The jump to C band...total weight of system?

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Hello all:

It's coming close to a year since I got the Ku band system set up, and it's been absolutely terrific. Now I'm getting the itch to go to C band, but as with so many people it's a question of where to put the dish. If I do this it'll be with a 6' dish. Right now, I have the DG-280 HH motor w/Fortec 90cm dish mounted to a piece of EMT, which is in turn bracketed to a vent pipe coming up through the roof decking. It's pretty solid and lots of windstorms and rough weather hasn't touched it. My question is, what is (approximately) the total weight of everything I would need for the 6' setup, i.e. the dish, actuator, polar mount, etc. Would my vent pipe arrangement work if I beefed it up? I assume not, since everyone usually uses poles in concrete or tripods.

I have a nice, big open roof, but I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to use a tripod of any sort mounted to a structure made of wood; expansion and contraction would screw up the alignment (I would think).

One last thing, I'm somewhat confused about the C band LBNFs, do they actually have a motor inside them to change polarity, hence three cables (actuator power, LNB power and a separate one for the coax/signal)? Naturally I would want to do C/Ku band together with the good old Mercury II.

CN

[rainman]

you can use a bsc 621 lnbf for c and ku with only the coax cable and the actuator wires. as for mounting would recommend setting on a pole mounted in concrete close to the ground to save it from the wind.

[BYX]

No matter what make sure you install your C band dish with schedule 40 pipe minimum, mounted on the ground and better if bracketed to a wall.
I tell you this from experience.
I had my 6 footer on an EMT pipe very well mounted on the wall, with anchors, and wall mounting brackets meant for communications antennas.
Last month of June a windgust of 65 MPH broke my mast like a straw and the mounting brakets stayed intact and the antenna got damaged.

[Vitruvius]

Yes, for a 6 foot dish you would need some substantial reinforcing to hold the pipe. This is why 3 feet of concrete footing in the ground works so well. A while back someone had the question about poking the pipe through his roof and anchoring to a slab on grade. This is possible if you have a long enough pole/ steel tube. There is roof flashing to make sure it works.
The best is concrete in the ground.

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Okay...I ordered the BSC621 and the scalar ring adaptor/lnbf holder for offset dishes (but received the other C/Ku lnbf they offer, I guess it doesn't matter because the specs and price are the same) and thought, what the heck, I'll throw this on my 90cm dish and see what happens. According to lyngsat, I should be able to get a couple C band tps- if I even got one, I would be happy and move on to a bigger dish.

BUT:

When I put it on my dish, I got nothing, absolutely nothing, out of either C OR Ku-band. I did expect the Ku band to work. So: since these things come with no instructions of any sort, where the heck do you start!?!?! There are no scale degrees on the lnbf, so I have no idea what its orientation is! Then, how far forward or backward do you put it in the holder (which doesn't fit very tightly at all)? I looked at the pictures on the Sadoun site and it shows the lnbf with the Ku-band unit facing more or less up, which is counterintuitive- I would think it would face down to keep it out of the rain a little bit. So, give me a clue guys, I obviously don't have one right now.

CN

[rainman]

if it has a arrow on it that would be at the 12 o'clock position if not the flat part would be at the 8 o'clock position when looking at it from the front of the dish.

[pmb1010]

dont forget it has built in diseqc switch.
Set it to "2" for Ku band - if you have that jumper installed and are connecting to the end port connector.

c band is going to be very very difficult on that small a dish, if at all.

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Yeah I know I'm not supposed to get anything this way but I'm just curious- according to the lyngsat maps there are a couple sats with hot spots (in the 42 dbW range EIRP) right over my area! According to the charts a 90cm dish is supposed to work. Even if it doesn't, if I get the Ku band working with this new lbnf I will have learned something.

BTW: just out of curiosity, with the dilectric plate installed, you can get circular polarity on C band, but does it make the Ku band circular as well? I assume not.

CN

[Vitruvius]

CN, Yes, I have the BSC621-2 LNB installed. There is a difference to be aware of between the -2 model and the -1 model. I think it is the -1 model that should work with a Motorola 922 receiver but not the other one.

I had mine installed for C-band only... and for some weird reason I was not getting any signal. I finally hooked up the Ku cable to a diseqc switch that the C-band was attached to, and finally I got C-band signal and it was great.

Some people have had problems with the diseqc switch that is built into the LNB... I may have that problem.

I hope this helps...

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

Hello Guys:

First: I found the tiny little arrow on the back of the unit, so I've got the orientation right.

Second: remember, they didn't send me the BSC621, I have the GeoSat CK-1, and they sent an extra DiSeq switch in the box with it- I'm not using it, I have a Sonicview Diseq switch which I've been using with the Invacom Quad lnb, to switch between linear and circular, and it works flawlessly. I hooked up LNB 1 to the Ku and LNB 2 to the C band.

Long story short, I'm still getting absolutely nothing. I would be happy to just get the Ku band back. (I know the dish is aimed perfectly because I can swap the old Invacom back on and bingo, back in business.) Now: I see that this lnfb says "Ku band: LO freq.9.76/10.6 GHz". Does that mean that I have to use the "Universal" setting on the reciever, as opposed to the "10750" setting? (This is the Mercury II I'm talking about.) If so, do I let the reciever do "automatic" 22khz band switching?

I'm trying to rule everything out...at what point do I conclude I've got a bad unit?

TIA,
CN

[rainman]

yes you will have to use the universal setting leave the 22 khz on auto.

[BYX]

I have experimented C band with a 76 cm dish and the two best satellites to get are PAS9 and NSS806.
My experiment was with a regular scalar ring not a conical and I was able to receive ENLACE JUVENIL on PAS9 with abvout 40% signal quality and a Colombian channel on NSS806.
Keep in mind that NSS806 is circular polarized on C band.
I did it just for the fun of it and ended happy with the results.
A small dish is not a solution for C band.
Six feet is a decent size for north america to get almost the whole arc.
I never had problems with adjacent signals.
10 footers are the ideal antennas for C band.
Six footers are the ideal Do It Yourself size. The one that Sadoun sells is really a feather to work with.

[Vitruvius]

CN, Did you set your receiver's LNB to the proper frequency for C-Band which is 5150 and not 10750. If you don't do that, you wouldn't get any signal.

[cnagorka@gmail.com]

That's it for now- I've tried everything and can't get anything out of this lnb unit. And, to answer Vitruvius yes I remembered to set the LNB to 5150 (for lnb 2; and following what Rainman said I used the Universal setting for lnb 1, I chose to set up Ku on 1 and C band on 2).

There's only one other place I could have made a mistake, that I know of- the coax connector on the very end of the unit is the C band, and the coax coming out of the little flat unit half way down or so is Ku band, right? Even if I screwed that up, which I didn't, it wouldn't matter because I deliberately tested it the other way even though I figured it was wrong, and that didn't do anything, either.

I guess it's not possible that I got a bad unit, because I get the usual 40% signal level at all times, indicating that it's seeing background noise. Perhaps there's some problem with the aim of the lnb holder/adaptor (which is very sloppy) with relation to the dish. Just out of curiosity I hooked up the little analog sat finder just to see what it said, and the results made no sense at all; taking the unit out of the holder and setting down on the roof pegged out the meter, and just waving it around randomly made the meter move, but nothing I did with it in its holder on the dish seemed to have any effect.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed because of other sites on the net, one of which shows where a guy simply duct taped a C band lnb onto a small dish and got some signals! I didn't seriously expect anything like that but I did expect to get something, somewhere. So it's back to the drawing board, and the rental place to get a power auger for a 3' hole to fill w/cement and a big piece of pipe.

CN

[pmb1010]

for a goof change things around and put C band on port 1 and Ku on port 2 and give it another go.

Maybe the external switch is playing games with the LNBF's internal switch.

Easy enough to try.

(edit - although re-reading your last response maybe you tried this...)
oh well.

[Techfizzle]

Originally Posted by cnagorka@gmail.com

That's it for now- I've tried everything and can't get anything out of this lnb unit. And, to answer Vitruvius yes I remembered to set the LNB to 5150 (for lnb 2; and following what Rainman said I used the Universal setting for lnb 1, I chose to set up Ku on 1 and C band on 2).

There's only one other place I could have made a mistake, that I know of- the coax connector on the very end of the unit is the C band, and the coax coming out of the little flat unit half way down or so is Ku band, right? Even if I screwed that up, which I didn't, it wouldn't matter because I deliberately tested it the other way even though I figured it was wrong, and that didn't do anything, either.

I guess it's not possible that I got a bad unit, because I get the usual 40% signal level at all times, indicating that it's seeing background noise. Perhaps there's some problem with the aim of the lnb holder/adaptor (which is very sloppy) with relation to the dish. Just out of curiosity I hooked up the little analog sat finder just to see what it said, and the results made no sense at all; taking the unit out of the holder and setting down on the roof pegged out the meter, and just waving it around randomly made the meter move, but nothing I did with it in its holder on the dish seemed to have any effect.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed because of other sites on the net, one of which shows where a guy simply duct taped a C band lnb onto a small dish and got some signals! I didn't seriously expect anything like that but I did expect to get something, somewhere. So it's back to the drawing board, and the rental place to get a power auger for a 3' hole to fill w/cement and a big piece of pipe.

CN

the duct taper might of been me! lol

i have messed arround with a c-band lnb and a 31" dish. and did manage to pull in some analog and digital channels.

But when it comes to satellite TV, size DOES matter


If you want to get 90 percent of whats up there, you need to get at least a 6 foot dish, if you want to get it all, you need a 10 footer

they can usually be had for free if you drive around and do some door knocking.

Here is my take on lnbs.

I had a old chaparal micropak 25 degree lnb on my dish and was getting 200 signal on my drake and 12 to 14 ebno on my 4dtv, in english that means i was getting a great signal

i bought a chinese lnb off ebay and it performed the same.

there are quite a few channels on cband that you cant get on ku that are interesting, like some fox feeds

and if you havent heard before, you can get a 4dtv receiver, which allows you to subscribe to most of the channels you get on dish or directv, but alot cheaper

need any help pm me...
cheers