Pictures, As Promised!

[Bibbler]

Here is the result of my fun day yesterday!!

http://pumanews.com/cband/


Lots of clean up work to go! But the hard part is done!

Thanks to all of you for your help and advice!!

Al

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Bibbler

Here is the result of my fun day yesterday!!

http://pumanews.com/cband/

...

Neat. What is the "home-made" part? Interesting adjustment for declination. How did you adjust it? Looks like there are all sorts of potential surfaces to put an inclinometer on, so it should be easy. I'm just curious what you did.

[Bibbler]

Bill...

The only thing that is home made are the 2 pieces that we cut, drilled and bolted to the ring... Remember, this dish was never really designed to move, and is sold as a stationary dish.... So what we did was take some of the square tubing that was meant for the legs and drilled them and bolted them to the ring, which allowed them to be bolted them on for the motor...

Here is pics of it assembled as it was designed. The "legs" are what I stole and cut for the 2 vertical mounting pieces:

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/F...s/IMG_1973.JPG

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/F...s/IMG_1974.JPG

The adjustment was factory for the motor... I just hooked it up to how I thought it should look Must be close.. I attached my magnetic angle finder to one of the "homemade" pieces to get the right angle....

What do ya think?? It's not a bad dish at all... It is admittedly, a little flimsy especially the outer edge.. But I think it is strong enough to hold up (once all is assembled it gets some structural strength) even in a moderate to hard wind... And you absolutely can not beat the price!!!

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Bibbler

Bill...

The only thing that is home made are the 2 pieces that we cut, drilled and bolted to the ring... Remember, this dish was never really designed to move, and is sold as a stationary dish.... So what we did was take some of the square tubing that was meant for the legs and drilled them and bolted them to the ring, which allowed them to be bolted them on for the motor...

Here is pics of it assembled as it was designed. The "legs" are what I stole and cut for the 2 vertical mounting pieces:

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/F...s/IMG_1973.JPG

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/F...s/IMG_1974.JPG

The adjustment was factory for the motor... I just hooked it up to how I thought it should look Must be close.. I attached my magnetic angle finder to one of the "homemade" pieces to get the right angle....

What do ya think?? It's not a bad dish at all... It is admittedly, a little flimsy especially the outer edge.. But I think it is strong enough to hold up (once all is assembled it gets some structural strength) even in a moderate wind... And you absolutely can not beat the price!!!

Yeah, it does look nice. Re the adjustment, I'm assuming that the bolt in the middle of the upper brass piece in:
http://pumanews.com/cband/Photos_files/IMG_0183.jpg
must be how you adjust declination. Ie can't be done at factory since everyone is different. It should be adjusted so that the dish looks about 5.6 degrees lower than the elevation described by the plane perpindicular to the motor's axis. Ie I'm guessing that if you put your inclinometer on your home made piece to get an elevation (angle vs ground) and then put a flat surface across the top of the upper brass piece, and put the other surface of the inclinometer on that to get an elevation, they should differ by about 5.6 degrees. After you've got the declination set like that, you can forget about it, and peak the south sat with the motor elevation. Sort of the opposite of how it's done with the offset dishes, mainly because it's easier to find surfaces relating to the dish aim with these prime focus things.

[pmb1010]

are those black lines in the snapshot of the tv artifacts created by the camera?

Can you take a pic with no flash?

[be236]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

are those black lines in the snapshot of the tv artifacts created by the camera?

Can you take a pic with no flash?

Nice picture and website.. made on a Mac, eh? Extra cool!

[Darkman]

Great pictures Bibbler.. and congrats!

[Darkman]

Originally Posted by Jagee

If i take a picture of my back yard were do i put it in so you can see it and tell me were i could put my identcal set up that you have.Ive tried 4 places so far to no avail.Except were my 31in fortec star is.

You can try to put it here for example (among many other simular places on the net, i am sure) ... Here:

Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket

Have to register there first though.. more likely

[Jagee]

i wish i lived near you,id like to copy your settings bibbler,do i add or subtract for my declination to find from 180degrees ive tried everything.but i live in grovetown,ga.33.2lat 82.2long ive used evry calculator and angle finder and still no luck.maybe i alt to break dn. and get a declination meter.any suggestion will be of help ive been working this since 3 weeks so far.Thank goodness my back up 31in dish works..oh im trying to put in a 6ft fortecstar dish with hh180.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Jagee

i wish i lived near you,id like to copy your settings bibbler,do i add or subtract for my declination to find from 180degrees ive tried everything.but i live in grovetown,ga.33.2lat 82.2long ive used evry calculator and angle finder and still no luck.maybe i alt to break dn. and get a declination meter.any suggestion will be of help ive been working this since 3 weeks so far.Thank goodness my back up 31in dish works..oh im trying to put in a 6ft fortecstar dish with hh180.

Make sure you don't confuse declination with declination.
What I mean is that there are 2 terms involved called declination here. The declination I think you are referring to is magnetic declination, which is the difference between true south and magnetic south. For you, according to NOAA's Geophysical Data Center - Geomagnetic Data it is 5.7 deg , which means that your true south is a compass heading of 185.7 deg.

The other "declination" is the angle below the plane perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis, that the dish aims. This is because the plane perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis describes a plane that is parallel to, but above the earth's equatorial plane that the sat is in, so your dish has to look down a bit to see the sat. For you, the declination of a sat to your south would be 5.4 deg, and the declination of a sat to your east or west is 4.8. You should try to use 4.8 (even though most calculators you find will say 5.4) . The big question is how to set the declination. As I mentioned above, it looks like on that motor's mount, that declination is set vis the bolt on top of the brass section. It looks like that would allow the dish to tilt down a bit. To set it, you'd have to find flat surfaces either parallel or perpindicular to the aim of the dish , and either parallel or perpindicular to the motor's rotation axis. On Al's picture, his home-made piece he bolted to is perpindicular to the dish's aim, and either the top of the motor or a flat surface put on top of the brass piece would be perpincicular to the motor's axis of rotation. I'd compare one measurement to 90 minus the other, and adjust until the dish's elevation was a bit less than 5 degrees lower than the motor's plane of rotation.

Once you've done that, and have oriented the dish to your true south, just raise and lower the motor's elevation until you find your true south satellite. I don't know if that motor has latitude, elevation or no markings on it's scale, but it's not important, as it is only a starting point. Ideally, you should be using an elevation of about 90-33.8=56.2 (and if it has a latitude setting, use 33.8 instead of your latitude).

[lostinthewoods]

Just a quick note to Bill's posting above.

Grovetown is close to Stone Mountain and in that area, the general charts for declination, are almost useless. When I was flying out of there, a quick check of the charts showed some crazy things going on. He would be better to use the sun charts from a site like this:

Sun or Moon Altitude/Azimuth Table

to find his true south.

Just my 3¢

Lost

[reho33]

Great job Bibbler. Love the pics. I am a bit worried though that you were only getting 50-60 % with the 6 footer. Did you get some stronger readings on other transponders /muxs? Reason I ask is because if I am going to go through all the trouble of pouring concrete, digging, etc. I want to believe that an 8 ' or bigger dish would generate maybe 70-80% Q as opposed to 50-60. Although if you get a lock and it does not degrade at 50-60 then maybe I could live with that.

[Jagee]

i didn't mean to hijack this spot please go to the title back yard.

[rainman]

nice clean setup Al looks really good.

[Bibbler]

Originally Posted by reho33

Great job Bibbler. Love the pics. I am a bit worried though that you were only getting 50-60 % with the 6 footer. Did you get some stronger readings on other transponders /muxs?

A couple of things, I'm not totally peaked out on this thing. What is really strange is that I can peak certain channels on a sat and others go weaker (and vice versa).... If I peak out the networks on 99 as high as I can get them (75-80%, other channels go totally away ???????) World Harvest is always 70-90% no matter what I do...

It was raining when I shot this so it's down a bit, but there was no breakup at all... 100% solid. Not sure if the Q meter on the Classic NA is stingy, but I have found over the past year that even the weak TPs, anything 40-46% or higher, stays solid. And remember, I have LOTS of trees, and am looking through them!...

Originally Posted by reho33

Reason I ask is because if I am going to go through all the trouble of pouring concrete, digging, etc. I want to believe that an 8 ' or bigger dish would generate maybe 70-80% Q as opposed to 50-60. Although if you get a lock and it does not degrade at 50-60 then maybe I could live with that.

As mentioned, I'm seeing no degrade on the picture at all. This of course is not to say that an 8 footer wouldn't be a BIG improvement, but I also am trying to keep "peace in the family" She thinks the 6' is a real "BIG Dish".

If I get a chance to peak it some more this weekend, I'll be able to give you a much better idea on performance....

[pmb1010]

Is the LNBF skew-able on this prime focus mount?

(and yes I know the dish movement skews the LNBF automatically, but I'm talking about a fine adjustment)

[wejones]

Yeah, it could very well be a polarity thing, which if there are no interferring channels, won't affect reception that much, but with polarity off, some channels will have interferrence, and be affected more than others. It could be that in order to improve quality on one strong channel, that the dish had to be moved off the sat to avoid interferrence from nearby sats, enough to kill reception on the weak channels. I also have to ask, whether the focal length was carefully measured when installing the LNBF? If the focal length is off, you can be receiving 2 sats at once. I once used to peak my dish on one sat, and would try to get a weak transponder that I knew was on that sat, but instead, I'd get a transponder from a nearby sat instead. I'd have to move the dish a bit to pick up the weak transponder. Thing would go blink, and kick over from the wrong signal to the right signal. That was an unusual situation with 2 signals with exactly the same parameters, but it shows how you can get interferrence from nearby sats if the polarity is off, or due to the poor resolution of a smaller dish, or in my case contributed to by sidelobes, etc.