The P* is tracking the arc tonight!

[Shawn95GT]

I'm either really lucky or you guys give some good advice .

I swung from IA-7(129W) to Echostar 3 (61.5W) and tagged a bazillions sats in between.

Lesson learned:
Just because when you USALS over to a satellite and the quality meter is showing squat... that doesn't mean you missed the sat. It just means you aren't picking up whatever your reciever is looking for (whatever transponder etc). Blind scan anyways and you may be pleasantly suprised.

I have the CoolSat cued up to blind scan the whole right side (Ku) of Lyngsat right now .

Thanks for all the help getting me this far!

 

[Shawn95GT]

Some pics from the uber blind scan:

Oh yeah - and playing around I was able to pick up Pas9 (58W) and 148W actually came in but the quality bar was all over the place. I attribute this to my Fica tree about 6' to the west of my dish . I didn't see anything on 148 worth hacking up my tree for.

 

[Rick in MD]

Very Cool, Now that I am back from vacation, I will be putting a pole out in the yard and getting mine of the side of the house.. I have both G10 and 121W dialed in great, and hope to have the entire ARC in the next few weeks. I have the SM3D12 H-H motor and a pretty clear southern view, so I am hoping for the same range of Sats that you have picked up.

 

[charper1]

Are you blind scanning in "ALL" mode? Do you really go back and painstakingly remove all those scrambled finds? Why not just blind scan "FTA" mode?

 

[Shawn95GT]

Are you blind scanning in "ALL" mode? Do you really go back and painstakingly remove all those scrambled finds? Why not just blind scan "FTA" mode?

I did scan 'ALL' and then delete scrambled in the database menu.

I wonder if scanning FTA only would discard the channels that show up with the $ but are actually in the clear... I'll have to test that.

 

[PopcornNMore]

Very good Shawn. I can't wait to get my setup up and running. Tomorrow I am going to prime and paint the pole and possibly add dirt and flowers at the bottom. This will make the wife happy.

Did you receive any local FTA stations in your area from Echostar 7? I am receiving the Miami channels for now. Of course I was using a circular LNBF. I need to try using a linear LNBF to see if I still receive them. I may add another dish just to get the Echostar channels (Miami, GOL, NASA, etc.) and use a DiSEqC switch.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Very good Shawn. I can't wait to get my setup up and running. Tomorrow I am going to prime and paint the pole and possibly add dirt and flowers at the bottom. This will make the wife happy.

Did you receive any local FTA stations in your area from Echostar 7? I am receiving the Miami channels for now. Of course I was using a circular LNBF. I need to try using a linear LNBF to see if I still receive them. I may add another dish just to get the Echostar channels (Miami, GOL, NASA, etc.) and use a DiSEqC switch.

I got abosutely nothing from Echo 7 (119) - except the superdish 121 barker... yes 121. I get the same thing at 121. I get some of the E* stuff with my Ku LNB but I think I'm going to go ahead and add a D* LNB and see if I have better luck with the FTA E* stuff. Even the international channel promo is spuratic at best. Echo9 gives me the Superdish 121 screen and some Asian channel in the clear. GolTV comes in great @110 though.

If I connect the Voom dish (18") to the Coolsat the international promo comes in great.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Some pics of the pretty much finaliazed install. I forgot to paint the P* mount .

The video is what happens when a guy who thinks this is fun also thinks tinkering with video editing is fun - lol.

My cheesy video of the P* in action (2Megs)

 

[charper1]

Shawn, not sure if I have asked this before, but what part of PHX? I am in the east valley; Val Vista & Elliot.

 

[CbandLover]

Shawn,
Thanks for the awesome pics and the really cool video! You just confirmed the same setup that I want to do actually works! No need to worry about wasting time on this project since I now know that it works. I may attempt with a Stab 120 for extra weight management of the heavy dish. Please let us know how the motor holds up... I may just go the route you took.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Shawn, not sure if I have asked this before, but what part of PHX? I am in the east valley; Val Vista & Elliot.

I live in North Phoenix - I-17 and Rose Garden Ln. My mom lives kind of close to you - Gilbert / Baseline.

 

[Stefan]

Congratualations. Looks like you've done pretty well setting up your primestar dish.

"Just because when you USALS over to a satellite and the quality meter is showing squat... that doesn't mean you missed the sat. It just means you aren't picking up whatever your reciever is looking for (whatever transponder etc). Blind scan anyways and you may be pleasantly suprised."

Yeah, what you have to remember is that to determine the quality of signal the reciever must know things like the symbol rate of a particular transponder and such as that. If you haven't yet scanned a satellite for transpoders then the reciever may not know exactly what to look for in determining quality. What I did when I first setup my primestar was use a satellite meter inline between the reciever and lnb. If you have a universial LNB you might need to enable the 22Khz tone when using such meters. Anyway, my meter gave off an audible tone whenever I hit a satellite and it was loud enough to hear quite easily even from inside. This helped quite a bit in finding the right declination setting on the inverted primestar mount. The way I did this was first get the dish and motor assmebly on the pole pointing true south using a compass and adjusting for magnetic deviation. Then I went inside and used the reciever to move the dish to where a satellite should be. Next I went outside and used a ratchet wrench to adjust the declination using the bolt on the bottom (would be the top on a normal non-motorised primestar installation) of the primestar mount until I heard the loud shreak from the meter indicating I'd hit the satellite. I then went inside and scanned the satellite to see if what was being transmitted on the satellite agreed with what should be on that particular satellite according to lyngsat. If it did I knew I was pretty much in the ballpark. After this I searched for other satellites to make sure I was tracking the arc properly and after finding and scanning a few different satellites scattered through out the arc, I then did some fine tweaking of adjustments to get optimum quality readings from the reciever.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Shawn,
Thanks for the awesome pics and the really cool video! You just confirmed the same setup that I want to do actually works! No need to worry about wasting time on this project since I now know that it works. I may attempt with a Stab 120 for extra weight management of the heavy dish. Please let us know how the motor holds up... I may just go the route you took.

Thanks for the kind words.

I came real close to not even attempting to motorize this dish. I was concidering just picking up a Fortec 90cm dish and motorizing that. Stephan posted a quick and easy (PVC) way to make the 2 3/8" mount work on the SG2100's motor and I decided to give it a shot. The PVC adaptor cost me about $2.50 to build.

I'm VERY happy with the results.

 

[PopcornNMore]

What a great video! The pictures look awsome!

I may use that PVC conversion as well on my dish.

Your installation looks VERY professional!

 

[Shawn95GT]

ooh - my 1st feed

NBA highlights and so far an interview with Nash

Telstar-6 11.709V 4195 4216

I think it's actually at 11.711V (TP1)

 

[Mr Tony]

Are you blind scanning in "ALL" mode? Do you really go back and painstakingly remove all those scrambled finds? Why not just blind scan "FTA" mode?

Charper
The Coolsat will only blind scan all...I havent found a way to scan just blind scan FTA

There is a button to nuke all scrambled channels

Other scanning techniques you can scan just FTA and not scrambled

 

[PopcornNMore]

Shawn,

How did you get such good screenshots of the Coolsat receiver?

 

[Shawn95GT]

I have the CoolSat's output piped into my PC TV tuner card's composite input.

I have an ATI HD Wonder card.

 

[PopcornNMore]

I saw this new Primestar dish on E-Bay. I think it is a good price at $49 for all that it includes. Shawn, is your P* dish 40" X 30" like this one?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32844&item=5773899620&rd=1

 

[Mr Tony]

I saw that too, but it looks like the LNB's are retrofitted for DirecTV (101 & 119)