there are three CWs on 72W but not that frequency I had one on 89W but it's not there now. I scanned that freq on 89 but nothing
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Phlatwound Takes Over Care and Feeding of the Birdview Spoon
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Thanks, yeh I saw those on Lyngsat. Whatever this is has the national commercials and then goes to black screen for the local spots (I guess?)
That's about the highest SR I ever remember.
Using a fresh out-of-the-box GeoSat C2 LNBF.
Hmmm, I just tried blind scanning with the Openbox,and got 41 ITC radio channels
3929 H 7250
and another ITC tv channel
3862 V 25999
"TVC+Latino"
I must be further east than I thought.
That's about the highest SR I ever remember.
Using a fresh out-of-the-box GeoSat C2 LNBF.
Hmmm, I just tried blind scanning with the Openbox,and got 41 ITC radio channels
3929 H 7250
and another ITC tv channel
3862 V 25999
"TVC+Latino"
I must be further east than I thought.
polarity backwards?
The Geosat C2 needs to be 90 degrees off. So 0 skew is 3:00 or 9:00 (not 12:00 or 6:00)
The Geosat C2 needs to be 90 degrees off. So 0 skew is 3:00 or 9:00 (not 12:00 or 6:00)
Wow.
This dish does not point anywhere NEAR where the mount points.
I think the wedge on the back only offsets a portion of the dish offset. This dish is the weirdest critter I have ever messed with.
And as far as polarity goes I could very well have it 90 off, it's kinda tough to determine what is even H or V by looking at the dish.
This dish does not point anywhere NEAR where the mount points.
I think the wedge on the back only offsets a portion of the dish offset. This dish is the weirdest critter I have ever messed with.
And as far as polarity goes I could very well have it 90 off, it's kinda tough to determine what is even H or V by looking at the dish.
Got my first C-band lock with this dish last night, was getting a channel each from 89W & 91W when I shut down for the night.
Fired it back up this evening and turned it west a little to bring up the quality on 91W, did a blind scan and got pretty much all I expected to get at 91W. Iceberg was correct in noticing my polarities were reversed last night, so I rotated the C2 90 deg and got things coming in on the correct polarities now.
Initially, to search for signal I was just turning the whole mount/dish by hand, back and forth about 20 degrees either side of my true south (93W) and changing the elevation of the dish about a half degree at a time after each sweep. It took about an hour of that last night before I locked those first 2 channels.
I have attached a couple of pics to try and illustrate how bizarre the aiming of this dish is. In the "front view" pic, the 7.5' Unimesh in the foreground and the BV solid in the background are both pointed at 99W...while the Spoon is receiving signals from 91W!
The "back view" pic shows the mount itself aimed somewhere around 80W, while the wedge offsets the reflector to where it is "facing" somewhere around 70W I would say...but as I mentioned before I am receiving STRONG signals from all tps on 91W in this position.
Linuxman told me when I got this dish that he didn't believe it could receive a signal from the same direction that the mount was facing, I believed him, and I think this test has proven that. Now I need to figure out how to get this thing to track in this factory orientation. Gotta be a way.
Fired it back up this evening and turned it west a little to bring up the quality on 91W, did a blind scan and got pretty much all I expected to get at 91W. Iceberg was correct in noticing my polarities were reversed last night, so I rotated the C2 90 deg and got things coming in on the correct polarities now.
Initially, to search for signal I was just turning the whole mount/dish by hand, back and forth about 20 degrees either side of my true south (93W) and changing the elevation of the dish about a half degree at a time after each sweep. It took about an hour of that last night before I locked those first 2 channels.
I have attached a couple of pics to try and illustrate how bizarre the aiming of this dish is. In the "front view" pic, the 7.5' Unimesh in the foreground and the BV solid in the background are both pointed at 99W...while the Spoon is receiving signals from 91W!
The "back view" pic shows the mount itself aimed somewhere around 80W, while the wedge offsets the reflector to where it is "facing" somewhere around 70W I would say...but as I mentioned before I am receiving STRONG signals from all tps on 91W in this position.
Linuxman told me when I got this dish that he didn't believe it could receive a signal from the same direction that the mount was facing, I believed him, and I think this test has proven that. Now I need to figure out how to get this thing to track in this factory orientation. Gotta be a way.
Attachments
I have now ran the mount to what I think is about 2 deg east of the apex (i.e. 91W when my TS is 93W), turned the dish/mount assembly and adjusted the elevation until I got the signal back on 91 W. It wasn't far off of any of those axis so I didn't take much moving.
Snugged the mount on the pole and going to start working east and west to see how far I can get through the arc. My elevation bar is at 34.5 deg (all my other mounts are around 37.6) so I am not real optimistic that I will get very far off center of the arc...but we'll see.
Snugged the mount on the pole and going to start working east and west to see how far I can get through the arc. My elevation bar is at 34.5 deg (all my other mounts are around 37.6) so I am not real optimistic that I will get very far off center of the arc...but we'll see.
A headache dish? lol Gives you one trying to figure it out! I know its 91 for the radio feeds but never saw that tv channel, so maybe it is on 89, aimed partially in between.
It's definitely an oddball! I think I understand the geometry of turning a typical offset dish on it's side, but when you throw in that big wedge between the mount and reflector things really start getting interesting. Having no declination adjustment is not helpful either.
And yes, I was actually aimed between 89W and 91W.
Would love to hear anyone's theories on how to aim this thing.
I think I would consider turning the thing upright like a normal offset dish if I could. I can't really think of any advantage to having it sideways. Could you find a manual?
I tried it vertically and had some success but I think it was going to take more declination adjustment than I could easily provide to get it to track out at the ends of the arc.
As far as any advantage to have it sideways (besides it hopefully working better) you are correct...but it just looks COOL laying on it's side like that.
I want all my dishes to be functional of course, but I also look at them as "yard art", and that sideways Spoon definitely draws the eye to it.
Haven't been able to find any tech literature on the Spoon, or anyone that knows anything about them. I think they appeared pretty close to the end of the Birdview company existence and probably not a whole lot of them are out there.
Hoping some old dealer/installer pops into this forum with some ideas, somebody somewhere has to know about these things.
I stuck a red TrackerII LNBF in the scalar and tried seeing how much of the arc I could track on Ku-band. Using Openbox S9.
My true south is 93W and I typically set my elevation bars on polar and H-H @ 37.6 degrees (from the "Modified" chart).
I saw right off the bat that the dish wasn't tracking so I just started turning the dish with the mover (about 2.5-3 counts = 1 degree on my V-Box 6) and manually changing the elevation of the dish after I changed the azimuth.
Here are my data points:
Satellite Degrees Channel Q%
87W 35.4 KTEL 70%
89W 35.1 BYU 76%
91W 34.7 NEWSONE 76%
93W TS 34.0 WRIGHT PAT 65%
95W 33.6 CCTV 76%
97W 32.4 RUSS TODAY 74%
99W 31.0 RADIO REKA 75%
101W 30.2 02-NHK 71%
103W 29.3 MS10 76%
105W 28.3 MACYS 71%
107W 26.0 FTN-1 71%
111W 23.6 LIVE 70%
As you can see everything east of my TS I had to raise the elevation, and west of TS I had to decrease the elevation. And it's not a small amount either. You can't "bend" a BV dish/mount anyway, like you can the typical mesh BUD/small Ku dish to see if you are aiming above or below the arc, these things are built like a tank.
Typically those elevation numbers (low to the east side/high to the west) would suggest (I think) that the north/south axis is set too far west, but something is so far out that a simple azimuth tweak will not cure it.
As I mentioned earlier the immovable part of the mount is facing at least 10 degrees east of 93W when the dish is receiving 93W. I wondered if I may be possibly receiving a side lobe but was unable to raise a signal any other way.
Assuming the dish is oriented correctly on the mount, since I am receiving my TS satellite @ 93W with an elevation bar reading of 34.0 degrees, I think that suggests that I would need to add 3.6 degrees of declination (to achieve an elevation bar reading of 37.6 degrees). This could be done by spacing the bottom of the dish away from the bottom mount plate. That would be a couple of inches or so, not good.
But "fixing" the declination will do nothing for the polar axis issue, so..
This is just a big offset dish, layed on it's side, with a wedge (of about 15 degrees) between the mount and the dish. If this dish had an offset of say 25 degrees, and the wedge cancelled out 15 degrees of that, I would assume that the dish would receive signal from a sat 10 degrees from the direction that the mount is "facing".
The bolt pattern that attaches the wedge to the back of the reflector is not symetrical, so I didn't invert it when I had it apart. I have to assume that these dishes did actually work, I hope I am missing something fairly simple here, but I'll be dipped if I know what.
My true south is 93W and I typically set my elevation bars on polar and H-H @ 37.6 degrees (from the "Modified" chart).
I saw right off the bat that the dish wasn't tracking so I just started turning the dish with the mover (about 2.5-3 counts = 1 degree on my V-Box 6) and manually changing the elevation of the dish after I changed the azimuth.
Here are my data points:
Satellite Degrees Channel Q%
87W 35.4 KTEL 70%
89W 35.1 BYU 76%
91W 34.7 NEWSONE 76%
93W TS 34.0 WRIGHT PAT 65%
95W 33.6 CCTV 76%
97W 32.4 RUSS TODAY 74%
99W 31.0 RADIO REKA 75%
101W 30.2 02-NHK 71%
103W 29.3 MS10 76%
105W 28.3 MACYS 71%
107W 26.0 FTN-1 71%
111W 23.6 LIVE 70%
As you can see everything east of my TS I had to raise the elevation, and west of TS I had to decrease the elevation. And it's not a small amount either. You can't "bend" a BV dish/mount anyway, like you can the typical mesh BUD/small Ku dish to see if you are aiming above or below the arc, these things are built like a tank.
Typically those elevation numbers (low to the east side/high to the west) would suggest (I think) that the north/south axis is set too far west, but something is so far out that a simple azimuth tweak will not cure it.
As I mentioned earlier the immovable part of the mount is facing at least 10 degrees east of 93W when the dish is receiving 93W. I wondered if I may be possibly receiving a side lobe but was unable to raise a signal any other way.
Assuming the dish is oriented correctly on the mount, since I am receiving my TS satellite @ 93W with an elevation bar reading of 34.0 degrees, I think that suggests that I would need to add 3.6 degrees of declination (to achieve an elevation bar reading of 37.6 degrees). This could be done by spacing the bottom of the dish away from the bottom mount plate. That would be a couple of inches or so, not good.
But "fixing" the declination will do nothing for the polar axis issue, so..
This is just a big offset dish, layed on it's side, with a wedge (of about 15 degrees) between the mount and the dish. If this dish had an offset of say 25 degrees, and the wedge cancelled out 15 degrees of that, I would assume that the dish would receive signal from a sat 10 degrees from the direction that the mount is "facing".
The bolt pattern that attaches the wedge to the back of the reflector is not symetrical, so I didn't invert it when I had it apart. I have to assume that these dishes did actually work, I hope I am missing something fairly simple here, but I'll be dipped if I know what.
looks like good work , keeping you busy
since you know you got both a polar mount & offset dish in one it might be kinda different in tuning. I don't know and i know its probably all guess work but i think you should just leave the declination set where it is and continue trying to get the dish on arc. slight adjustments with the whole dish eastward till it tracks the arc as best as possible then you can see where you are at from there one thing common about polar mounts and offset dishes is north/south axis.
since this is a weird setup are we so sure that the TS satellite is 93 ? reason i ask is this being a polar/offset dish but its also kinda a oddball where the dish is skewed toward the east.
i'm not doubting you just injecting questions cause i don't know if anyone knows the answer ... i wish that installer from calif still posted on the forums that might be helpful
since you know you got both a polar mount & offset dish in one it might be kinda different in tuning. I don't know and i know its probably all guess work but i think you should just leave the declination set where it is and continue trying to get the dish on arc. slight adjustments with the whole dish eastward till it tracks the arc as best as possible then you can see where you are at from there one thing common about polar mounts and offset dishes is north/south axis.
since this is a weird setup are we so sure that the TS satellite is 93 ? reason i ask is this being a polar/offset dish but its also kinda a oddball where the dish is skewed toward the east.
i'm not doubting you just injecting questions cause i don't know if anyone knows the answer ... i wish that installer from calif still posted on the forums that might be helpful
looks like good work , keeping you busy
since you know you got both a polar mount & offset dish in one it might be kinda different in tuning. I don't know and i know its probably all guess work but i think you should just leave the declination set where it is and continue trying to get the dish on arc. slight adjustments with the whole dish eastward till it tracks the arc as best as possible then you can see where you are at from there one thing common about polar mounts and offset dishes is north/south axis.
since this is a weird setup are we so sure that the TS satellite is 93 ? reason i ask is this being a polar/offset dish but its also kinda a oddball where the dish is skewed toward the east.
i'm not doubting you just injecting questions cause i don't know if anyone knows the answer ... i wish that installer from calif still posted on the forums that might be helpful
I appreciate your thoughts G, believe me nothing I have stated about this dish is set in stone in my mind, I am open to anything!
Are you saying that I might try setting my elevation bar to 37.6 (my Modified Elevation @ apex), centering the mount at apex and then turning the whole assembly until I found signal, and then making that sat my "TS"?
The only way I know to make a movable mount work is for the mount to be at apex when it is aimed at the highest sat in the arc (93W in my case) as a starting point, and then the declination has to be accounted for, especially as you travel further each way from apex.
It is surprising how little info there seems to be concerning these Spoon dishes, to be found on the Internet. I did find the magazine cover pic below, and also here is one of the dish as Fred found it in St. Louis. As you can see they are 180 degrees different, not sure if that would make a difference or not. I was aware of that mag cover pic back when I got this dish, and thought maybe the different orientation between the 2 was similar to what you do with an actuator east and west of the Mississippi.
Definitely a challenge better suited to cooler weather.
Attachments
hmmm . i really dont know about the
seems way back when most of the programming satellites were toward the center of the arc , the magazine picture looks like it would receive the western arc better and the other photo ( Freds) looks like it has the dish rotated more like a normal offset dish skewed on its side. this is the part that s strange why would a spoon dish have a western satellite if all the major satellites where in the center of the arc. or is the dish actually looking easterly and the lnbf arm ( spoon ) offsets the look and so in this magazine photo its actually looking at the center arc ( 91 - 99 ).
whatever elevation you had to get the base readings above
these are just susgestions
and i think i would adjust it backwards from normal
go to your western most satellite you can receive ( without adjustment) rotate the dish slightly east and check across the arc.
i know all this is guess work and in the middle of a hot summer
then . if all else fails mounting the spoon on the side like in the mag photo might throw a different offset to the dish that will allow it to track differently ( like pointed at 95 but receives 93 or 91 ) kinda like setting a second offset scaler on a prime focus dish.
seems way back when most of the programming satellites were toward the center of the arc , the magazine picture looks like it would receive the western arc better and the other photo ( Freds) looks like it has the dish rotated more like a normal offset dish skewed on its side. this is the part that s strange why would a spoon dish have a western satellite if all the major satellites where in the center of the arc. or is the dish actually looking easterly and the lnbf arm ( spoon ) offsets the look and so in this magazine photo its actually looking at the center arc ( 91 - 99 ).
whatever elevation you had to get the base readings above
these are just susgestions
and i think i would adjust it backwards from normal
go to your western most satellite you can receive ( without adjustment) rotate the dish slightly east and check across the arc.
i know all this is guess work and in the middle of a hot summer
then . if all else fails mounting the spoon on the side like in the mag photo might throw a different offset to the dish that will allow it to track differently ( like pointed at 95 but receives 93 or 91 ) kinda like setting a second offset scaler on a prime focus dish.
everything east of my TS I had to raise the elevation
everything west of my TS I had to lower the elevation
Looking at the "philosophy of dish tracking" says your azimuth is too far west.
I been thinking(That in itself may be scary) maybe getting a close approximation of the dishes 'offset"
might help(?) String across dish face E-W. then a string from the center of feed to the mid point of the dish face string. measure angle at apex. Offset is in the other direction.
Place a square in the dish, with the surfaces in contact 'square' with that orientation of the dish. The prodruding part of the square angled the measured offset towards the side of dish opposite the feed.
Then you can 'see' where it's aimed to locate the true south or zenith satellite.
everything west of my TS I had to lower the elevation
Looking at the "philosophy of dish tracking" says your azimuth is too far west.
I been thinking(That in itself may be scary) maybe getting a close approximation of the dishes 'offset"
might help(?) String across dish face E-W. then a string from the center of feed to the mid point of the dish face string. measure angle at apex. Offset is in the other direction.
Place a square in the dish, with the surfaces in contact 'square' with that orientation of the dish. The prodruding part of the square angled the measured offset towards the side of dish opposite the feed.
Then you can 'see' where it's aimed to locate the true south or zenith satellite.
I appreciate your thoughts G, believe me nothing I have stated about this dish is set in stone in my mind, I am open to anything!
Are you saying that I might try setting my elevation bar to 37.6 (my Modified Elevation @ apex), centering the mount at apex and then turning the whole assembly until I found signal, and then making that sat my "TS"?
The only way I know to make a movable mount work is for the mount to be at apex when it is aimed at the highest sat in the arc (93W in my case) as a starting point, and then the declination has to be accounted for, especially as you travel further each way from apex.
It is surprising how little info there seems to be concerning these Spoon dishes, to be found on the Internet. I did find the magazine cover pic below, and also here is one of the dish as Fred found it in St. Louis. As you can see they are 180 degrees different, not sure if that would make a difference or not. I was aware of that mag cover pic back when I got this dish, and thought maybe the different orientation between the 2 was similar to what you do with an actuator east and west of the Mississippi.
Definitely a challenge better suited to cooler weather.
I actually have the physical copy of that magazine, and there aint a DAMN thing on that dish in there except how to win it, sadly. I have about 18-20 copies of STV and from what I have looked through so far there's no info on the spoon at ALL. Not even an Ad. Other than that cover.
As long as the string is out, for the previous suggestion, another would be plug in some measurements into the WiFi offset dish calculator in Parabola Calculator version 2.0
---------------------------------
some random numbers:
Frequency 4000 MHz
Large Diameter 120 in.
Small Diameter 95 in.
Depth 8 in.
Distance of deepest point from bottom edge along large axis 50 in.
-------------------------
The Focal Length is 97.69 in.
This offset reflector is a section of a full parabola with a diameter of 230.22 in whose vertex is at the bottom edge of the offset reflector. The full parabola has an f/D = 0.42, which determines criticality of focal length.
The focal point of the dish is 97.69 in from the bottom edge of the reflector and 131.60 in from the top edge of the reflector.
For operation with the main beam on the horizon with the feed at the bottom, the dish must be tilted forward so that the large axis is 73.59 degrees above horizontal.
Illumination angle for feed = 61.01 degrees on the large axis and 52.20 degrees on the small axis. A feedhorn with a 3 dB beamwidth of 29.27 degrees is needed, equivalent to the feed for a conventional dish with f/D = 1.10.
Gain at 50% efficiency = 37.09 dBi.If you do really well, you might get 60% efficiency for a gain = 37.88 dBi.
---------------------------------
some random numbers:
Frequency 4000 MHz
Large Diameter 120 in.
Small Diameter 95 in.
Depth 8 in.
Distance of deepest point from bottom edge along large axis 50 in.
-------------------------
The Focal Length is 97.69 in.
This offset reflector is a section of a full parabola with a diameter of 230.22 in whose vertex is at the bottom edge of the offset reflector. The full parabola has an f/D = 0.42, which determines criticality of focal length.
The focal point of the dish is 97.69 in from the bottom edge of the reflector and 131.60 in from the top edge of the reflector.
For operation with the main beam on the horizon with the feed at the bottom, the dish must be tilted forward so that the large axis is 73.59 degrees above horizontal.
Illumination angle for feed = 61.01 degrees on the large axis and 52.20 degrees on the small axis. A feedhorn with a 3 dB beamwidth of 29.27 degrees is needed, equivalent to the feed for a conventional dish with f/D = 1.10.
Gain at 50% efficiency = 37.09 dBi.If you do really well, you might get 60% efficiency for a gain = 37.88 dBi.
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