putting up ku motor.

[Dee_Ann]

I think I'm going to cry.

Maybe I should just go to bed and dream of snowy mountains.

Maybe tomorrow things will make more sense.

Now I see why people just pay to have someone slap up a non moving pizza dish and be done with it.



Nite nite..

 

[Bill_KY]

Now I see why people just pay to have someone slap up a non moving pizza dish and be done with it.

.

Why don't you get cable TV for a little while. Usually there are no commitments and all they charge is a connection fee. This way it will give you more to watch while you are getting things set up. After you get this Ku Band dish with motor and that C-Band going, then drop cable if you want without concerns of early termination fees.

 

[mr3p]

If you look down inside the motor arm of the 9120 you will see a hex socket. Its a 6mm hex socket and with an extension rod and bit you can remove the arm (and re-attach) very easily. While not required, it would make drilling holes in the arm a bit easier if you go that route.

 

[Wescopc]

Oh.
My.
Gawd.

Why so complicated??!!??

I totally do not understand all that. I was with the program up to the point of the motor shaft being parallel with the axis of the earth but after that my brain went all splodey inside..

Well, I found the little book that came with the motor.
I went to dishpointer.com and it said I am at lattitude 30.
In the book it says
Your site lattitude = 30
elevation angle = 60
declination angle = 4.961

I can't see anything in there about shaft angle so I scanned the specifications page in for the thing.
Oh and by the way, the book says the tube is 45mm. That is incorrect, it's much larger, I think it's like 55mm.. We measured it long time ago when I first got it but I've forgotten now.

Do you find in the book the formula where they subtract the declination from a number to give you the dish elevation?

 

[Dee_Ann]

Do you find in the book the formula where they subtract the declination from a number to give you the dish elevation?

There is nothing at all in the little book about formulas.

I scanned in the little booklet for the motor.
I have no idea how to make it into a pdf and I didn't want to attached a bazillion images so I put them in a zip file.

 

[Wescopc]

Page 10 of your manual shows 40 degrees - the declination. So that is what you would use. Your motor has a 40 degree bend!
Bob

 

[Dee_Ann]

I'm still totally confused about the ku motor situation. I just do not at all understand the blasted thing.

However, I am not ready to put it up yet. Trying to understand it while it's sitting on my stove is pointless. When I get to a place where I can put the thing on the pole, then I will try to figure it out, one step at a time.

So. Here are pictures of the modifications my dad made for me on this thing. The pictures are attached.

What he did was move the clamp thing down a little and put some more, bigger bolts on it with extra nuts so that in theory it can be adjusted to tilt. It isn't finished yet, he said it needs washers and he may need to drill the holes at angles, depending on how much it has to tilt.

The mystery is, does it need to tilt half and inch or 5 inches? If it's too much then this plan may not work.


Changing direction a little bit now, today, since I had nothing else to do, I made new cables for all the dishes to go to the switch. I bought some white wire too, I thought I would run different color wire for like the H and V wires or between the ku and Cband. But I ran out of white wire, I didn't buy enough so that idea fell flat on it's face. Sigh...

These cables are HARD to make. Pushing those ends on the wires is hard to do and makes my hands hurt so much. I'm hoping I won't have to make many more wires again after this.

Another thing that annoyed me was that the ex put some kind of plastic box from the wall of our house out on one of the poles for the switch to go in. Well, that was fine and dandy until I added those extra 4x3 switches for the primestar dishes to combine two wires into one wire then into the main switch. Too much junk in that one box.

Plus the door was falling off, the hinges were broken. If I had to open it for any reason it would make me crazy fighting with all that mess.

So. I thought this up all on my own! I went online looking for new boxes to replace this old falling apart one. I about fainted when I saw how much they cost! Like $50 or more plus shipping! And they were smaller than the one that's there now. So I went to Lowes and looked around and I figured out all by myself that I could put a tool box on the pole!

I bought a cheap, $7 plastic tool box. I drilled six holes in the bottom and cut a slot between all the holes so that I could push the cables through and lock them into the holes.

The man next door was outside replacing his air conditioner so I went over and talked him out of some *huge* plastic tie strips that I saw him using. I put a board on the floor, put two tie strips on the board, set the tool box on that then put a board on the inside bottom of the tool box.

Then I put some screws through the whole thing to clamp it all together.

I took it outside and using the tie strips I got it stuck tight on the pole. Then I put the two 4x3 switches inside of it and ran two wires out of this box into the old box that now has only the one switch in it.

Now the old box is totally trashed and falling apart but now that I know that my toolbox invention works I can go buy another one just like it and make another box for the other switch. It's MUCH easier when they are in separate boxes, I don't have to fight them like a mad octopus now.

Just to be safe, I twisted a piece of wire in the tool box lids, there's a think for a padlock I guess. This should keep it shut in storms.



In the picture it still shows some of the old wires that I hadn't yet replaced at the time I took the pictures and some of the new ones I made today. I have since removed all the old black wires and replaced them all with new blue wires. And a few white ones.


After I put all the new wires in I checked and all the satellites are showing 100% on the signal now. And I was worried that the wires wouldn't work! Whew!

I did give up on the satellite at 85. I spent days trying to find the Golden Nugget but, nothing. Heck with it. I moved the dish back to 97.
For some weird reason I like watching Russian news on RTnews channel. Not so much for the news but for the little clips they show about Russia. They have a beautiful country, I would like to go spend a full spring there sometime touring it. And I have Fashion One back too.

For now, I suppose things are about as good as they can be until I get the big Cband dishes put up and until my dad and I can come up with something that will work on the ku motor problem.

So here's some pics of his modifications and to my little tool box invention..


The big question is, will this modification my dad made, work? Is he on the right track or should we stop now and try something else before he botches up this metal plate too much to use it?

Thanks guys!

 

[AcWxRadar]

Hi Dee,

Your toolbox enclosure is really swell! A very slick idea.

I notice that your new white cables have compression connectors, very wise choice. Good compression connectors seal much better. If you are finding the cable connectors very difficult to install, you might have quad shield cable and using standard cable connectors. That would make them very "tight". This is okay, but as you report, it really hurts the hands and the fingers getting them to start. You certainly don't want to go the other way (connectors made for quad shield cable on a standard RG-6 cable). They will simply just fall off!

As for your Dad's dish bracket. I am not so sure. You really only need about 1/2" to 1" of range in elevation adjustment fgr tweaking, but that is IF your bracket is already in the proper angle range already.

The dish you are using (I assume an older Primestar or Channel Master dish) is an excellent dish, but it is heavy and installing it on a motor may prove to be quite a project to get it right. Your homemade bracket to attach the dish to the motor tube will need to be lightweight and all the angles must be correct.

The two angles you will need to confront are the elevation (which I just tried to cover) and then the angle of the clamp around the motor tube. You want the vertical axis of the dish reflector to be perfectly parallel to the vertical axis of the motor tube. This may be more difficult to judge with the eye using your homemade assembly. Therefore, you will want to spend some extra time to ensure that you set it correctly. Fortunately, the way your clamp is designed, it appears that once you have it set, you will never need to change it during tweaking.

There is one item that truly bothers me. That is the overall weight of your dish and your homemade bracket. You may find that many H-H motors won't be able to handle it. If you already have a motor, I would simply test it out (without even trying to check your satellite positions) and just see if your motor will drive your dish assembly back and forth across the whole arc without grunting and groaning and stalling. If it stalls at all, it won't ever work right and you will probably retire your motor at an early age. Check this first before you spend too much time on anything else. Otherwise, you may simply be wasting your time. You don't want to do that.

Good luck, Dee! Enjoy and have fun!

RADAR

 

[geekt]

That was a good idea with the tool box. It actually doesn't look so bad either.

I'm not all that experienced with this either, but the way you jerry rigged the angle would worry me a bit. I was thinking before that maybe a hinge might work, but I didn't wanna say anything until someone more experienced gave you more ideas.

 

[Tron]

I really hate to say this, but it might be a good idea to shelve the Primestar for now and just use a dish that will fit that motor without modification. The reason I suggest this is that installing a motor for the first time can sometimes be a daunting task, but then throwing in the added factor of a modification, it could really be a project killer. My suggestion would be to install a dish that will fit the SG-9120 without any modification, learn how the motor works and how to adjust it to the arc, then tackle a modification project later. Heck, you might even want to have two motors at some point in the future, since this gives great flexibility in a setup.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I really hate to say this, but it might be a good idea to shelve the Primestar for now and just use a dish that will fit that motor without modification. The reason I suggest this is that installing a motor for the first time can sometimes be a daunting task, but then throwing in the added factor of a modification, it could really be a project killer. My suggestion would be to install a dish that will fit the SG-9120 without any modification, learn how the motor works and how to adjust it to the arc, then tackle a modification project later. Heck, you might even want to have two motors at some point in the future, since this gives great flexibility in a setup.

Yeah, I'm kind of thinking the same thing.

The problem is, the tube on the motor is too large to fit anything without modification.
Purchasing THIS motor was a mistake. A bad mistake. A huge waste of money, time and effort.

I need to either sell this motor and buy a motor that is standard size so that it can be put on any dish or, buy a new dish that is made to mount to this weird motor.

My problem is that the flippin dishes are too expensive to ship! A small 09cm dish costs $50 but the shipping is $65 !!
I'm not playing that mess. And to pay that much to have United Package Smashers twist, mangle, warp and dent it up before I get a chance to twist, mangle, warp and dent it myself?? No way...

So, I am going to search out a place where I can walk into a store, buy one and carry it home myself.

This whole thing has been extremely frustrating.
I see no real hope of resolve here.

I think I will clean the motor up (it has dust on it from sitting around and a few scratches in it from handling and put it up for sale.
I have the original box, all the parts and the little booklet.
It's never been connected to anything.

Maybe someone else can make use of it, I can not.
I do not have tools or skills to modify stuff. I have a little cordless drill my dad gave me and a dozen drills for it. It's for stuff like fixing cabinets and screen doors. And I'm not very good at things like that either.

The other problem, the biggest problem, is that I don't understand this stuff. My brain can not grasp or process all this stuff about angles and elevations and stuff. The other dishes, I can deal with, the internet says to tilt them to 54. On the dish there are marks that I can read. I turn the bolt until it points to 54 and I'm pretty much there. It's already figured out for me so that people like me can adjust it.

Seriously, I s**k at math. I can not do geometry at all. I'm barely adequate at basic math. I use my iPhone calculator when I'm shopping. A LOT. Degrees, blow my mind and cause me to have a nervous breakdown.

My dad is no idiot but he knows even less than I do about satellites and I don't know much. I can't impose too much on him with this stuff, he has a life and things to do better than camping out over here trying to help me with stuff that probably will never work anyway.


So I think what I am going to do is search out a store in the Houston area where I can walk in and out with a dish that will fit this motor.
If not, then I'll sell this motor and buy another one that's more standard.

I'm pretty much at the limit of my frustration with all this.

At least I have all new wires now. That's about all I've accomplished.


Just so that I don't leave on a sour note I'll throw in a token smiley even though it doesn't really apply in this case. So here's one just because.. (yeah right..)

 

[chapelrun]

Some help - maybe

Dee Ann,

If you have the PrimeStar 75E dish you might be able to something similar to what I did.

I just flipped the mount 180 degrees from the way it orginally was installed. See link below.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/205656-upgraded-my-motorized-setup.html

I hope this helps. :up

 

[turbosat]

Dee, If you can get your dad to make a simple swivel or bracket to adjust the angles on your dish project, you will be able to adjust it so it will track the arc. All you need is a couple of inches of "play" at the bottom of the dish where it attaches to the motor shaft, in order to get that "dish" elevation adjusted. (as opposed to the motor's elevation, which you set on the motor bracket that attaches to the pole.) I'll try to get some pictures of mine soon, very busy this last week or so trying to get the house ready to paint. But I started out with a flat piece of metal like your dad made for you, then tossed that for simple angle brackets that I bolted together to make my dish bracket, then attached that to the motor's shaft with 1. a muffler clamp at the top of the bracket, and down at the bottom of the bracket I used a conduit hanger with a long bolt thru it, where I could add in that small amount of "tilt" you need to get your dish elevation. "Don't throw in the towel just yet, lol. It just sounds harder than it really is, I stunk at geometry too but I did this.

 

[turbosat]

my mod on primestar 90cm

Dee, here's the shot of the mod I did on my primestar for the H-H motor. This is the DG380 motor, and it does have the bigger motorshaft. I wasn't sure if I really needed that size but that was the way it came, and it worked fine. The brackets, copied from another member's similar setup, is just some angle bracket i got at the hardware store, cut in 4 pieces long enough to hit the dish's existing holes, and each pair bolted together with short bolts. That conduit hanger on the bottom I believe is a 2 1/2" one, its not really that tight on the motorshaft-it's main purpose was to allow the adjustment of the dish angle. And besides, that muffler clamp, which has gotten rusty over 18months, holds the entire thing tightly anyway. It's not hard to throw that together but, yes, you still have to take your angle meter and tinker with the dish elevation. That part might be too aggravating for your first motor install, but i have a stubborn streak and decided I was going to do it. Didn't take an hour to get it tracking the arc. It would be hard to do without a receiver and tv out by your dish though, to watch the results as you adjust. I just found out I can't upload the !@$#! picture now, browser balking, pm me your email address, and I'll send it to you. If you like.

 

[Kallesatman]

I admire her stamina on this project and my hat is off to her. Isn't there somebody on this forum that lives close to her that could help her and maybe even have the proper dish laying around that they don't need and help her out of her frustration?
You are doing super and don't give up. I know what frustration is like and I've been in the field of communications ( technical ) for over 40 years but I am a stubborn kraut and I also don't give up. I'm not even a red head.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, I'm taking a few weeks off from it.
I'm having some simple exploratory surgery early next week and my doc is restricting me to "do nothing!" duty for a minimum of one week after. The rest of this week I'm trying to get my ducks in a row.

I guess I'll just have to relax and watch TV for a week or so until I'm done mending then give it a go again.

Maybe this break will give my dad some time to cook up something a little more polished than what he's come up with so far.

Then again I may just take a trip to Houston and try to find a store that sells satellite dishes.
Or just buy a new motor. I don't know but I have a few weeks to figure out what I'm going to do about this.

I will be around reading a LOT, I just can't do anything physical. Can't even drive or lift 5lbs.
But everything will be fine and I'll get back to this stuff and one way or the other, I'll find a way to put a motored dish up..

Thanks guys..

 

[Tron]

Good luck with the surgery, Dee! Looks like you'll have plenty of forum-reading time ...