FTA Installation - Phase II

[Bibbler]

OK Now, ... Since I have had my stuff up and running for a few months and am enjoying it, I am seriously thinking of taking it to the next phase...

Just a brief description of my situation. I live in a tree and hill encircled area. I have found my way through the trees with no problem and have the system working properly (thanks mostly to Bill!!!!)..

Unfortunately, there is a hill in my backyard that makes reception of any sat above about 110 W impossible (the dish points right into the hillside)... Since the thing I really want most up there is G10, what do yinz think about this...

1st, I replace my 80cm dish with a larger 100. (it will help as some of my birds are marginal 40-50 signal but perfectly watchable). A better motor than the HH90 will of course be required..

2nd, move the old dish on top of the hill and set it stationary on G10.

Now the problem... I'm talking 600-700 feet of cable. I have no doubt I need all RG-11 and, as I mention, it will be mounted stationary (I wouldn't even try to run a motor at this distance)....

Anyone have any thoughts or experience at very long coax runs and the chances of seeing G10??????....

[pmb1010]

You might consider putting a 100 or 120cm at the top of the hill.
Maybe more signal collection might be a way to overcome the long cable lengths.

There are signal amplifiers out there to overcome long cable runs.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Bibbler

.....
Unfortunately, there is a hill in my backyard that makes reception of any sat above about 110 W impossible
......
2nd, move the old dish on top of the hill and set it stationary on G10.

Now the problem... I'm talking 600-700 feet of cable. I have no doubt I need all RG-11 and, as I mention, it will be mounted stationary (I wouldn't even try to run a motor at this distance)....
...

Boy, that is a long run. I'm running about 250' , but that's about 2-3 times as much. I wouldn't be too surprised that you'd get signal at that distance, and you might need an inline amp (and then the argument will start about where to put it...{I say in the middle}....) but I'm wondering if you'd lose so much DC that you wouldn't be able to get the 18V polarity. That happens on one of my LNBFs when powered by my Twinhan through a switch. Ie the Twinhan is a bit low on LNBF voltage anyway, and the switch cuts the voltage a bit more, so all I can get is the 13V polarity unless I take the switch out. I've put the meter on my coax out at the dish, and the voltage is borderline even when it works. I'd guess that you'd be in the same boat, that your 18V voltage would drop down to 15 or something, and you'd get nothing but the 13V polarity. I guess you could run up the hill and manually turn your lnbf to change polarity.
Keep us posted. Sounds like an interesting project.

[rainman]

something you may try is to install a small tower where you have the dish at now 20 feet straight up can change line of site by quite a bit. and you won't have such a long cable run.

[Bibbler]

I could try a tower, but not sure I could get high enough.. The picture doesn't do justice to the actucal situation. Here I am at the dish location looking west. The hill is higher and steeper than it appears here.. I'm going to guess that it is a 130-140 degree hill.. It goes up a way, levels, up a bit more, into a hollow, then straight up ..

You might want to do a remote install ???

In english you get a weather proof box + insurance and run power up the hill.

Might need a permit for AC extension not sure.

Next plant the dish + receiver and install a uhf remote extender ??? and run the cable with possibly a inline amp between the receiver and your house.

I think the lower frequency cable tv signal is a bit more robust as I have about upto 600 / 700 feet of cable tv connection from pole in street to my tv via roof / ceiling / lid ?? open space. Maybe a bit less but close to it.

Might need to have another inline amp or the Walmart / radio shack normal cable signal amp to boost the signal not sure between receiver tv out and tv.
This might be enough to get the signal from your fta receiver to your tv and not need the inline amp.

Also for the remote control if the uhf one does not have the distance then maybe run a 2 wire / 4 wire cable to there and some how rig this to transfer the signal via this cable to change channels.

I think you can un solder the antena on the extension thingy of the remote extender and connect a ?? 2 strand wire to it and the same thingy up at the sat install.

Ground to ground and signal to signal ??

Similar concept to extending a telephone cable to another / out building / workshop / garage.


Hope this helps might need to explore it a bit further and or ask radio shack / radio / electonics engineer about this.

[Bibbler]

Another possibility (to recover some of what I am missing on G10) is to simply go down the road and offer to haul that BUD out of my neighbors yard. I'm thinking if I could hone in on 95 and 99, I would have most of the programming I am missing on G10...

Although this will eliminate the long cable run, it will cause a few more problems to overcome (or at least things I have never done).... I don't want a motorized system as I would have to run a slave etc, .. too complicated for me (and for me to show anyone how to run, ie. the wife)..

So what I was thinking is something like a dual feed on the BUD hitting both 95 and 99... I think I am probably creating a cabling nightmare, albeit one with reasonable length runs...

This might work:

S-DS41C 4-Way

Sadoun DiSEqC Switch


This combines 4 dishes / lnb's into 1 cable or maybe 4 lnb's into 1 receiver.

I will likely have 2 lnb's on 2 motor 100cm dishes at this stage in planning before buying and was thinking of 2 or more lnb's per dish.

This way 1 cable can do the work instead of 4 as running 8 cable's 4 per dish is expensive.

Think you can get max. 4 lnb's per receiver not sure.

Might use a 4 lnb's to 1 cable and then connect a splitter to get 1 cable to 4 or 8 receivers.

Then might be worth getting ?? RG11 ? the better cable but run 1 length to get best signal to the receiver and combining the lnb's at the dish to 1 cable.

Hope this helps.

[rainman]

Originally Posted by Bibbler

Another possibility (to recover some of what I am missing on G10) is to simply go down the road and offer to haul that BUD out of my neighbors yard. I'm thinking if I could hone in on 95 and 99, I would have most of the programming I am missing on G10...

Although this will eliminate the long cable run, it will cause a few more problems to overcome (or at least things I have never done).... I don't want a motorized system as I would have to run a slave etc, .. too complicated for me (and for me to show anyone how to run, ie. the wife)..

So what I was thinking is something like a dual feed on the BUD hitting both 95 and 99... I think I am probably creating a cabling nightmare, albeit one with reasonable length runs...

I think the biggest problem would be getting to c band feed horns to work for 2 sats if you add a acuator and v box to move the c band dish than that might work better.

[Bibbler]

Originally Posted by rainman

I think the biggest problem would be getting to c band feed horns to work for 2 sats if you add a acuator and v box to move the c band dish than that might work better.

Rain, can you tell me how this might work.. This sounds like the best solution. I leave my small dish where it is, and put the C band dish next to it... Now, (I believe the dish I am eyeing up still has a jack attached to it) so i can move the C band dish to the 2 or 3 sats that have the Networks, CW, and RTN... So All I prob need is a new LNB (Im sure this old one has an old one used for analog many moons ago...

So is there an uncomplicated way to easily get to say RTN on the C band without a lot of prob... I could set the Receiver to the right C band sat, then would use a seperate box to move the BUD to that Sat???

Is that about right???

The more I think of it this seems easier... I can recover most of what i am losing on G10 with C band, and don't have to worry about the long cable runs.. I imagine I won't miss G10 Too Too much if I can get the C band running in unison with what i already have on Ku.

[rainman]

with the v box you can set it for disqec 1.2 and your receiver will send the info to the v box to move the dish or you can use the v box as a seperate mover your choice. yeah if it's a old system will need a new lnb recommend a norsat pricey but worth it.

[elgemcdlf]

It appears to me that a roof mount dish and some tree trimming might do the trick. The roof would get you up about 20' which changes the whole picture. Some careful planning on placement could limit tree trimming to a bare minimum. Might even find a hole to look through without trimming anything.