Newb questions / FTA setup

[gps]

Greetings,

Thanks to all for the info I've picked up from lurking for a while. I may be acquiring an FTA setup soon. Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated:

1. I see sats nicknamed 97W, 101W, etc. What do those designations mean? 97 degrees would be eastward on a compass, so maybe it is longitude?

2. will a fixed 30" dish work with a (dual LNB?) for Galaxy 19 and it's neighbor 4 degrees away?

3. My location will be a wooden deck, and a few neighbors use tripods for their pay services. Are these stable enough for a 30"? My thought was that I could take the setup camping, etc, if it wasn't permanently mounted.

4. Is there some type of hand crank or other adjustable mount good for manually swinging a dish so I can surf different sats without a motor, and without having to loosen and tighten the mast clamp again and again?

Best regards and thanks again to all.

 

[freezy]

yes on all counts except the last one, no planetary manual mount.

87w is a longitude. there is a satellite parked there in the "clarkes belt". If you use an online tool like dishfinder. you enter your zip code and it will tell you what azimuth it is to whatever satellite you want to receive.

you are talking about Ku dishes. They are pretty portable. Once you get a method of placing a plumbed mast while you are traveling and get a feel for where elevations are on your dish mount (dial inclinometer... lots less guessing) it will get lots easier.

fta is a tinkerers hobby. it isnt a very reliable replacement for packaged service

 

[Magic Static]

Satellite positions start at 0° Prime Meridian and go east and west 180°. So 97W is 97° west of the Prime Meridian.
30" is minamal size for FTA. 4° spacing on that dish would be a challange. Check GloryStar/Satellite AV links on top of the page. They make a dish just for 101W and 97W
which will give you an idea of what you need.

I have a small pole for temp placement on a deck or whatever that I take with me at times.
I've not seen a manual polar mount for a KU dish.

 

[cyberham]

Horizon-to-horizon motors for these small Ku dishes aren't that expensive, large or heavy. They are quite portable if going camping in a car. And the receiver supplies motor voltage automatically via the cable you must connect to the dish anyway. I think in the long run you would appreciate having a motor in your system since each individual satellite (except 97W) doesn't have so many channels these days. Personally, if I had to point a fixed dish nowadays at just one satellite, and I was looking for general entertainment that might please a group of people, I'd point it at either 87W or 125W that has the PBS stations. You need a newish receiver capable of DVB-S2 for this. Unless you want a variety of news in English, then I'd choose 97W. Or good old shows for nostalgia, then I'd choose 83W.

 

[phlatwound]

Some great advice already in this thread, gps.

I will add, if you want to go the fixed-dish route for 97W and 101W, and are going to buy new stuff, get this:

36" 90cm Satellite FTA Dish with 4 Degree Kit w/2 LNBFs | eBay

SatAv (that Ebay Seller) is also sponsor of this forum, sells quality stuff at competitive pricing, and stands behind all they sell.


If you think you might want to go motorized (good idea if you ask me), I would recommend this dish/LNBF combo:

36 Inch 90 cm Free To Air FTA Satellite Dish & HD LNBF (890963002636) | eBay

If you are considering feeding your sat signal to more than one tv you will need to upgrade to a dual-output LNBF.


For a motor I recommend the DG380:

Sadoun Powertech HH Mount Motor DG380 DG-380 DiSEqC 1.2 Compatible

Make sure you get the correct motor shaft size for whatever dish size you get, there are only 2 sizes I believe.


And here is a receiver for your consideration, not available yet, but will be very soon:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-ai...w-geosatpro-microhd-receiver-coming-soon.html

Very long thread but lots of info there.


We could have a whole nother conversation if you were willing and capable of scrounging used components for your system.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Greetings,

Thanks to all for the info I've picked up from lurking for a while. I may be acquiring an FTA setup soon. Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated:

1. I see sats nicknamed 97W, 101W, etc. What do those designations mean? 97 degrees would be eastward on a compass, so maybe it is longitude?

Best regards and thanks again to all.

GPS,

I wanted to expand on item #1 regarding the satellite position (i.e. 97°W).

The communication satellites that we are interested in (FTA, DN, DirecTV, etc) have "geosynchronous" orbits in the Clarke Belt. This means that they HOLD the same position in the sky at all times. The Clarke Belt is band or a region in space surrounding the earth at a specific altitude (approx 22,000 miles) and specific latitude (0° or directly above the equator).

REFER to: Geostationary orbit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Satellites don't actually remain in a permanent position in the Clarke Belt magically nor on their own. They need to be continuously steered with "thrusters" to keep them on track. If they stopped steering the satellites from earth to maintain their position, the satellite would slowly drift out of position and its orbit would decay. However, because of the physics involved, the Clarke Belt is the region where it requires the least amount of power to maintain the satellite's orbital position, thus the overall life of the satellite is extended to roughly 14-18 years more or less, barring any other problems, errors or failures. So, theoretically, the Clarke Belt is the best possible orbit to place a satellite.

Basically, it is the on-board fuel supply for maneuvering and maintaining the satellite's orbital position that determines the life of the satellite. Once it runs low on fuel, the satellite is considered defunct. The fuel supply is monitored and when it begins to run low, the satellite is generally decommissioned and guided to "the bone yard". The bone yard is basically a place where satellites go to die. While there is still enough fuel on board, they steer the satellite to a non-specific location away from all other active satellites and basically it just floats around unused (mostly) until it runs totally out of fuel and its orbit decays and it falls out of the sky, almost literally, and burns up while re-entering the atmosphere.

When a satellite orbital position is referenced as a degree value (i.e. 97.0° W for Galaxy 19) it corresponds to the longitude line on the earth's surface. If you live at a location that has a geographic longitude coordinate of 97.0° West, then that satellite (Galaxy 19) would be directly south of you and would always appear to be in the same location in the sky. Satellites with lower numbered orbits would be eastward in the sky and those with higher numbers would be westward (if you remain at the same place on the surface of the earth).

Hope that helps create a mental picture for you in light of your first question.

RADAR

 

[AcWxRadar]

Greetings,

Thanks to all for the info I've picked up from lurking for a while. I may be acquiring an FTA setup soon. Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated:

3. My location will be a wooden deck, and a few neighbors use tripods for their pay services. Are these stable enough for a 30"? My thought was that I could take the setup camping, etc, if it wasn't permanently mounted.

4. Is there some type of hand crank or other adjustable mount good for manually swinging a dish so I can surf different sats without a motor, and without having to loosen and tighten the mast clamp again and again?

Best regards and thanks again to all.

GPS,

Tripods are fine. IF they are well secured so that wind (or kids or inebriated adults) don't move them. I have a 1.2 M dish on a tripod, but it is well anchored to the ground with stakes through the tripod feet. It is basically a permanent installation in regards to how stable it is.

I recommend that (if you don't bolt the base down to your deck) that you set up the upper portion of the mast, the dish and the motor to be absolutely perfectly aligned and do not readjust it. Then adjust the base of the tripod to level the mast and adjust the azimuth. In other words, try to reduce the number of adjustable axis' to the minimum possible. Use some sandbags to hold the feet of the tripod in place if necessary.

If the upper mast, motor and dish adjustments are left fixed, and they were spot on to begin with, then you only need to concern yourself with keeping the base of the mast level and pointing the whole assembly towards the correct azimuth. Overall, this will simplify your adjustments in the long run.

As for some sort of crank mechanism to adjust the tripod/dish I would not spend the time or money on this. If you are really handy at mechanically engineering such things, you can fabricate something that would be well suited for the purpose, but I think that it is a great deal of overkill. If you have a mind to and the time to do it, it would be nice. But, I think you can do just as well with a motor if you are going to set this up on your deck.

If you are wanting to take it camping, I think I would opt to just dial it in manually as if it were a fixed point dish w/o a motor and w/o a hand crank. You won't find much of anything that you can BUY to do it for you cheaply. You would have to engineer it yourself otherwise it is going to cost you a lot of dough to get something really GOOD or you are going to get a piece of junk.

If you haven't set up many (or any) dishes before this, you really should focus on using a fixed point dish and getting adept and proficient at aligning fixed point dishes first. There is a lot of valuable information and experience that you will gain that can be applied when you do adopt a motor later. You won't understand precisely what the motor is doing until you have to work at being the motor yourself first. You will get a much better perception of the dish alignment parameters if you have to align everything manually first. It is kind of like taking a prerequisite college course or OJT.

That is my personal technical advice for your satellite stuff.

Now, I must give you a hard time regarding camping. First of all, why in the world would you want to go camping and take a TV along? Or even a radio? That's not camping! Going camping should mean a backpack, a hatchet and knife, a spool of rope, a gun and a fishing pole and NO PEOPLE or contact with society. You gotta go out in the woods, into the mountains or on the plains or on a canoe down a wild river and live off the land. Even a tent would be a luxury that should not be included in the camping experience. You can stay in your backyard in a tent. If you are taking your TV along, to go camping, you might as well paint your living room walls with murals of trees and sit in your comfy recliner! LOL You simply cannot enjoy and experience nature while camping unless you set out afoot and without anything but the barest of necessities for survival.

You understand that I am ribbing you on this subject, but I must tell you that it is the only way that I go camping. I won't have it any other way. Unfortunately, no one else ever seems to want to go camping with me. I don't understand why.

RADAR

 

[AcWxRadar]

Greetings,

Thanks to all for the info I've picked up from lurking for a while. I may be acquiring an FTA setup soon. Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated:

2. will a fixed 30" dish work with a (dual LNB?) for Galaxy 19 and it's neighbor 4 degrees away?

Best regards and thanks again to all.

GPS,

On this subject I very much doubt it. The dish is too small to pull in a strong signal from even one satellite, let alone two. It can be done, but I am certain that you won't receive a very good signal from both sats at the same time. You might pick up a few of the strongest signals from each, but you will lose so many more. Some folks have managed this with a little trouble and specific dishes, but it is not the best way to go.

If you want the best experience, you need to set up your system in one of two ways:

1] Multiple fixed point dishes with switches to select which dish / satellite you want to access

OR

2] One motorized dish to receive all available satellites over your horizon.

You can attempt to get two linear sats on one dish, and it can work, but I think you will miss out on the majority of reception from both sats.

Overall, a motorized dish is best in my sincerest opinion. It's a little slower to switch from one sat to another (as opposed to using switches) but you only need one installation. If there were only two satellites to access, I would go with two fixed point dishes and connect them with switches. But, there are multiple sats here and over there and one here, easiest overall to access them all is with a motor.

With a motor, you have to wait for the motor to drive from sat to sat, with a switch matrix, it is split second access, but how many dishes do you want to set up in your yard? There is a plus and minus to either side. I personally like the motorized system best.

You might try both ways at first, but I think that you will end up with a motorized system in the end.

RADAR

 

[gps]

Greetings All,

Thank you all so much for the perfect answers. Fantastic! What a great bunch of folks on this forum.

freezy: "fta is a tinkerers hobby. it isnt a very reliable replacement for packaged service"

Thank goodness. I've tinkered with ham radio for years, and the thought of a tech installing the dish for me and paying for service bores me to tears!

Magic Static: "I've not seen a manual polar mount for a KU dish"

I wonder if there would be an easy way to make a mount that is easily repeatedly re-adjusted? I guess I could just move the tripod around?

cyberham: Thank you very much for the nutshell of what types of shows are on what sats. The lists can be somewhat overwhelming.

Phlatwound: "We could have a whole nother conversation if you were willing and capable of scrounging used components for your system."

It would be my pleasure. I may be 'inheriting' a complete fixed FTA system at some point soon which is great, but what fun would that be without "augmenting" it? I'm already searching Craigslist for tripods, commercial throw-aways, etc.

AcWxRadar: "why in the world would you want to go camping and take a TV along?"

I cut out my explanation for brevity. The entire reason for these "camping" trips would be to play with field sat ops. Or for extra entertainment during amateur radio trips! Radar I especially want to thank you very much for spending so much time on your thorough replies to my questions. You have really shortened the learning curve for me, and I'm sure many lurkers as well. Great reading. Your avatar brought up another question: do you know if these dishes can be used for the 'wefax' weather map sat? I don't believe that it's in a geosynchronous orbit though.

 

[AcWxRadar]

GPS,

I don't recall WEFAX by name, but I do recall a weather satellite channel that you can subscribe to. It is extremely expensive and generally only found at airports or FBO's for aircraft navigation concerns. I'd like to have it at home, but I don't think I could afford it. We cannot tune into it through FTA options.

If you go out camping and want to spend time researching sat ops while out in the woods, then you are much more of a die hard than I! LOL

I am hard-core on every hobby. When I go fishing, I fish. When I go camping, I am camping out in the backwoods, alone and gritty. When I am playing with satellites, I am focused only on that. I just don't like to mix these hobbies and mingle them together. I do like to keep my focus on just one hobby at a time. When I get excited about one hobby and I am into it, I do really well with it. But, sometimes I need to break off and do something else for a bit. This keeps all my hobbies interesting to me and keeps me from getting too overboard on any one.

There is a season for everything!

RADAR

 

[gps]

"If you go out camping and want to spend time researching sat ops while out in the woods, then you are much more of a die hard than I! LOL"

What I was thinking was to travel to high ground, and try to hit difficult sats. I've glanced at posts that said there are ones that are low on the horizon, or for some other reason tough to hit?

"I do like to keep my focus on just one hobby at a time. When I get excited about one hobby and I am into it, I do really well with it."

I can totally relate to this. If I didn't have budgetary restrictions, It would soon get way out of control.