RF Explorer - 15-2700MHz Spectrum Anakyzer $269

On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Oct 2013 19:39:46 -0700) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

We had huge storm a few days ago in Europe, several people got killed, millions of damage. It managed to mis-align my sat dish slightly. It is a motorized dish, but now the sat were all a degree or two on the side. In the past when the weather was bad I just added x degrees to the station select script, and it would still sort of work (no need to go outside). But now I just selected a known sat and transponder, uses xdipo dsp beep function, plugged in the FM radio transmitter into the PC audio out, went outside with FM radio and earplugs, and moved the dish back listening to the beep via the radio No guessing whatsoever.

Back in the early 80s when I was doing satcom stuff, we aimed dishes in the field using a cardboard triangle cut for the correct latitude, a compass, and a calibrated boot for applying the adjustment. Then it was peaked using a hammer and a portable spectrum analyzer. Works fine.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Well, you have a few advantages. You're working with a small dish, you have a genuine polar mount, and your dish is motorized. For DVB, we use multiple LNB's on the dish to deal with multiple satellites. I think 5 or 6 LNB's is typical. Note that the entire surface of the dish is not used. In Europe, it's my understanding that motorized dishes are the fashion. Your dish also has an accurate polar mount, which allows the motorized dish to swing across the satellite belt..

However, the 3 and 5 meter dishes do not have these advantages. The 3 meter dish is a polar mount, and can be swung around, but with all the rust and 0.5 degree accuracy requirement, that's not easy. Also, no motor.

The 5 meter dish has even more rust, no motor, and the mount from hell. Since we just discovered that the LNB is dead, I haven't determined exactly how to deal with the monster. Lacking a vertical pipe, I'm forced to use a hand winch to adjust the elevation, and brute force to swing it across the geostationary satellite belt. Fortunately, I have a precision digital inclinometer which at least will get the elevation correct. However, everything else is adjusted with shims and an 8 lb hammer. Incidentally, if you look carefully at the azimuth hinges, you'll notice that the designers made a good attempt at compensating for the small change in elevation as the dish swings across the satellite belt. That makes it useful with a motorized actuator. That also means I can't use my usual trick of setting the elevation exactly, and swinging the azimuth until I find the bird. What would be trivial with a vertical pipe mount, is a nightmare with whatever this thing is called.

On a sunny day (Fri, 01 Nov 2013 07:52:23 -0700) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Yes

Amazing, most I have seen here is 2 or maybe 3 LNBs.

I think this is not correct, Most dishes are pointed at the Astra satellites for the northern languages, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium. Many immigrants have a dish pointed at Hotbird 13 east for the Arabic programs, sometimes they may have a dual LNB, often just some thing on the balcony. You use those flats with on every balcony a dish...

I dunno a single motor dish except mine in this area. Across the street is somebody who has a single LNB pointing to polsat (Polish), wherever that bird may be.

You do not see big dishes here, the Astra sats are very powerful, and can be received by a plate sized dish..

Yes, it turns an angle doing that nice feature. I can almost point it all the way west, but then it looks like it hangs on the side, but the horizon is the limit,

Mine is 87 cm IIRC or 83...? Rusty, yes the mounting brackets, the motor housing and dish are OK.

Yes these very big dishes could be a problem, I guess we in Europe are a bit spoiled with all that free to air programming and super powerful sats.

I cannot speak for the northern countries here, they have their own sats I think.

On a sunny day (Fri, 01 Nov 2013 10:35:44 -0400) it happened Phil Hobbs wrote in :

Will record some movies tonight from prosieben. Note the tiny 'dsp' button under the beep butten that I added just to get soundcard alignment beep output. It has build in calculator for elevation and azimth, connected to my DVB-S2 (HDTV) USB receiver (size of a pack of cigarettes), that steers the dish via Diseqc protocol.

All goes to harddisk, and then to BluRay if it is any good,

There is a reason RF guys are known as "plumbers". ;-)

Yeah, the pilot of the forklift that ran a prong through the box.

Blaming the victim only goes so far.

-- john

Here's one fellows story after an airline baggage handler broke his Taylor guitar.

And the video;

Mikek

I remember the video, but never saw the wiki. The deal is the cases they are showing are not ATA cases.

In a perfect world, baggage handlers wouldn't toss bags. But you need to live in the real world and take individual responsibility, in this case for carelessness of another person.

I know someone who routinely moves a seven figure dollar amount of electronics that he needs in remote locations. They use a commercial airfreight charter. Even so, all the gear is in ATA rated cases with shock sensors. The charter isn't allowed to transport passengers, so he flies in a different transport.

Your post would be more meaningful if you were the person that claimed his dishes were cracked. So please explain how YOU know HIS dishes were broken by a fork lift.

On 11/1/2013 7:52 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: What are you using for precision inclination?

Of course you *know* that the dishes weren't well packed. Lefties know what's good for everyone, except themselves, of course.

In North American, we have plenty of Ku band video. Lyngstat will show you that. In CONUS, any house can have any number of dishes up to 1 meter in size, thanks to the satellite lobby and their lackies, AKA the FCC. Owning your own C-band BUD is subject to all sorts of ordinances.

Did I miss a shot of your dish? I assume if you are using a diseq, you really don't have a polar mount. I thought a polar mount needs the wiper motor kind of set up.

They were broken, ergo they were not well packed. QED.

No surprise; the idiot lefty somehow knows this and also knows how they were treated by the shipping company. All predictable. Idiot lefties always are.

Why not FedEx for international ?

On a sunny day (Fri, 01 Nov 2013 16:55:23 -0700) it happened miso wrote in :

Yes diseqc. When the weather gets better maybe I will take a pic, not much to see, dish is against the wall.

Polar mount arctic mount, moon mount ;-)

This is or looks like (cannot remember the model number) the positioner I have:

When it turns it makes the dish follow the position of the sats on the horizon, so it tilts left for east, and right for west (when pointing south from the northern hemisphere):

• * * * *

• * sats \|/ --------------- horizon dish positioner Most geo stationary communication sats are at 40,000 km altitude at the equator. So it basically follows the horizon. That means for example when pointing at sats that are west (for me above the Atlantic) the dish is tilted all the way to the right. I cannot target sats below the horizon, that is why I cannot get NASA TV from the far west, or the US sats, and they cannot see ours.

I left mine in the office, but it's something like this one: The trick to using it is to obtain an accurate 0 degree (level) reference. That's easily done by simply reversing the level on an allegedly flat surface until the readings are zero in both directions.

However, despite all the technology, we failed to find the correct satellite. That was because most of the really sensitive LNB's (13K and 20K) found in the station junk box were defective, and the home made feed mount was not quite centered. What I needed was a way to identify which bird I was hearing, so that I could move the dish to the correct position. I tried every dish aiming trick I could conjure, without success. My ancient SatHawk 3000 meter couldn't identify anything, probably because the data base is about 10 years old. A spectrum analyzer would have been useless, as it can't identify the bird.

One trick was to use the feed mount as a sun dial. We had two additional dishes, both pointed at the desired satellite, so the shadows should have been at the same clock position. They were, but the dish we were working on was not. That's initially how I found the off center feed, which was later confirmed with a tape measure. another is to stick a mirror on the back of the dish, under the feed, and use a laser pointer to simulate a boresight alignment.

I go back next week with a better signal level meter, Ouija Board, and bigger hammer.

Updated photos. Commentary and web page to follow when done:

I thought polar mount needed something like this:

The Motec is just a rotor as far as I know. I have a Stab sitting here, but never got around to doing an installation on the dish.