103w - 11911 10.5dB

 

[iBoston]

Okay, since the radio services moved from 103 to 101, i already had a dish covering 101w. So, i moved the cable over for the radio station satellite receiver. I have a bullet LNBF on 101/97, so i cannot put my quad on it for the extra coax i needed. But since 101 doesn't have any Horizontal signals, i went ahead and piped the one H signal to the house network, and the other to the outside radio satellite receiver.

I then moved the dish that was pointed at 125w to 105w to pick up the one FTA veterans service.

 

[iBoston]

Hahaha.. Its been a busy summer.. So, i forgot i moved 125w to 105w, and couldn't remember which darn dish was pointing at 105w... I was scratching my head not remembering... I am glad i post my work on this forum... It all makes sense now!!!

Now that i have that straight in my head, i can figure out where I'm going from here. I noticed that when we had snow last week, i lost the radio channels on 101. So, my 36" dish may not make me happy enough. The 39" i used for 105w might be a good way to go and dedicate that for 101w .

 

[iBoston]

I have a couple extra 39" inch dishes that i don't use. I figured it was better to hook them up than to let them continue collecting dust. I was aiming for some far east satellites, but came to the realization that the location i chose for one dish, which is where my USALS was, is probably not good for the <45 degrees. I think some apple trees might be in the way. So, i locked the dish at 129w for Reuters.

If i have time, ill try the last spare 39" for 15w (probably not lock able - too low from horizon) 22w or 45w as those are the last locations i don't have fixed locations at.

 

[iBoston]

I have made this mistake a few times. I hook up a new dish, and i don't quite lock it down enough. The last dish i setup was @129w. We had a 3 day wind storm, and by the end of it, i couldn't lock Reuters. This was about 1 week ago. Today, freakishly warm, got outside and re-tuned the dish, and got a better lock than before, and tightened it down hopefully enough.

Got my Reuters back!

 

[iBoston]

Well, i have come to the conclusion that the aspen 5x8 multi switches are problematic. I just had my 3rd one go bad over the last 10 years. I lost my Horizontal signals on my multiswitch. I've had this same kind of issue occur before. Now i have to swap out my 5x8 switch. Ugh I'm done with the Aspen brand for the 5x8's.

 

[Hyper Casey]

Well, i have come to the conclusion that the aspen 5x8 multi switches are problematic. I just had my 3rd one go bad over the last 10 years. I lost my Horizontal signals on my multiswitch. I've had this same kind of issue occur before. Now i have to swap out my 5x8 switch. Ugh I'm done with the Aspen brand for the 5x8's.

What brand are you going to SWITCH to?

Pun intended.

lol

But seriously, curious what switch you will use, there can not be many choices out there for a 5x8 switch these days.

 

[iBoston]

What brand are you going to SWITCH to?

Pun intended.

lol

But seriously, curious what switch you will use, there can not be many choices out there for a 5x8 switch these days.

I ordered a coupled. Ill let you know how they operate.
I have an update. Well, I got a take-two on the switch. I hooked a voltage tester to the horizontal LNBF ports, and saw that the 18 volts expected was LOW, closer to 14 volts than 18. (not close enough to trigger the LNBF to switch to H.) I didn't have any spare 18volt inserters. I did however have a spare 24v COAX power inserter that was 6 volts higher. I put that in and everything is working again.. Now the voltage on the H LNBF ports is right at 18 volts.

I did test the original 18volt ac/dc coax adapter, and it was putting out just under the 18v at 17.96 volts. I disconnected all receiver inputs, and just threw in a portable tp frequency checker, and the same low voltage was on the horizontal side of both Sat A and Sat B lines to the LNBF. So, i believe there is something internally that is diminishing the voltage to the point its not triggering the LNBF to switch to horizontal. Either that, or it is a bad 18volt power supply that shows the correct voltage, but under load may diminish.

I'm trying to find a18volt DC coax inserters, but not finding any. If you know a source, let me know.

 

[one_db_compression]

I ordered a coupled. Ill let you know how they operate.
I have an update. Well, I got a take-two on the switch. I hooked a voltage tester to the horizontal LNBF ports, and saw that the 18 volts expected was LOW, closer to 14 volts than 18. (not close enough to trigger the LNBF to switch to H.) I didn't have any spare 18volt inserters. I did however have a spare 24v COAX power inserter that was 6 volts higher. I put that in and everything is working again.. Now the voltage on the H LNBF ports is right at 18 volts.

I did test the original 18volt ac/dc coax adapter, and it was putting out just under the 18v at 17.96 volts. I disconnected all receiver inputs, and just threw in a portable tp frequency checker, and the same low voltage was on the horizontal side of both Sat A and Sat B lines to the LNBF. So, i believe there is something internally that is diminishing the voltage to the point its not triggering the LNBF to switch to horizontal. Either that, or it is a bad 18volt power supply that shows the correct voltage, but under load may diminish.

I'm trying to find a18volt DC coax inserters, but not finding any. If you know a source, let me know.

Some models of Motorola block drop amplifiers for CATV use a 18 VDC power supply with a F connector. Check eBay.