LiveSatNews

July 19th, 2007 by admin

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 (42×40) 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.  http://www.sadoun.net/forums/satellite-equipment-reviews/