Planning

DLR · #1 (**permalink**) 09-24-2006, 03:53 AM

Hi ya'll,
I have been reading up and learning all I can about FTA. So far what I have came to is that I want to get the captiveworks 1000 and a motorized dish. My problem is that I live in the country and have DTV but thats just for 1 bird. I have a line of sight problem, TREE's, lots and lots of tree's. what I need to know is will a larger dish compensate for obstructions? if not, can I put the dish up high enough using rigid conduit and guy wire to prevent sway? I have read that the max cable run for RG6 is 125'. I will have to go way over that in order to get a clear line of sight. we are planning on having the land cleared (10 acres or so) by selling the tree's to a logging company. but that is down the line a few months. does anyone have any suggestions to get me going in the right direction?

Edit:found this sight to be most knowledgable and really impressed with soudons prices on some items. the motorized dish will definatly be comming from here whenever I do make my jump. sure do wish they carried the captiveworks!

rainman · #2 (**permalink**) 09-24-2006, 08:41 AM

some of the guys on here is running 250 ft of RG6 the most common problems on long runs is not enough power to run the motor.if you can get the mount steady enough you should have no problems. one idea is to cut the top out of 1 tree and mount it temporary till you get the rest of the trees down.and welcome to the forums.

wejones · #3 (**permalink**) 09-24-2006, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DLR

Hi ya'll,
I have been reading up and learning all I can about FTA. So far what I have came to is that I want to get the captiveworks 1000 and a motorized dish. My problem is that I live in the country and have DTV but thats just for 1 bird. I have a line of sight problem, TREE's, lots and lots of tree's. what I need to know is will a larger dish compensate for obstructions? if not, can I put the dish up high enough using rigid conduit and guy wire to prevent sway? I have read that the max cable run for RG6 is 125'. I will have to go way over that in order to get a clear line of sight. we are planning on having the land cleared (10 acres or so) by selling the tree's to a logging company. but that is down the line a few months. does anyone have any suggestions to get me going in the right direction?

Edit:found this sight to be most knowledgable and really impressed with soudons prices on some items. the motorized dish will definatly be comming from here whenever I do make my jump. sure do wish they carried the captiveworks!

I live in the woods too. I had to do a lot of searching to find the one spot where I could see a good deal of the sky. My dishes are looking over some trees, and under other thees and through some holes in others. I have gotten very good with a rope saw to take off limbs high up in the trees.
But to your question, a big dish may help a bit, but unless the tree is sparse, it's usually a killer. Usually, if you can see a good deal of sky through the tree limbs, you have a chance, but if not, you don't have a chance. And the further away the trees are, the worse your chances. I've even demonstrated that I could receive through a sheet of plywood if the plywood is right in front of the LNBF, however if you put the plywood several feet out in front of the dish, it kills the signal. (Ie it's more of a scattering thing than absorbtion thing, and the further away the further away the scattering takes the signal. Same with rain fade.) Also, pine trees are worse than disiduous (?sp?) trees, at least when the leaves are dry. I have a few sats that I can receive when the leaves are dry, but after a rain or snow, when the leaves are wet, I lose reception. Also, I have several sats that I can see in the winter when the leaves are off the trees, but I can't see in the summer.

What I would recommend is to wait for a bit more than a week, and during that time look at Lyngsat, and decide what sats you are interested in viewing. Also you can use one of several web pages to find the Azimuth/Elevation to each sat, then you can use the USNO tables or one of several programs to find out when the Sun will be at that Az/El. This is because during about the first week of October, the sun will be following the Clarke belt fairly well for those in the northern hemisphere, so you can get a pretty good idea of where to put your dish by looking at where you have a view of the sun. There was also a web page posted by someone that would predict solar outages for specific satellites.
Anyway, by finding out where the sats are, you can better choose your site, and also decide which trees might be cut down, etc.

Relative to the length of COAX, the 125' maximum coax length you mention is just plain wrong. As far as signal is concerned, I wouldn't worry until you get up over 300', and even then it is possible to use amplifiers, although I wouldn't try that with a motor powered through the coax. There is some question regarding how long the coax can be before the DiseqC commands have trouble getting to the motor. I'm running something in the range of 250' myself. Signal is no problem for me, but for a while I was having problems controlling the motor, but for the past week or so, it's been working fine. In my case, my dish isn't really that far away, however it is on the opposite side of my garage, so the cable has to go into the garage, up into the attic of the garage across the garage into the 2nd floor of my house, then follows the pipes down into my basement and across to the other side of the basement where my receivers are. When I first installed my big dish sat system here about a decade ago, I located my receiver up in the second floor of the house, which reduced the cable run by about 75', but then I had about 75' of A/V line to get to my TV, which turned out to be more of a difficulty than the additional RF cable. But anyway, you can certainly go up to 250' of coax, and probably more.

DLR · #4 (**permalink**) 09-24-2006, 12:23 PM

Thanx guys for the replies. It will be well over 300 ft to the center of the fish pond damn/driveway. and we are talking predominantly pine tree's to. there are a few oak and hickory but not many. perhaps if I wait till I cut the tree's then the need for a larger dish wont be needed. fixed dishes are an option, but in this case not cost effective as a motorized would be. I can keep reading and absorb some of the knowledge. I do have direct and also I have a dish 500 legacy stored brand new in the box so I can go ahead and snatch up the captiveworks 1000. It would seem that the viewsat is the most popular on the other sights. I am at 31.297 and 86.490W so I think my elevation would need to be higher than those in the northern states and canada. to spot the birds. thats just my common sense thinking, I could be wrong. I dont think that little more elevation is going to be enough to clear the tree's. I might have a shot at getting most of the atlantic sats
seeing that that is pretty much in the wide open. I hope to be hearing from the logging guys this week. So maybe the wait wont be that long.

BKP · #5 (**permalink**) 09-24-2006, 03:08 PM

You could do a bucket mount and move it around to find a spot.. I've seen some pictures of different ones.. I'll see if I can get a photo or two for ya..

DLR · #6 (**permalink**) 09-25-2006, 01:24 AM

thats would be kewl

BKP · #7 (**permalink**) 09-25-2006, 01:30 PM

Here is a step by step how to link..

http://www.chrisrowland.com/fta_how_to_set_pole.htm

DLR · #8 (**permalink**) 09-25-2006, 02:22 PM

thats an alternative.... I might go with something like that if I decide not to wait from the logging guys, should be hearing from them this week.

elgemcdlf · #9 (**permalink**) 09-25-2006, 02:32 PM

I currently have a run of roughly 175' of RG6 with a DiSEqC at about the 100' point. It is going to a C Band dish and the only problem I have had is I can not run it from port 3. Switched to port 1 and no problems. Have Ku running from port 4 and that run is roughly 115'.

glen4cindy · #10 (**permalink**) 10-04-2006, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wejones

I've even demonstrated that I could receive through a sheet of plywood if the plywood is right in front of the LNBF, however if you put the plywood several feet out in front of the dish, it kills the signal. (Ie it's more of a scattering thing than absorbtion thing, and the further away the further away the scattering takes the signal.

Just got my motorized dish package today! Yahoo! And I was kind of astonished at the size of the dish. I had pictured it to be not all that much bigger than my triple sat DTV dish, but, it is really big! 80cm to be exact.

The problem now, is, my subdivision rules will not allow this size dish to be in view and where I had thought about placing it in the back yard is where my wife wants to put play equipment in the future.

In reading this post about the plywood, I was wondering if the same were true of vinyl. We have a solid vinyl privacy fence surrounding our back yard. If I were to mount the dish directly on the ground on a pole buried in concrete or say a 4' x 4' right in front of my fence (allowing for rotational tolerances of course), will I get adequate signal to enjoy FTA, or do I have to find another spot?

If I have to locate another spot, the problem will be with how to get the coax into our house. We are on a corner lot, and I don't know the exact size of our yard, but, we have a 16' x 42' pool with a 4.5' concrete apron around it.

Thanks for being so patient with a newbie!

elgemcdlf · #11 (**permalink**) 10-05-2006, 09:12 AM

Your subdivision has no say. Federal law allows up to a 1m dish to be placed anywhere on the property you reside within providing your landlord does not provide programming for you. Ownership of the property only strengthens your position. There was a link on www.sadoun.com that went to the complete law.

wejones · #12 (**permalink**) 10-05-2006, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glen4cindy

Just got my motorized dish package today! Yahoo! And I was kind of astonished at the size of the dish. I had pictured it to be not all that much bigger than my triple sat DTV dish, but, it is really big! 80cm to be exact.

The problem now, is, my subdivision rules will not allow this size dish to be in view and where I had thought about placing it in the back yard is where my wife wants to put play equipment in the future.

In reading this post about the plywood, I was wondering if the same were true of vinyl. We have a solid vinyl privacy fence surrounding our back yard. If I were to mount the dish directly on the ground on a pole buried in concrete or say a 4' x 4' right in front of my fence (allowing for rotational tolerances of course), will I get adequate signal to enjoy FTA, or do I have to find another spot?

If I have to locate another spot, the problem will be with how to get the coax into our house. We are on a corner lot, and I don't know the exact size of our yard, but, we have a 16' x 42' pool with a 4.5' concrete apron around it.

Thanks for being so patient with a newbie!

I don't think they can stop you from having a dish less than 1 meter. It used to be that if you belonged to some planned community, that the community organization could control what you put up, but I'm pretty sure that this has changed. I'm sure someone here can point you to the FCC documents that cover this.

Re vinyl, I would think that would work, unless there is some metal imbedded in it. It's not always obvious what materials are transparent to microwave. I've found that for receiving some frequencies that it works better through the wooden walls than it does through the windows. Ie the windows have metalic coatings and constituents in the glass.

glen4cindy · #13 (**permalink**) 10-05-2006, 08:07 PM

Thanks for all the helpful info.

No matter what the FCC says, I do have to keep my wife happy too!

I am going to start out using a bucket mount until I can find the best place to put it. She does not want it in sight in the yard in front or on the side of our house, but, does not really mind most places in the back yard.

Thanks again.

elgemcdlf · #14 (**permalink**) 10-05-2006, 10:54 PM

I dunno know. Wives are pretty easy to find but a good location to view the arc, now that is another story.

rainman · #15 (**permalink**) 10-06-2006, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elgemcdlf

I dunno know. Wives are pretty easy to find but a good location to view the arc, now that is another story.

sounds like a statement from a single guy.LOL

wejones · #16 (**permalink**) 10-06-2006, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glen4cindy

No matter what the FCC says, I do have to keep my wife happy too!

Thanks again.

They used to make radoms of some kind that would disguise a dish, making it look like something else, like a rock or bush or something. I can't remember where I saw them. But you might look around. I cover my REAL small (DTV) dishes with a plastic trash bag in the winter to keep snow off the LNBF. If you did that, you wouldn't be able to see the dish, but then again, your "community" may have regs against plastic bags too. :-)