Success with a ku motor.

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Looks like a standard single-polarity Ku LNB, with an LO of 10750
The problem is, it gets only one polarity: vertical or horizontal.
So, while it's good hardware, it's not something I see you using in the immediate future.

You might want one of these replacement soup-can-sized LNBs at Impakt Products.
Either the ones labeled Channel Master or the Eagle Aspen.

You can probably scrounge up a replacement, locally. Maybe from a broken dish?
Or maybe one of the bandstacked DishNetwork LNBFs (flat ones with a collar on the side where the feedhorn bolts up)
Oh, here's a more comprehensive discussion on the LNBs.
There's even a link to a picture I posted, showing what they all look like.

Oh, and my apologies.
The good 22khz switch that passes the 22khz and diseqc commands through it is: Ecoda.
You had me distracted and spelling it wrong. ;)

What about these? I remembered seeing these in the box-o-cr*p last year or two ago and dug them out.
 

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Oh, and I was thinking of pointing this new dish at 83 AMC 9 for RTV. As far as I know, there's nothing on there except the two channels and both are on the same horizontal.

Oh oh. Google tells me a DRO is the less preferred of LNB's. I apparently would do much better with a PLL type.
Maybe one of those I have is a PLL?
 
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Dee, the LNBs you pictured will work fine. You will want to unbolt one of them from the feedhorn (4 screws). Then, unbolt the waveguide and single polarity LNB from the Channel Master feedhorn. The dual polarity LNB will bolt right on with the 4 screws.

Here is a picture to illustrate the waveguide, LNB, and feedhorn on the Channel Master.
 

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Oh, of course. I forgot you still had a junkbox full of great parts!
The LNBs you pictured should work fine.

Yes, you could dedicate a single-polarity dish to a particular bird.
But, if you're not short on parts, or on switch ports, I really don't embrace the idea.
I prefer the flexibility of changing my mind and re-pointing to a new bird sometime in the future, without being concerned whether I have a single or dual polarity LNB on the dish.
Thanks to Trons nice picture above, you can go either way. - :up

And as to PLL, yep, they're the best.
Not likely you'll find any out there just laying around.
You know how people talk about some LNBs being off a few megahertz?
Well, a PLL LNB won't be.
That is particularly required for a very narrow bandwidth data transmission.
With the wideband video we work with, the DRO LNBs are apparently just fine.
It's a matter of having the receiver find the signal.
If it's wideband as in video, the receiver can find it even if you are a little off frequency.
If it's very narrow band data, you have to be spot on the money, (or do a blind scan).
I'm guessing the data transmission application can't blind scan, because there are other potential signals very close together.
 
Oh boy..

Ok, so I took apart the LNB.

The soup can part from the box-o-cr*p though, it isn't marked which way is up, down, left or right.

There are two connectors on it for H and V and I understand that I will have to put those to a combiner like a few of my other Primerstar dishes. That is not a problem.

What is a problem though is that there are EIGHT holes on the soup can part and four holes on the front part. This allows you an infinite potential for getting it wrong. :eek:

Also, do I take that guide thing off the Norsat LNB and transfer it to the soup can LNB? Or just bolt the front directly to the soup can?

There is a mark on the soup can, an indented line made by the factory that runs front to back. Someone put a mark in it with I guess a sharpie at some point in it's life.

Does that mark face up? Or what? I guess it could face down or to any position on the clock for that matter. As you change the soup can on the front part the connectors on the back change position too so I am going out on a limb and assuming that how it's bolted together is 100% relevant to the polarity and skew. Right?
 

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Great job Dee!!! What brand 8 port switch are you using in the system?

Thank you.. :)

This is the switch I am using. It has been very reliable and very easy for me to use. I'm not the brightest but even I can use this thing. I like it.

:)
 

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Dee, switching out the lnb part with the feedhorn, removing those screws that is, does make it possible to get the skew off-kilter from the factory setting. Done it before and it can get confusing if you want both polarities. But in your case, since you only want Horiz, it won't matter. Just turn the thing until the video pops in. Fine tune for best signal.
edit to add : I mean twist the whole lnbf in the clamp once you have it assembled and mounted.
 
Look at one of the soup can LNBs from an elliptical dish.
(see your picture above, or the one I posted)
You can tell which side of the feed horn wings (with holes in 'em) is up and which is down.
See the marks on the feed horn tube where it goes to the LNB through that big split washer?
When you line up the mark with -0- , where is the big indented line along the side of the LNB?

I'm going from memory, so double check me...
I think the line is at 3 o'clock, looking from the connectors, over the LNB, at the face of the dish.
(or 9 o'clock, if you are looking directly into the open end of the feedhorn)

Unfortunately, the parts I have in the garage may have been previously molested, so I can't be positive of anything.
But with the above info, I think you should be able to get on the beam without much trouble.
 
I HATE firefox...... :mad::rant:

I typed up a bunch of stuff then for no reason what so ever, POOF... Crash and burn, everything lost and gone.

Firefox 4.0.1 is garbage. Period. GARBAGE....


I'm too tired to retype everything again.

For now I'll just say that I want to thank you guys again for your help, I put the soup can on the feedhorn (right?) and after several hours of trial and error, I made it work on one half, the vertical. I aimed it at 89 for the ABC channels there and it works great. For now.

This is all temporary though, everything is going to get torn down and shuffled around soon. Again... :rolleyes:
 

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This is all temporary though, everything is going to get torn down and shuffled around soon. Again... :rolleyes:

Dee,

You have more projects going on than I can think of doing on my setup! :o

The national weather gal has been saying it is HOT down your way!!!

Are you working at night again to avoid the heat when

perhaps it is a cool 80 degrees??? :cool:
 
This is all temporary though, everything is going to get torn down and shuffled around soon. Again... :rolleyes:

I think we all have gone thru reconfiguring the entire setup a time or two. Regarding the wish to add the GBox,and since your "shuffling" It would be real nice to have one or two more cables between the PC and your switch to make it easier. I used to have the 8x1 switch outside, but now it's next to the PC and 4x1's replace it at the outside location as needed. The Gbox is after the 8x1 and then out to the dish on a seperate cable. I'm using a tone controlled LNBF (741KU/C) so I can't use a ECODA (tone switch) like you have at the same time.
 
Dee,

You have more projects going on than I can think of doing on my setup! :o

The national weather gal has been saying it is HOT down your way!!!

Are you working at night again to avoid the heat when

perhaps it is a cool 80 degrees??? :cool:


Heh... Yeah, I'm in vampire mode again. I'm a total night person by nature (got it from Mom).. Every few months I'll flip over to day hours for a few weeks then migrate back to nights again.

The days are miserably hot here, we're in what they are calling an "exceptional drought" which they say is worse than an extreme drought. Even at night it's hot and sticky out.
Worse, I'm dead on the Gulf of Mexico so we get strong south winds around the clock and it's humid and sticky and icky out all the time. The good part of the drought is that the mosquitoes are down but still there. I use Avon's Skin So Soft to keep them away, OFF burns my skin like fire. I guess the DEET in it is BAD stuff. The SSS though, works really well but doesn't last long and you have to reapply it a few times. It doesn't burn and it smells nice.

With all these dishes and my OTA, there's always something good on TV.

If I sleep in the day I miss my talk shows (The View & The Talk) and court shows (Judge JB, Judy, PC, etc.) and if I sleep at night I miss lots of great stuff on Me and This.

I try to record the daytime stuff while I sleep then watch them during the dead spots like when the war stuff comes on..

For years I was away from home (when I was working) and never watched TV much at all. I guess I'm catching up now.. :eek:

Once I get all the motorized dishes working there will be no hope for me. I'll never leave the house again.. :rolleyes:

I wish I could order groceries online and have them delivered. You can do that in big cities but that will never happen here in Bedrock... :(
 

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For Christmas last year, my sister gave me a cute little weather thing, it shows the highs and lows and I reset it each morning as I sit at the computer. There is a little cartoon of a boy in the middle of this thing that shows a boy with various clothing on, from a swim suit to a full snow suit. As the weather warms up, it starts removing clothing, till the hottest part of any day showing the swimsuit. Does that make and sense?

Yesterdays high was 110.0 degrees.

Last nights low was 59.0 degrees.

Northern part of Western Arizona, 90 miles south of Las Vegas.

Photto
 
Yep, the Gulf South is terribly uncomfortable this time of year, and like Dee, I sleep days to avoid the worst. The 100 days of hell has certainly begun :( ...
 
Dee, I probably missed it, but just wondering what model motor you used. I am planning on motorizing one of my 84e's (I have 3) and was going to rig a different mount due to the weight (the dish itself is relatively light) but if there is a motor that can handle the weight of that mount then I would prefer to do that. Thanks and good luck on your redo/or dish farm makeover. That is what I enjoy about this hobby, always find something I can improve on.

Photomann, I have passed by your place a few times, I have relatives in Vegas and took the alternate route through Laughlin 2-3 times while the bridge was being worked on. In fact just came back from Vegas a week ago, but used the new bridge. When we were in Vegas, it was nice (90's are not really that nice but everything is relative). We had 108 Thursday in west Texas.
 
For Christmas last year, my sister gave me a cute little weather thing, it shows the highs and lows and I reset it each morning as I sit at the computer. There is a little cartoon of a boy in the middle of this thing that shows a boy with various clothing on, from a swim suit to a full snow suit. As the weather warms up, it starts removing clothing, till the hottest part of any day showing the swimsuit. Does that make and sense?

Yesterdays high was 110.0 degrees.

Last nights low was 59.0 degrees.

Northern part of Western Arizona, 90 miles south of Las Vegas.

Photto


I'm past the age of swimsuits.. :( I haven't been to the beach in 20 years or a public pool in 40 years. With some of the neighbors I have around here, a swimsuit is ill advised.

About 25 years ago I went to Las Vegas for a week on business. Really. In the evenings I did play a few slots and Keno. It was terrible cold at night and the almost zero humidity almost killed me! During the day it was comfortable but still horribly dry. I did get to visit all the old school mafia casinos before they tore them all down. Sadly, I didn't have a camera. :(
Oh well, you couldn't take pictures inside of anywhere. I did get a little collection of matchbooks and Keno tickets though. Still have them squirreled away somewhere..
I can't imagine how people can survive in that single digit humidity. For me I find my comfort zone to be about 30% - 40% humidity and temperatures in the 50's to 60's.



Yep, the Gulf South is terribly uncomfortable this time of year, and like Dee, I sleep days to avoid the worst. The 100 days of hell has certainly begun :( ...


100 days? Shoot, down here it's miserable from about the middle of March until the middle of December. Our so called "winter" is average mid 40's for about 2 months and usually in Feb. we get a little two week cool snap where it dances around the low 30's and MAY dip into the freezing point one or two nights which always causes as much panic as if a hurricane had hit. People run out and almost riot, stripping the stores of everything.

Silly rabbits...... It does NOT get cold here. EVER. It gets a little cool for a few weeks but that's it.



Dee, I probably missed it, but just wondering what model motor you used. I am planning on motorizing one of my 84e's (I have 3) and was going to rig a different mount due to the weight (the dish itself is relatively light) but if there is a motor that can handle the weight of that mount then I would prefer to do that. Thanks and good luck on your redo/or dish farm makeover. That is what I enjoy about this hobby, always find something I can improve on.

Photomann, I have passed by your place a few times, I have relatives in Vegas and took the alternate route through Laughlin 2-3 times while the bridge was being worked on. In fact just came back from Vegas a week ago, but used the new bridge. When we were in Vegas, it was nice (90's are not really that nice but everything is relative). We had 108 Thursday in west Texas.


OMG you guys in west Texas really get cooked big times! I could never make it there.

The motor I have is a Powermax SG9120. When this motor came out originally it was on sale I think. I knew absolutely zero about motors, I had never seen one before.
I did not understand anything about the motor tubes or how to attach them.
What I ended up with was the model that has the large, heavy duty tube. For the longest time time I was at a loss as to what to do with the thing. My dad took it and tried to make an adapter for it but it just didn't get it. Then by total accident I discovered that I could use a piece of old fence post over the tube to fit the dish mount. It's not the best or most elaborate solution but it seems to be working well for me so far.

So what I'm getting to is that they sell two models of this motor, one with the large, heavy duty tube that I have and a smaller, lighter tube that is industry standard for motorized dishes. The larger one is non standard but it allows you to adapt it like I did.

Also be aware that you can not change the tubes from one to the other. You can't buy a motor with a large tube and then later replace the tube with the smaller one. And of course you can't put a larger tube on the motor with the small tube. I asked one of the satellite companies about this and that's what they told me. So be very sure of what you plan to do and what you order.

I was frustrated and bummed out for more than a year, I was certain I had a white elephant on my hands until I bumbled into the solution of sawing that lip off and sliding a piece of fence post over it. Turns out that was a diamond in the rough for me. :D
 
Photomann, I have passed by your place a few times, I have relatives in Vegas and took the alternate route through Laughlin 2-3 times while the bridge was being worked on. In fact just came back from Vegas a week ago, but used the new bridge. When we were in Vegas, it was nice (90's are not really that nice but everything is relative). We had 108 Thursday in west Texas.

There are actually a couple of different ways to get to Las Vegas from here, and either will put you very close to our place.

If you passed over the bridge on Highway 93 heading south, you were actually within four miles of here. Where the turn off is to the land fill, if you go the opposite direction a few miles, you'd run smack dab into our place.

If you went through Laughlin/Bullhead City and climbed the hill where State Hwy 68 gets you from Bullhead to Kingman, it saves almost 50 miles instead of going down to Needles and Interstate 40. Look at a map, it can be very deceptive. And we are just a mile off State Hwy 68 at Colorado Ave, mile marker 20.

Photto
 
Dee, yep it has been baking here the past week, hopefully it will cool off this coming week as expected. The thing about here is it at least cools off at night, upper 60's to 70 for lows. When I lived in Austin that humidity kept the temps up at night so there is never a break. Yep, I know about the 2 tubes sold on diff. models of the 9120. I was just concerned if it could handle the weight and appears to be able to based on your work.

Photto, I never took the route through Needles, if I did not do 93 and over the dam, I would take 68 through Bullhead and Laughlin, but Laughlin to Boulder City was a nap waiting to happen. I took that road if the reports on the dam were congested crossing. That new bridge is really nice, on the way out we stopped at the bridge and walked across. Now if Lake Mead could get some more water.
 
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100 days? Shoot, down here it's miserable from about the middle of March until the middle of December. Our so called "winter" is average mid 40's for about 2 months and usually in Feb. we get a little two week cool snap where it dances around the low 30's and MAY dip into the freezing point one or two nights which always causes as much panic as if a hurricane had hit. People run out and almost riot, stripping the stores of everything.

So true... And when it gets below 70, people here want to light their fireplaces! :eek:
 
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