Success with a ku motor.

[Anole]

...There is an option to set all the satellites to USALS motor, there should be an option to set all the LNB settings to whatever it is you use. One would assume that if you set all the satellites to USALS that you are using a single dish and a single LNB. Right?

Yes, but you can still go back and set individual satellites to a different switch position, if you have 'em on a fixed dish.
The motor won't turn, and instead you have instant access.

...I went over there today and used my iPhone to verify that they will be able to see the satellites. On the side of the house where the air conditioners are it is fenced off from everything and hidden from view. Mom doesn't have anything planted over there and never goes on that side of the fence. The only one that ever goes there is Dad to mow the grass or work on their ever troublesome air conditioners.

She'll never even see the dish except when driving up the street for a few seconds.

It will be right next to the house so he won't have to bury the wires. It won't be any big deal to drill a hole and run the wire through the wall, then it will go through the suspended ceiling and down behind the bookcase to the tv and tuner. Running the wire will be pretty simple, so he says... If they decide to add more dishes in the future, it won't be a problem.

. . . .I have already suggested to my dad that he should keep an eye out for a 7 or 8 foot mesh dish. A 10' dish is far too big to put on the side of their house but a 7 or an 8 could be done and with it hidden behind the fence, my mom wouldn't be against it.

. . . Wires aren't really a problem with where the dish (and maybe future dishes) are going.

This is the best news I've heard so far.
I thought your Mom was a yard-tyrant (in addition to a remote-hog), but now it sounds like you've got a place to put a BUD or fixed dishes she won't mind! - :up

I have seen you guys talking about ortho but I do not understand what they are or what they really do. It's a level of technical that is way above my head so I just glance over it and move along to simpler things. And I do not know what a "C2" is but I will try to find out.

Sorry for speaking in "jargon".
A C2 is a dual output C-band LNBF from SatelliteAV.
I'm sure that on an 8 foot BUD, it'll do you just fine.
WSI/Galaxy has a similar product (esx242), but we don't have a head-to-head review of the two LNBFs.

The comments for the ortho mode C-band feed was to get extra performance if you were faced with a 6 foot BUD limitation at the folks house.
If you run an 8'er, I think the C2 will do.
But here is some more info if you feel like reading:

Corrado is: Thinking about orthomode feedhorns
http://www.satelliteguys.us/c-band-...27429-thinking-about-orthomode-feedhorns.html

 

[Dee_Ann]

Happy 4th all you satellite guys and gals!

​

Well. I took a few days off from things just to unwind and chill out for a bit.​

The project for my folks is nearing the end! YAY!​

A few days ago Dad came by with some power tools and we (he with me supervising) made some modifications to the dish they are getting. He used a hand held band saw to cut part of the pole mount off of the dish. He also flipped the pole thing inside the main thing that the dish bolts to so that the bolts face the dish and not the motor because they were hitting the wires.

​

He ground out a notch so the adjustment bolt wouldn't hit the mount as you adjust it up and down. Doing these things allow me to move the dish higher up the motor tube. It is my hope that this will cause less strain on the motor. My dad agreed with me and he’s an engineer so I think we’ll be safe with this.

​

So Dad took his tools and went home. I mounted it on the pole the next day and I was able to find 95 with the Chinese channels, 97 and I found 89 I think, the one with the ABC stuff but that was about it. I would move it over towards the PBS satellite at 125 and nothing.. Arrrrrgh!

​

Heck with it I said and for a few days it sat. I worked on my patio and garden and stuff and to heck with the satellites..

​

Last night Dad called up, “Hey when are we getting our satellite?”.. Oh oh... I told him that I had taken a break and that I would get on it today.

​

So, today I went out and took the whole thing down. I looked on dishpointer and figured out where to point the motor for true south. Right at the corner of a neighbors roof. I drew a line on top of the motor with a sharpie and squinted down the top of the line and aimed it at that house corner. Then I pushed the button on the motor to set it to zero and yanked the wire out because the flippin Openbox kept trying to point it back to a satellite! Once I had it set to dead zero I put the dish back on the motor tube and adjusted it so that it was perfectly square with the motor, IE pointing true south too then I tightened it up. I reconnected the wire and the tuner went right back to aiming it at the last satellite.

​

I go inside and check, it gets a few satellites better than it had then I aim it at PBS (which is the biggie) and some of the channels are coming in, some not so good. This is still an improvement though. So I take my little meter device out there, connect it and make some adjustments to the motor and the dish, I go back inside and find that it’s now picking up all the PBS channels like a champ! Woo hoo!

​

So right now I set it to blindscan ALL the satellites again now that it has the larger 1meter dish on it, the dish they are keeping. I’ll download the file and clean out the known, permanently scrambled channels so they won’t have to wade through them then put that back in the tuner and wrap it up.

​

I talked to Dad and he’s coming to pick me up at 7am along with their new gadgets and we are going to go install it at their house. Dad put a pole up last week and ran the wires yesterday so all I have to do is go put connectors on them. I learned how to do that and I think I do a pretty good job of it if I may say so myself. It’s not too hard when you have the right tools. And you make a dozen duds in the process..

​

I’ll have to spend a few hours teaching them how to use the system of course. I put Dad’s USB disk on the tuner and now you can pause live TV, fast forward, rewind, record, etc.. They’ll love the pause feature!

​

I know one thing for sure, the remote control is going to be a big problem for Mom, what with her eyesight going out..

​

What will stink though, is that they do not have internet at home, at all and will not have access to TitanTV for a guide. So all they can do is tune to a channel and see what’s playing. That stinks.. I can not figure out any way they can download a guide for say a week at a time on a thumb drive then view it at home. Dad’s too stubborn to get internet at home and goes to the library to use it there for free. He’s been mad at the cable company since the early 70‘s and their phone line has too much static for DSL. Oh well..

​

FINALLY!! My parents will have satellite and are ~almost~ members of the 21st century! YAY! Now if I could just convince them to get internet!

​

I can’t wait to hear the squeals of joy from my mom when I bring up PBS on her TV. And PBS channels she’s never even heard of!

​

Thank you guys for all your help in everything, you’ve helped to make a few old people super happy! ​

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, my folks are watching FTA satellite now and I am, motorless....

My dad picked me up early this morning along with the stuff and we went to their house.
First thing, before it got too hot, we put the dish up. I used my nifty little meter to fine tune the dish as best as I could, put ends on the wires, hooked it up and went inside, out of the heat.

I put ends on the wires inside, found the right wire (he ran a second wire as a spare/future expansion wire) and hooked it all up.

Bingo! Everything came in great! The HD video cable plugged right into the TV and the PBS HD channels looked awesome! My mom was thrilled to have PBS agian! 2:

I checked all the satellites and they were all coming in really well. All across the sky, everything was working as it should be!

I was so relieved that it went so well, it actually went better at their house than what I was getting with it here. I couldn't have been happier!

After checking to make sure that everything was working right, I spent about three hours going through the channels with them, explaining the basics to them and instructing them on how to do things. Mom was sitting there like "Ok, ok, now give me the remote!" :clap


Dad glared at me when I handed the remote to her first..


Both of them are excited and happy to have satellite now..

Oh yes, I almost forgot, when we went on family vacation a few months ago I took a few thousand pictures. Dad has been bugging me to put them on a DVD which I haven't been able to figure out how to do. I saw the Openbox has a feature for playing videos and photos from a USB disk. Ok, cool.. I copied the vacation photos folder from my pc onto the portable disk. I used the remote to pull up a slide show of the photos for them. They were soooo happy to have the photos to play on their TV and I was so happy that it solved my problem of not knowing how to make a slide show DVD. I love it!

So, it's all good now. They have satellite, in HD, it works great with their TV and they have the family vacation photos too. It couldn't have worked out better!

The dish is hidden from view behind the fence so my mom has no problem with it at all and she said that she may very well request a complete second system just like this one so that they can watch two different things upstairs and down stairs, to keep the peace...


Now I need to buy a new motor to replace the one that they have for my own use.

This has been a really good learning experience. I had never messed with motors before, now, I know. I know I can do it again the next time, from what I have learned, without having to go on the internet and asking stupid questions.

Time for me to get a new motor now and do my own. I'm ready to make that step.

Thank you guys, you've all been a huge help to me, I couldn't have done it without you! :high5:

 

[Wescopc]

Good job!

 

[Dee_Ann]

I just purchased a new motor to replace the one they got. I should have it in a few weeks or less.

Being that RTV has fallen to the bottom of the list of favorites, I'm going to motorize that dish. It's a Primestar 75E which I think is a tad under 1 meter, I think it's like 3/4 of a meter or something close to that. I had it motorized a few weeks ago when I first started playing with the original motor. Now that I know how to do it it shouldn't be a big deal to repeat it.
I'm still going to keep my fixed dishes on the 8 way switch for instant channel changes, I'll just skip those satellites in the motor setup, it will only motor to satellites that I don't have a fixed dish aimed at. I think then I will have the ultimate setup and I can't think of any way it could be made any better. Oh, yes I can. All my neighbors cut down their trees and I add one more 1 meter dish for the Cuban satellite. Then I would be set. OMG I can't believe how much I've learned to do in the past few years! WOW!!

Thanks so much guys!

 

[Anole]

Looks great. - :up
Love that side-yard, or whatever you call it.
Great place for BUDs, should you go that way.

Only thing I can think of is maybe to shove your switch 'n cables up into an open-bottom rain-cover of some sort.
Cut-off 2 liter coke bottle, upside down?
That way, the rain won't flow down the cables to anywhere you don't want it to go.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Looks great. - :up
Love that side-yard, or whatever you call it.
Great place for BUDs, should you go that way.

Only thing I can think of is maybe to shove your switch 'n cables up into an open-bottom rain-cover of some sort.
Cut-off 2 liter coke bottle, upside down?
That way, the rain won't flow down the cables to anywhere you don't want it to go.

I told my dad that he needs to go to Lowe's and get one of those $7 plastic tool boxes like I did and let me modify it for him like I did mine.
He said he'll go get one tomorrow and drop it off for me to fix it up. We should have him something fixed up before the weekend. Not much chance of rain lately so I'm not super concerned. The connectors all have plastic rain caps over them for now so that's better than nothing. He likes the tool box idea because it's cheap, waterproof and easy to get inside of if you need to..

Where their dish is, it's the southerly side of their house and Mom never goes on that side, just Dad for mowing. The fence hides it from the back yard (she putters around a lot in the back yard with her flowers).. She doesn't really find it all that ugly though, much to my amazement. I guess after she saw the crazy collection in my yard, it makes one little dish look pretty good.

I suggested to Dad that we see if we can find him a used 8 foot mesh C-band dish on Craigslist and he said that would be ok with him. If I could hook them up with the goodies on 87, they would be in TV heaven!

 

[PopcornNMore]

Great job Dee!

Where did you purchase the blue RG-6 coax and what brand compression fittings do you use?

 

[Dee_Ann]

Great job Dee!

Where did you purchase the blue RG-6 coax and what brand compression fittings do you use?

Hi Popcorn,

The wire I bought from here, 1 Cat5 + 1 RG6 Quad Cable (500' Spool)

(attached is a pdf that gives the details about the wires)

The connectors I got on ebay, PCT RG6 F Connectors Compression Coaxial Cable TV 50 - eBay (item 310326643649 end time Jun-22-11 07:47:23 PDT)

The wire is neat stuff because it has a lot of wires in it and you can use it for many things. I ran several wires from the house to the dishes and the small wires on the side, the cat 5 wires, I use for the motors on the C dishes. It works great!

I had asked early this year about this type of wire and you guys said it was good stuff so I went with it.

The tools to put the connectors on, I got those on ebay too but I don't have a link handy for them.

My dad asked me yesterday "How are you going to crimp the wires?" I laughed and showed him these tools and told him they are compression fittings. He asked what that was. I told him crimps are so yesteryear and that this is the new stuff. So he sat and watched me put connectors on the wires and he said "Wow, that's a slick tool!".. My dad gets his cookies on tools. Sheesh.. It's just a tool.

Anyway he was all impressed with it and even more impressed that I learned how to do these things..

 

[Tron]

Cox Cable is using those fittings here now. Got a nice handful of them from a cable guy a few weeks ago ...

 

[PopcornNMore]

Thank you Dee. I purchased a bag of those same connectors several months ago and was impressed that they use no plastic insert like some others, but for some reason when I give them a tug they come off with a little force. I believe the crimper is at fault which I purchased cheap (about $14) on EBay. We use the same crimper as shown in your photo (DL-808 / 808R) here at work. I did a quick search and couldn't find any for under $49. Perhaps I'll make the investment or do a search on EBay to see if I can get one a little cheaper. Perhaps I'll purchase some of that blue coax as well and redo a lot of my coax runs to the dishes.

 

[PopcornNMore]

Dee is this the compression crimper you have?
Coax Compression Connector Crimp Crimper Tool F BNC RCA | eBay

 

[Larry1]

I believe the crimper is at fault which I purchased cheap

Did the rings on the connector fully compress? You if not, you may be able to put a spacer (a washer) in front of the connector in the tool for it compresses down further. (if your compression tool is not adjustable) Otherwise, the cable may be too thin for the connector to fully secure on the cable. Also the PCT web video for the how to shows folding the braided shield back before inserting the cable into the connector.
YouTube - ?Channel Master Connector Installation?‏
http://www.pctstore.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/pct trs connectors installation guide.pdf
Note there are pictures of the connector fully compressed.

 

[PopcornNMore]

Did the rings on the connector fully compress? You if not, you may be able to put a spacer (a washer) in front of the connector in the tool for it compresses down further. (if your compression tool is not adjustable) Otherwise, the cable may be too thin for the connector to fully secure on the cable. Also the PCT web video for the how to shows folding the braided shield back before inserting the cable into the connector.
YouTube - ?Channel Master Connector Installation?‏
http://www.pctstore.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/pct trs connectors installation guide.pdf
Note there are pictures of the connector fully compressed.

Very good video. Also, I like the idea of adding a washer to my crimping tool.

 

[Bongu]

I suggested to Dad that we see if we can find him a used 8 foot mesh C-band dish on Craigslist and he said that would be ok with him. If I could hook them up with the goodies on 87, they would be in TV heaven!

How far away is Ft Worth? A member has a couple dishes there for free in the classified section. One Ku and one C-band.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee is this the compression crimper you have?
Coax Compression Connector Crimp Crimper Tool F BNC RCA | eBay

I can't say for sure that's the same vendor but it sure looks to be the identical tool.

 

[Dee_Ann]

How far away is Ft Worth? A member has a couple dishes there for free in the classified section. One Ku and one C-band.

Round trip, 800+ miles.. A minimum of a two day trip.. A bit much there..

 

[Magic Static]

I found a crimping tool at Sadoun very inexpensive. I've used it for about 60 times now and I got to say i'm very happy with it.
70014 Datashark Crimp Tool
Of course not all compression connectors are the same so you have to make sure the tool fits the connector. So I bought some nice connecters as well.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Dee_Ann,

I have been off-line most of the summer (as I usually am to address my other hobbies and chores - mostly chores), but I stopped in to take a peek at what was going on yesterday and today and I ran across your thread here.

HOTDOG!

You have done so excellently well in your satellite endeavors! I am very impressed with your initiative and self-motivation, expressly your "ingenuity" + "scrounging" abilities. I sensed that you had a special drive for this hobby. Yep. You've done very well! You deserve a big "WAY TO GO" from me!

RADAR

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well my new motor will be here tomorrow. Now that I know what to do I'll be motorized before the sun goes down.

Well, maybe not totally. I need to figure out how to mix USALS and my 8 way switch and the encoda 22k switch all together.

I'm going to put the motor on the coolsat first to ensure that it's lined up right and working 100% as it should be then move it from the coolsat to the pc tuner.

I know I have to put the motor first. But, can I put an encoda 22k switch between the pc and the motor? I really, really need to be able to do that.

Thanks..

edit: Here's a very crude drawing of what I'm trying to do. (I'm already setup like this only without the USALS motor, yet. All the rest, I have working fine now)

edit2: I am ~assuming~ that this is possible, going on what I read here, http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-ai...zed-dishes-same-receiver.html?highlight=ecoda and here, http://www.satelliteguys.us/172351-ecoda-22khz-reliability-4.html#post1799528

edit3: The 22k switch and the gbox are inside the house. There are two wires running from the house to the dishes. One wire runs from the gbox to the BIG cband and the other wire runs to the 8 way switch. On it there are, um, several ku dishes and the small 6' WSI cband. It's not officially motorized (it is but it's a long story)..
The wires are underground from the house to the dishes. Putting the 8 way switch in the house is not at all an option because I would have to run a zillion wires into the house. It's all actually more complicated than that as there are also a few 3x4 switches out there on a few of the old primestars but for simplicity sake we'll pretend them away.

edit4: I found the specifications on the switches I use. And the USALS motor I am using is an SG-9120. The dish is a primestar 75e so it's not very heavy or large.