Mercury II and HTS Tracker Premier

[draggon_9]

Is it possible to hook the HTS Tracker Premier to the Mercury II ? I know I won't be able to change satellites but could I at least change channels ? I know there's voltage on the IF out connector but I'm not sure what it would do to the input connector on the HTS unit. I couldn't find much info on the HTS. (Don't want to fry anything).

[wejones]

Originally Posted by draggon_9

Is it possible to hook the HTS Tracker Premier to the Mercury II ? I know I won't be able to change satellites but could I at least change channels ? I know there's voltage on the IF out connector but I'm not sure what it would do to the input connector on the HTS unit. I couldn't find much info on the HTS. (Don't want to fry anything).

What kind of dish/motor do you have? Basically, if you have a big dish system controlled by the HTS, it's best to slave the Mercury to the HTS, and if (as I guess) that you have a small 3' dish controlled by the Mercury, then you could slave the HTS to the Mercury. There will probably be 18V coming out of the HTS, so what you should do is get a "DC-block" at radio shack, and connect the HTS to the Mercury's pass-thru via the DC block. I don't think there will be any voltage coming out of the Mercury's pass-thru, but there definately should be some from the HTS, and you don't want them to fight each other.
You can control what sat, and what polarity you are on by using the Mercury, then look for analog signals on the HTS. Hopefully you can get it configured as a 32 channel Ku sat. You'll probably have to tune the transponder frequencies on the HTS, because analog Ku channels don't follow any standard. Also, if your dish has a universal LNBF, then you will be missing about 1/3 of the band, because the HTS is assuming a 10750 LO freq instead of the 10600 on a universal LNBF.

Should he not also get a dual lnb for the small dish + switch 2x4 or similar ??

[wejones]

Originally Posted by WarraWarra

Should he not also get a dual lnb for the small dish + switch 2x4 or similar ??

I've never used a 2x4. It might be possible, but I don't see any way to wire one without 2 coax runs, and if you do that, you might as well just go to the 2 lnbf ports directly. The way I suggested can be done with what he has now, except for the DC-block.

[draggon_9]

Thanks guy's, I'll head down to radio shack and see what they got. I'll let you know. Thanks

[wejones]

Originally Posted by draggon_9

Thanks guy's, I'll head down to radio shack and see what they got. I'll let you know. Thanks

I assume that Radio Shack still has them (DC-blocks). I tried to find them on their on-line catalog yesterday, and didn't see them listed. I see that Sadoun has something similar, ie:
http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/S...ng-coupler.htm
The Sadoun description says "not for satellite use", however I think the RS versions have the same frequency rating, so these may be the same as the RS items, I don't know. I have heard that there are 2 different types of these things, ie ones made with capacitors and others made with diodes. I've never seen the diode version, but supposedly they can fail in a shorted state. I've been using the RS versions for years, with no problems, and they really don't seem to have much if any insertion loss. I've had 3 or 4 of them in the chain between various receivers, and haven't noticed significant signal loss, which if the insertion loss was as great as they say, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

[draggon_9]

They don't have anything like that at the radio shack here. Could't I just make my own using something like a disk capacitor about .047 uf or so? It would be nice to know what value of capacitor they use.

[draggon_9]

Whoops! or maybe a couple of diodes back to back?