Wave Frontier Toroidal T-90 Satellite Dish

[Iceberg]

The other day I was out working on the “dish farm” and I decided to condense some of the setup.

Now before today I had the following set up
-6 foot C-Band dish
-Dish500 with I adapter for Dish Network subscription 110
-Dish300 for 61.5 Dish Network
-36" dish for G10 with a LNB attached for 119 Dish Network
-Primestar dish for IA8
-StarChoice dish for SC subscription
-30" motorized

I know lots of us have multiple LNB’s on one dish (usually 2 or 3) but the LNB’s off the center always have lower signal and that turned me off. I always want the best signal possible..
I had seen picture of the dual reflector dishes that can do 10+ LNB’s and thought “yeah right”. I did some reading and saw a review done in Tele-satellite magazine a month or so ago and that’s what caught my interest. If I could combine dishes together while not sacrificing signal that would really clean up a lot of the setup. But the article was pretty quick and the review only did 4 satellites 13 degrees apart. I wanted more.

Enter the Wave Frontier Toroidal T-90 multi-LNB dish

Fist thing you want to do before ordering is to figure out what satellites you want to pick up (to make sure you have enough LNB’s & switches). The satellites have to be 3 degrees apart and the max view is 40 degrees so I took out the Lyngsat list and started figuring out what satellites I wanted to get. I knew I needed 110 & 119 for Dish and 107.3 for StarChoice. This would take care of my subscriptions. I wanted G10 for sure so I knew the farthest I could go on the other side was AMC9 at 83. With AMC1 (103) and the screwy skew, I figured “half way between”. I also chose some satellites with feeds. 97, 93, 89, and 85. So I ordered from Sadoun the T-90, 3 duals, one single, and 2 reverse DBS LNB’s and 2 22k switches. I already had a couple LNB’s that could be used too. If you use DBS for subscription, you need these reverse polarity LNB’s due to the 2 reflectors or else the polarity is backwards. KU Band is fine.

So Friday night I come home to see a HUGE box in front of my door. I had to use the 2 wheeler to bring it in. Opened up the box to see a lot of parts (a lot). Took everything out of the box and separated the parts in little piles. Please note this is not a half hour build the dish job so make sure you have a couple hours minimum to build it. And away we go.

The first thing I noticed is the instructions aren’t the best. I mainly looked at the pictures. This is a big dish (42x40) and has 2 reflectors. They claim the 2nd reflector does the magic. We’ll see. Building it wasn’t bad (there aren’t that many actual parts, just lots of nuts and bolts). I did have a little difficulty lining up the holes for 2 pieces but we got it put together. I highly suggest 2 people put this together because the dish is heavy. The mast is kinda weird. There is only one bolt to go through the bottom of the mast and there is a brace that goes behind the mast and you have to use. The mast is 2 3/8" so it is a bigger mast. Once I had the dish put together I put it on the mast (temporarily set up in living room). Put the arms on to hold the 2nd reflector and put that up. Lastly there is the “slide bar” where the LNB’s go. It took me about 3 hours to build it and get it ready (I did take a couple breaks but I say it was at least 2+ hours for sure. And I wish I had a 2nd set of hands because putting together some parts were tricky for one person.

So Saturday I went out to find a spot to mount the dish. Check Line of sight which was no issue. The issue was I thought I could use my StarChoice mast but it was too small and I really didn’t want to drill more holes, I settled on the table that my C-Band dish is on. Made sure mast was plumb and put in bolts for foot and brace and leveled it out. Put dish up (here is where a 2nd person could come in handy) on mast and was very happy that by looks, my roof wouldn’t come near my LOS : )

There is a spot on Sadoun’s site that you can enter your latitude/longitude and list your easternmost & western most satellites that you want to pick up and it tells you where to aim the dish and gives you skew and “twist” of the LNB holders. Printed that out and started working on aiming. The first two issues I came across were there is no elevation markings. Its just one giant bolt that you screw and unscrew. Another thing is skew has markings for every 10. My skew was 82.61 so I had to guestimate.

The LNB holders are quite interesting. They have markings for 0, +10, +20, -10, -20 and I didn’t know what they were for. Well, these are to twist the LNB holder to aim it up properly. The chart that I printed out told me what each one was and you can fine tune these (more on that later).

Since I wanted to get from 85-123 I used 83 in the setup which gave me 103 as my “center” LNB. I felt it was easier to use an exiting satellite and not “104" when I said I wanted 85-123. The slide scale is pretty neat. It has markings on it so you don’t have to guess. The LNB in the center goes to 0. So I slid it down the scale to 0 and tightened it.

Here’s where the fun began. With no way of knowing what elevation was, I had to basically hunt. I tuned up Pentagon channel on my Pansat 1500 and aimed where I thought it was. Nothing. Tried some more. Nothing. If I had a angle finder it would be easier (I think). The one advantage of the Pansat is when your close, the signal meter goes up (even if the elevation is off). Finally found Pentagon. 45 signal. Tweaked the LNB and got it at abut 75. Now I skewed to where I thought 82 was. You’re suppose to add LNB’s on your far east and west satellites and tweak the skew from there. This is what took forever to do because one was fine but the other was bad. I tried for almost an hour to get both at good signals. I decided to try and tweak it a little closer in by using 119 and 89 (these 2 satellites I wanted for sure). This was much easier to do and in 15 minutes I had both tweaked in.

Now I started adding LNB’s. First one was 107.3 for my SC subscription and got that tuned in.(I hooked up my StarChoice receiver to tune that in). Setting up other LNB’s is much easier. 107.3 is 4 degrees form 103. Slide it to “4" on the scale and bam..signal. Tweaked the signal in. Added 110 & 119 with a breeze. Now I started on the other side (remember, when working with multiple LNB’s they go on the opposite side so the right side was from 101 down).
Added 97 and tweaked. The best thing to do if you don’t have a satellite meter is to pick an active transponder on the receiver and slide the LNB until the signal comes in.
Remember the numbers on the LNB holders? You can adjust those for optimum signal. There is a screw to keep them from moving. I adjusted those and got a few more points on some transponders. Basically when the signal comes down, it reflects off the dish to the 2nd reflector and to the LNB. The twisting of the bracket lines it up to get the second bounce. So twisting them allows you to optimize signal. Skew is normally not needed as the whole dish is skewed but you can skew the LNB too if you wish (again for signal).I only did that for AMC1 (which is off anyways) and one other (I forget off the top of my head). Had good signal on a couple TP’s on IA5. I made sure to check most active TP’s before continuing. Slipped another LNB down the scale for IA6 and got that tuned in. This is the easiest part. Just need to add or subtract and line it up on the marking. Please note this is not etched in stone, You can move it for optimum signal. Added one for 89 and got really good signal. I tried to add one for 85 but AMC2 is kinda bad signal wise here in MN so the signals I didn’t like the best. So I settled on AMC9 at 83. I tried to get 79 (which is more than 20 off center) and I did get a flicker but ran out of the slide bar

Now the last one was G10. This one took some working because I feel I might have a minor LOS issue. The signals aren’t as good as I wanted but should be fine.

[Iceberg]

So now the test. What kind of signals can I get? This is where I was most skeptical as I have worked with multiple LNB’s on a dish and normally any LNB not dead center has some degrading of signal. This is where I was amazed by the signals I was getting.

103 was the first one that amazed me. Remember that AMC1's skew is goofy so I skewed the LNB and to my amazement, I got 99 on Pentagon. I also got about 10 feeds that I have NEVER seen on AMC1 (mainly due to the LNB being off). So I was very happy.
107.3, 110, and 119 were set up with their respective receivers, so those were fine

97 I tweaked a little bit and got 75-80 on most transponders. 93 took some tweaking but I got very good numbers on those. 89 made me happy as ABCNewsNow & ABCNewsOne were both 75-85 on the meter. I did pick up a couple feeds.
AMC9 had NBC News Feed and that was at 75 (that’s normal). G10 was the only one I saw some signal loss (maybe it was the satellite) but I was amazed at how the fact I was 20 degrees off center for AMC9 and the signal was the same as if I had it aimed at a fixed dish. The numbers for IA8 were the same as my 40x30 Primestar which was aimed directly at the satellite.

Then I decided to have some fun. The book claims 3 degree spacing due to the LNB holders and LNB’s. But could I get 2 degrees? I really wanted 101 for some of the programming there and since the signals are strong, I figured “what the heck lets try”. This took some major tweaking because the LNB holders are too big so 2.5 degrees is the minimum spacing. I did get 107.3 & 110 with non issues but 110 sicne its DBS has some play room. I put the LNB between 103 & 97 and got it over as far as I could to 103 and I got a decent signal (40) on KUIL but some of the weaker ones not even a flicker. So I twisted the LNB holder and the signal went up. Even though the LNB is probably aimed at 100 twisting the LNB holder allowed me to get decent signals on 101. These aren’t as good as if I could aim directly at 101 but decent.

So when all said and done I have
Single LNB on 83
Dual LNB on 89
Dual LNB on 93
Dual LNB on 97
Single LNB on 101
Dual LNB on 103
Single LNB on 107.3 for StarChoice
Single reversed LNB’s for 110/119 for Dish subscription
Single LNB on 123

When I first started I had my doubts (lots of them) but this is one amazing dish. The fact that I was able to go from 7 dishes to 3 is amazing. I was able to get rid of the StarChoice dish, the Primestar at IA8, the G10 dish and the 2 DBS dishes (I did lose 61.5 but I mainly used that for Pentagon Channel). So now I have my motorized, the Toroidal and the C-Band dish. I was able to add 10 LNB’s to the dish and not sacrifice the signal. This will allow me to motor around and still be able to see a few satellites on other boxes which works good for sporting events.

Pros of the dish are pretty self explanatory
-allows you to use multiple LNB’s on one dish
-signal is not degraded even if it is 20 degrees off center (this is what made me a believer in the dish)
-Once you get the east, west and center LNBs set up, adding LNB’s is a breeze
-multiple ways of fine tuning for optimum signal if needed
-slide scale on this rules. No need to think where it needs to be. Just add or subtract from the center LNB. (So when I added one for 97, I went to the mark for “6" and boom signal)
-Lots of room for me to add cables & switches
-Big reflector (42x40) really brings in those signals
-Allows you to use multiple receivers to see multiple satellites (your setup may vary depending on LNB’s)

The drawback of the unit (and there are a couple)
-First off, I cannot stress enough this is not for the beginner. Setting this up is not like adding LNB’s to a fixed dish. When working with a fixed plane (the slide scale) you cant move the LNB’s up and down. You have to move the whole unit. The hardest part was getting the far east & west satellites tuned in with the skew and elevation. This took the longest. Make sure you have planned a good half day for setup and a couple hours for building.
-The unit is very heavy (30+ pounds) so a 2nd person is suggested for mounting and building.
-no elevation scale really bugs me (of course if I had an angle reader there would be no issues). There is even a spot to put the angle reader
-skew scale is pretty generic. Marks every 10. Wish it had more markings.
-3 degree spacing so make sure you know what you want to get first. I was able to get 2 degrees but I have a feeling if I wanted 87 (as an example) it would be trickier than 101 due to lower signals
-You need special LNB’s for DBS due to the dual reflector. The polarity is off if you use a regular DBS LNB. No biggie if you use it for FTA but a subscription requires these different LNB’s. Hopefully they don’t go out.

Reasons you might want to get a T-90
-you have multiple subscriptions and want them all on one dish
-you have multiple receivers and want to see a few satellites
-you want to condense your dish farm
-you want instant channel changing from a couple satellites

Reasons the T-90 may not be for you
-you want to see satellites 2 degrees apart
-you have LOS issues
-you want to see it all (the T-90 has a 40 degree arc whereas a motorized can see more)
-you have issues aiming a fixed dish

All and all I am VERY happy with the Toroidal dish. I know some people like having a dish farm, but due to my setup I was limited with putting dishes on the roof and the deck was getting to look a little tacky with dishes everywhere, so I was able to go from 7 dishes to 3 makes me happy. Thanks to Sadoun for stocking the dish and also for their fast shipping. I still have to hook it all up with switches and stuff.

[Iceberg]

pictures of the dish and LNB's

[Iceberg]

more of the dish & LNB's

[Iceberg]

Well its Sunday and here are the screen shots of what I am picking up. I am using a Pansat 1500 with the threshold of 30 for signal and a very spazzy meter. The meter jumps on some signals so what the picture shows is close to what I reported. First thing was I did move the 83 LNB to 85 and did get a church feed at a stable 30. When I was on 83 the signals were 75 for the NBC news feed and 60-65 on the data TP’s. On Dish 119 & 110 all signals were between 95-115 (no pictures)

AMC1 is the next one I went to. This is my dead center LNB and after skewing the LNB to compensate for the oddball skew, I am VERY happy with the results. Pentagon at 99 and about 10 feeds. Most are between 50-60

[Iceberg]

AMC4 is the oddball. This one I shouldnt be able to get due tot he 3 degree spacing on the brackets. But a little twisting I can get KUIL at 75, 3ABN at 45-50 and LLBN on 38-40

For AnikF1 I used my StarChoice receiver. In the right corner the + number is what I look at. Considering +5.0 is minimum and +7.5 is good, I’m happy with my results

[Iceberg]

IA5 I chose 5 different transponders and got mostly in the 80's but one was between 66-75

[Iceberg]

IA6 was 60-65 on CBS Newsfeed, Doc Scott was a little low but its been like that lately. Azteca and Macy were at 90. Most of the other channels (feeds) were around 75-90

[Iceberg]

IA8 registered very well on both ABC NEWS NOW and ABC NEWS ONE at 90 and 75 respectively. There was a sports feed last night that registered a 80

[Iceberg]

So all and all I am very happy with the dish. Other than the obstacles I had aiming it I had fun, learned a lot, and now can watch various satellites with only one dish

I still love the fact I can put 10 LNB's on one dish without compramizing signal

[buck12]

How sensitive are your lnbs on the weak satellites. I just bought a T90 and am going to try t set it up like your doing and run multible receivers. That was the biggest selling point for me instant channel changing for all recievers. I'm still gathering up all my parts to make it work. I was look around on the net and ran across a picture the person had made a bracket and extended past the end of the bar to pick up does satellite that your not suppose to be able to get. The way it look like he was proably 6 inches pass the bar. He was based in europe though I don't know if that would make a difference or not but he had 13 lnbs on it. I thinking I proably should go with lnbs with a really low noise factor thats why I was wondering what you were using. I'm in Virginia.

[Iceberg]

Lets see if I remember what LNB's I'm using for each satellite

85 is a .4 LNB (dont know the name)
89 is a Sadoun dual .4
93 is a DMSI dual .5
97 is a Sadoun dual .4
101 is a Xtreme LNB .3
103 is a Sadoun dual .4
107 is a Sadoun single .3 (StarChoice sub)
110/119 are the special DBS reversed ones (have a Dish sub)
123 is a DMSI .4 LNB

85 gets above the threshold on my Pansat. AMC2 sucks here in MN due to the footprint and I normally can't keep a stable picture. The fact this can is a major plus
103 due to the oddball skew, once I skewed the LNB 25 degrees off, I got TONS of feeds that I havent seen before. All at good signal

I really didnt come across any weak signals other than the 85 satellite. 101 has a few weaker signals and thats because you need 3 degree spacing. I'm rigging it to get 101 so I know the signal sare lower than normal

[Sadoun]

Very nice review Iceberg. Keep this thread live with your updates and comments

[cuongvu]

Hi Iceberg,

Very nice set up (too much for me though).

Are you going to sell the dishes you don't need? If so, do you have the 90cm dish?

I wanted to PM you, but I don't know how to do it.

Cuong

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by cuongvu

Are you going to sell the dishes you don't need? If so, do you have the 90cm dish?

I have the 90cm right now but I want to see if I can tweak Galaxy 10 to come in better. The "bad" transponder is pretty weak and if I can't get that signal up, I may have to put the 36" back up

I'll let ya know

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by Sadoun

Very nice review Iceberg. Keep this thread live with your updates and comments

will do!

yesterday I was ouot tweaking a few signals and running all the cables

[Iceberg]

well I went out tonight to see how far I can get away from the center and have signal.

I took a DBS LNB and switched the polarity on a couple TP's and started fishing for 129....took 10 seconds and bingo

45-47 quality on 129 TP 17 I think...so thats 26 off center

then went to the other side and put the LNB next to 85 and got 80 same TP for 82..which is 21 away...so my arc could be 47 right now

cant get 91 because the LNB wont fit in between 89 & 93 but might try something else

[rainman]

nice reveiw Ice maybe a nice addition in the future.

[Iceberg]

Well I did some work on it. After proving I can get more than 40 degrees I decided to go to work.

Switched from 83-123 and decided that 123 signal wasnt good enough so I'll use a separate dish for that

Picked 93 since that is my true south the skew was like +.38

Aimed LNB and raised dish about a degree and boom....90 on CBS News, 80 on Doc Scott, 90 on Azteca

Took all other LNB's off and tried at SBS6....15 on ONN
Did a little working and got it at 30...got a few feeds at 60

So we started adding LNB's
89..got ABCNewsOne at 90 and the scrambeld TP at 75
tried for 85 but with no feeds active, put it at 83 for now
added one for 79...NYN at 80, UEN at 60
added the one for 74

then the fun...lets try 2 degrees again....got the GBN at 99
even got a feed too

on the other side did 97 (most TP's between 80-90) and added one for 103
Put the SC LNB up for 107 and got that peaked and added the DBS for 110

Now right now I am maybe an inch off the arm for 119 (need an extra inch) so we'll rig that soon. But didnt have a holder for it (already have some coming)

Still havent added one for 101 yet because I ran out of KU LNB's

(I should have ordered a couple more duals the other day)

So when completed I'll have
72, 74, 79, 85 (or 83), 89, 93, 97, 101, 103, 107, 110, 119

47 degree spread and 12 LNB's...pretty nifty

Oh did I mention I love this dish

[Sadoun]

I am proud of you ICEBERG. This is the ultimate FTA hobby

[Iceberg]

I figured to add a little bit of length to the slide scale I'll just add a small piece of wood and add the LNB and I can get 119.

Now just to wait for my order from Sadoun to arrive

(hopefully it arrives today or tomorrow)

[Iceberg]

This is the ultimate FTA hobby

so true. Once I figured out the elevation and skew the first time, reaiming the dish for a new set of satellites was a breeze.

[BKP]

Great review... And it sounds like you're having lots of fun with your new toy...
I thought this T90 was a cool setup when I first saw it in the early summer.. But, with all the research I've done over the summer I hadn't read much good things about it.. Until now..

[Iceberg]

I was able to tweak it so I have 72 & 74 right next to each other...it was tough but GBN comes in at 90 and a couple feeds are at 60

I did try and get 119 today (which was past the arm). Could get 75 on the Pansat but the Dish Net reciever only registers a 60-62
(not enough to keep a signal unless its ultra clear out)


So right now we have
72, 74, 79, 85, 89, 93, 97, 103, 107, 110

will add 101 as soon as my holders come

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by BKP

I thought this T-90 was a cool setup when I first saw it in the early summer.. But, with all the research I've done over the summer I hadn't read much good things about it.. Until now..

thats exactly how I was. When I heard Toroidal I thought "hacker special where they get 82, 91, 110, 119 on one dish to steal". Then I read about the T90 and a couple months ago I saw a review in Tele-Satellite magazine that peaked my interest but the guy only did 4 LNB's 13 degrees apart (74, 79, 83, 87). I figured if I could get 107, 110, 119, 123 I was happy. I still cant belive some of the quality I get being 10, 14, even 20 degrees off centre.

[buck12]

So how are you wireing up all these lnbfs and to how many recievers are you going to. When I gather all my stuff to install mine I'm going into proably 4 receivers. I really don't want to use alot 4 to 1 disqec. I know in europe they use alot bigger ones, but I can't find in the U.S. right now. I was wondering what you were going to do. And how are you going to work the lnbfs that are off the bar to mount. I do believe this dish has a lot of potential in what you can do with and the quaility of it . I wish they had made c band dish in this way.

[Iceberg]

It will probably be 2 receivers

One will have all 8 LNB's (72, 74, 79, 85, 89, 93, 97, 103) with 2 4x1 diseqc switches and a 22k swith

The other will have 4 maybe 5 LNB's (duals are on 74, 79, 89, 93, 103..the rest are singles)


But if I wanted more receivers, I could always use 4x4 multiswitches for 2 LNB's to 4 boxes....possibilities are endless

I dont have the wiring hooked up yet.

And how are you going to work the lnbfs that are off the bar to mount.

The only one that is off the bar was going to be 119. I drilled a little hole in the slide scale and put a 1/2" piece of wood in the slide scale to extend it..but since 119 wouldnt give me a decent signal on the DIsh box (60-63 doesnt cut it for me) I don't have anything past the bar

[BKP]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

thats exactly how I was. When I heard Toroidal I thought "hacker special where they get 82, 91, 110, 119 on one dish to steal". Then I read about the T90 and a couple months ago I saw a review in Tele-Satellite magazine that peaked my interest but the guy only did 4 LNB's 13 degrees apart (74, 79, 83, 87). I figured if I could get 107, 110, 119, 123 I was happy. I still cant belive some of the quality I get being 10, 14, even 20 degrees off centre.

I didn't know anything about hacking then and actually still don't, ha..

I just looked at Sadoun T90 photos I think they should add a few of your photos with all those LNBFs hooked up.. That could help peak others interest..

Oh, what happened to your 6' C-Band...

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by BKP

Oh, what happened to your 6' C-Band...

The 6 footer is right now on the other side of the deck. That will be put back up on the old cable spoll it was on originally

[Iceberg]

Ran the cabling today

One setup has 2 4x1 diseqc switches into a 22k switch
72, 74, 79, 85, 89, 93, 97, 103..yes the switches are upside down. They're on the underside of the table to protect from rain

The other has a 4x1 diseqc and a 22k switch for 5 outputs
74, 79, 89, 93, 103

Used a bunch of wire ties and cleaned it up