Bad Luck, No Luck, & Frustrated! Advice, Please?

[jpasint]

Originally Posted by radiobob

After everything else I tried to improve my spotty reception, this evening I took the dish off its mount and set it face-down on the concrete of my driveway. It was completely and unequivocally obvious that the dish was, indeed, warped.

With nothing to lose, I put my foot on key parts of the back of the dish and squished down. That sucker is pretty strong 'cuz it mostly supported my 200+ lbs, but it seemed to be closer to the proper shape.

Afterwards, I remounted the dish and HOLY COW!Almost all of the illusive ethnic channels and dozens of radio channels on IA5 come in perfectly; while the Equity Broadcasting mux on G10R 11720 is still spotty, all the 11800 stations pound in! Excluding many of the ones I deleted, I now have something like 225 channels of video and I don't know how many radio! I can now receive channels on sats from PAS9 to IA7!

So, while my dish-squishing exercise paid off, it isn't a permanent fix since the dish is still warped and there are still some signals I can't pull out. Long term I'm looking at one of Satoun's 90 cm Fortec Star dishes.

But imagine: I had (a) a noisy self-oscillating LNB, (b) a deaf cheapie receiver (the Traxis), but on top of everything else, (c) the dish was bent! I could've tweaked and fine-tuned until I breathed my last and it still wouldn't have gotten any better. I kinda wonder if the friendly ham operator who sold me my original system at the Dayton Hamvention knew what he was pawning off on me...

But, for now...Wow! Reruns of Kojak and Hogans Heroes! Mission Impossible and weird (read that "unusual and interesting") music from around the world!

Sweet.

All the best,
Bob

Not crazy after all? Felt the same way Bob as you know my story. At least you were teased with some signal from your warped dish. I got nothing at all for about 2 weeks before I just tried a different dish. The old one is in a landfill right about now. It caused me too much grief to keep around. I took my revenge out on it this way!

Congrats on solving your problem.

Take care.

Joe

[rainman]

congrats Bob glad to see you getting it figured out. they always say in the car buisness when it don't work get a bigger hammer.LOL sounds like this apply to the sat buisness also.

[radiobob]

Originally Posted by jpasint

Not crazy after all? Felt the same way Bob as you know my story. At least you were teased with some signal from your warped dish. I got nothing at all for about 2 weeks before I just tried a different dish. The old one is in a landfill right about now. It caused me too much grief to keep around. I took my revenge out on it this way!

Congrats on solving your problem.

Take care.

Joe

Yeah, but it only took you two weeks to figure it out...it took me two months. Who's smarter? Heeeeee!

Originally Posted by rainman

congrats Bob glad to see you getting it figured out. they always say in the car buisness when it don't work get a bigger hammer.LOL sounds like this apply to the sat buisness also.

Bigger hammer, indeed... I have a 16 pound maul I'm thinking of using for "fine tuning".

Thanks. Have a great weekend.
Bob