Primestar Fiberglass Dish - Help

[el bandido]

Copy and paste the IMG code for your picture and it will be displayed here like this:

[1biggy]

That dish is made by Channelmaster, one of the best in the business! Worthless my ass!

On mine, the lnb white plastic cover the signals go in is 20.5 inches from the face of the dish, the arm is
22.5 inches long.

Good luck!

[sloader]

Ok, here it goes. The focal point of my 48”w x 52”h fiberglass dish is 36” from the dish center to the lnb face(BSC421). I cut 3 pieces of ½” steel tube, one for the bottom, and two for support braces, and 4 pieces of flat steel, 2 for a cross brace to connect the 3 tubes, and 2 to connect the lnb bracket(hanger clamp) to the middle tube. I then cut 5 pieces of mylar and attached them to the dish with 3m double face tape. I then attached the tubes to the dish, and the support tubes to the center tube with the cross bracket and a ½” clamp, this allowed me to change the angle of the center tube. I pointed the dish at the sun and using a piece of poster board, located the focal point, I then lowered the center bar to 3” below the focal point, and tightened the clamp, attached the 2 brackets to raise the lnb. I then took off the mylar and attached the lnb and conical scalar, and set the el for galaxy 16. panning the dish I hit it right away. I have 68 percent quality on tp 3845 with a VS plat lite, it was cloudy and starting to rain so I did not get to tweak the scaler or lnb. From the center of the dish to the front plasyic lnb cover was 36”. Since this is my first attempt at c-band, I don’t know if that is good quality readings or not, the network channels were crystal clear.

[el bandido]

Excellent!!!!
Now, how do you know that is the focal point??? You have only found a spot on the dish that works. Anyway, you have some channels that you did not have before so congratulations.
Post some clear pictures so others may see and learn. EB

[sloader]

That is where the five beams of light from the mylar film mirrors came together as one, by moving the posterboard in and out, and the dish left and right to get the right line of the sun. What are your quality readings for tp 3845 on your small dish?

[sloader]

Originally Posted by marksteven

post a nice picture of your antenna...it sounds like a 1.2....try to show the arm mounting holes or what ever it has...i've got all kinds mounting arms, feeds and hardware for all sorts of antennas (commercial and consumer)

marksteven

el, how do i insert a picture??

Do you have a mount that would fit this bolt pattern,

12.5 inch square center to center bolt pattern, on a fiberglass dish. I am looking for a mount to use an actuator arm with.

[marksteven]

i have a mount with the hole spacing you specified but it is az/el type


marksteven

[sloader]

How much, and can you take paypal

[el bandido]

Originally Posted by sloader

That is where the five beams of light from the mylar film mirrors came together as one, by moving the posterboard in and out, and the dish left and right to get the right line of the sun. What are your quality readings for tp 3845 on your small dish?

I get different quality readings on different receivers for 99W, tp 3845. Quality readings also change for me depending on whether the receiver is located close to the dish or if the receiver is located some distance from the dish. Since quality readings are not set to any type of a known quantity, they do not tell us much.
On the small dish, I get tp 3845 with a strong signal and the c band lnb is not in the focal point. The ku lnb is in the focal point as can be seen in the picture.

Your distance of 36 inches from the lnb to the center of the dish seems excessive for the dish size. It is considerably more distance than my four foot dish and it is close to the same distance as my prime focus 7.5 foot dish. Since your dish is offset in design, the lnb should be aimed below the dish center.

Several people have claimed to had good results using the sun to find the center of a satellite or other areas of a dish but I still don't see how the sun knows the degrees of an offset dish and automatically calculate them. You have it working so leave it like it is.

It would be a good idea to post clear pictures of this dish and the mods you have done to it. You will help other people by doing this. EB

[pansat226]

I have a Prime Star dish here with a mod mount for the INVACOM quad four. I have found that after modding the mount I needed to get more distance from the Lnb to the center of the dish to get higher quality.

[el bandido]

Pansat, What is your distance from dish to lnb?

[marksteven]

send me a check for 33 and i will mail it to you..........anyway guys and gulls string your antenna...top bottem left right...measure at the x of your string to the antenna face...that is the depth...then measure top to bottem of the antenna....divide that by the height by the depth and that is your focal distance...you will get the most out a small antenna by doing this..........manufactures suck.............they always want to sell you something bigger...oops, forgot to mentoin....you may half to play with the sweet spot on the antenna a bit, but stick with your focal distance..........mark

[sloader]

I swnt you a PM, with my info, we can work it through from there. I used Mylar film as mirrors to fing the focal point, seemed to work pretty good, need this mount for another identical dish.

[sloader]

Originally Posted by marksteven

send me a check for 33 and i will mail it to you..........anyway guys and gulls string your antenna...top bottem left right...measure at the x of your string to the antenna face...that is the depth...then measure top to bottem of the antenna....divide that by the height by the depth and that is your focal distance...you will get the most out a small antenna by doing this..........manufactures suck.............they always want to sell you something bigger...oops, forgot to mentoin....you may half to play with the sweet spot on the antenna a bit, but stick with your focal distance..........mark

If you could send me a pm with your address, I will send a postal money order out right away.

[1biggy]

I think you guys are going over the edge here, I had at one time 5 lnb's hangin on the primestar dish. You do not want to place the lnb exactly at the peak focal point, it should be alittle closer because you want to have some side rejection from the outer edges of the dish, otherwise you will get more "noise".
This dish is very forgiving as far as aiming. I had at one time 97-101-110-119 and 129 sats! My primestar doesn't have the skew adjustments either, so the lnbs were mounted all crazy! Aim center sat lnb then make or fab a bendable arm to place the other lnbs up down left and right. Amazingly I pegged the signal quality on all sats except 129. That peaked at around 80%.
A tech from Channelmaster told me to paint the dish with water based paint, one may use latex all day long without signal loss. I used a water based enamel and didn't notice any signal loss.
Good luck!