The twins!

Ronan|Raven

Spent to day putting up my second dish to get 28east after much struggling due to obstacles in the way and a broken dish.. (small winds and lidl dish = hilarity ) its working, cabling is being put in properly tomorrow but tis getting me 28eats for the parents for the fta channels and leaving my dish alone

Attached are pictures of the happy couple.

eoinm1

Nice job Ronan.

Ronan|Raven wrote:

(small winds and lidl dish = hilarity )

God I hope mine will be OK it's stuck on the side of a chimney of a two story house.

See ya,
Eóin

Greenman

Ronan|Raven wrote:

Spent to day putting up my second dish to get 28east after much struggling due to obstacles in the way and a broken dish.. (small winds and lidl dish = hilarity ) its working, cabling is being put in properly tomorrow but tis getting me 28eats for the parents for the fta channels and leaving my dish alone

Attached are pictures of the happy couple.

Well done on the twins!!!

See my quads!!!

seano

Hey Greenman ,you better be careful. If Belguim ever gets invaded again your place could be shortlisted for a communication centre

vsat

Greenman,
Do you have shares in triax,

Greenman

vsat wrote:

Greenman,
Do you have shares in triax,

No but I think they are a great dish!!!!
I also like Triax products!!!
This setup is an evolution of 9 years at this house, as the wife and I are of different cultures and tastes different satellites are a must, we are both foreigners in Belgium and like/love our sat Radio/TV.
From far away to near.
Dish 1 Cheap 1.2mt with quad lnb Astra 28.2
Dish 2 Motorised 1.1mt Triax 28.2 east to 40 west.
Dish 3 90cm Triax Astra 19 and Hotbird 13.
Dish 4 1.1mt Triax Arabsat 26.2

Nice neighbours here I can stick up as many dishes as I like.

vsat

I agree,
Triax equipment excellent, Excellent gain of dishes, and once installed properly, they never move in strong winds.

Tony

vsat wrote:

I agree,
and once installed properly, they never move in strong winds.

sorry to say some do although to a lesser extent tha cheaper inferior dishes

byte

Yeah, using an 80cm Triax dish for 3 birds at the moment myself. Sturdy dish indeed. Even better was the fact I got it for free! Amazing what some people want to throw out!

Rippy

byte wrote:

Yeah, using an 80cm Triax dish for 3 birds at the moment myself. Sturdy dish indeed. Even better was the fact I got it for free! Amazing what some people want to throw out!

Also using Triax TD78 for Hotbird 13 and astra 1 on 19. Had 28.2 on it as well but not getting hotbird the best with 3 lnbs so I took it off and stuck a minidish up as well.
Got both my dishes, my 3 aerials amp and diplexers for free....one man's rubbish etc etc.

byte

Wow, you did well.

vsat

Tony,
Never had a triax dish move, once they are installed correctly.

Rippy

Byte, I replaced the Triax dish for a customer who complained it had faded and thought a new one would look better on his newly painted house! Some people have more money than sense, which is great for the rest of us .
Never had one move either, at least not one I've put up myself!

Greenman

vsat wrote:

and once installed properly, they never move in strong winds.

Not a budge from my dishes and they have taken a battering from time to time. they are fairly cheap in a certain street in Brussels, just might take down the cheapie dish and put another Triax to finish the set!!!

maisflocke

maybe you should replace the faded triax on the left hand of the pic at the same time......

ha ha ha ha haaaa!!

Tony

vsat wrote:

Tony,
Never had a triax dish move, once they are installed correctly.

good for you

intersplat

Here's a wee 1.8 I installed yesterday (have to tidy up )

Tony

intersplat wrote:

Here's a wee 1.8 I installed yesterday (have to tidy up )

Nice job

vsat

We can all post nice pictures of offset antennas, and say we installed them,
why is cable lose, looks like a bitch to work at ?
Actuator looks very close to wall for proper arc movement ?

intersplat

Actuator has not been alligned yet . Just mounted and will finish off today or tomorrow. It needs to come a little east for mchoice sth africa then I'll be right matey. RTE and ITV banging in now .

Greenman

intersplat wrote:

Actuator has not been alligned yet . Just mounted and will finish off today or tomorrow. It needs to come a little east for mchoice sth africa then I'll be right matey. RTE and ITV banging in now .

Where are you???

Zaphod

Spent the weekend messing about with a wee 2.4M. Tested it with a C-band feedhorn (10 dollars from ebay) and seems to be pretty good, although it's only a az/el mount. Picked up the Pentagon Channel on the 1 West global beam and this NTSC feed from Mexico on 40 West with a screengrab of their equipment and flyaway uplink dish.

Ronan|Raven

Zaphod whats the performace like off those fortec star dishes? I was reading elsewhere they are pretty poor in comparison to other dishes of the same size. Would be nice to know what they are like as they are pretty nicely priced and am thinking of getting something a bit bigger .

Zaphod

I've only tested it on the C-Band so far and it was at least on a par if not actually better than our Channel Master. The 2 caveats however are
a) that C-band transmssions are, in theory[1] at least, more tolerant of errors in the dish surface than Ku-band because of the higher frequencies involved with Ku
b) the CM has a dual band corotor setup (IOW not optimal for C-band) which means we were not exactly comparing like with like. It's too much hassle to change the around the feedhorns because the corotor is a royal pain in the hole to setup and focus properly!


I've also seen the reports on the web where people have found these dishes to be somewhat less than useless. You'll notice that a lot of them, however, are using offset feeds on a prime focus dish, which is pretty damn stupid. Plus I doubt if many of them have experience with large dishes which are more difficult to align than small offset ones due to smaller beamwidth. And if you assemble the petals incorrectly, performance will nose dive.

[1] In practice C-band transmissions over Ireland are fairly weak so I reckon if it works as well as it does with C-band, it should work fairly well with Ku-band too. All will be revealed when the Ku band prime focus LNBF arrives from Australia.

intersplat

Greenman wrote:

Where are you???

Portugal. I'll get a pic of my m8's 5m next week and post .

Zaphod

Got a chance to test out the Fortec over the weekend with a Fuji prime focus Ku-band LNBF. Again performance seems to be quite good although after the umpteenth time moving the dish, you begin to realise how handy a polar mount is. Managed to pick up both 53East and 57East, the latter of which has an elevation of only 5.5 degrees above the horizon for our location. If I can take a chainsaw to the neighbours trees some night, I'll manage to squeeze a few more precent out of it!

As for smaller dishes I also tested out one the new Smart 0.2dB LNBFs and compared it to an Invacom 0.3dB LNBF on an 80cm offset Triax dish with a Technomate receiver.

Astra 2 28E
TP: 10832, H, 22000, 5/6
Invacom: S-92% Q-81%
Smart: S-93% Q-85%

TP: 11546, H, 27500, 2/3
Invacom: S-84% Q-83%
Smart: S-86% Q-81%

TP: 12226, H, 27500, 2/3
Invacom: S-92% Q-84%
Smart: S-91% Q-84%


Hispasat 30W
TP: 11851, H, 27500, 3/4
Invacom: S-91% Q-59%
Smart: S-92% Q-59%

TP: 12092, V, 27500, 3/4
Invacom: S-90% Q-63%
Smart: S-91% Q-64%

TP: 12456, V, 27500, 3/4
Invacom: S-92% Q-65%
Smart: S-93% Q-65%


Sirius 5E
TP: 11766, H, 27500, 3/4
Invacom: S-71% Q-49%
Smart: S-78% Q-49%

TP: 12111, H, 27500, 5/6
Invacom: S-73% Q-59%
Smart: S-81% Q-59%

TP: 12418, H, 27500, 3/4
Invacom: S-74% Q-60%
Smart: S-81% Q-60%


Thor 1W
TP: 11189, V, 2142, 3/4
Invacom: S-81% Q-40%
Smart: S-88% Q-40%

TP: 11247, V, 24500, 7/8
Invacom: No activity. No lock
Smart: Some activity. No lock

Overall the Smart is definitely on a par with the Invacom, performing exactly the same on 28E and 30W across the frequency band.

The results on Sirius are interesting with the signal strength being significantly stronger with the Smart, but the quality remaining the same. Similarly with Thor. Also there was some fluctutations on the signal meter for 11247GHz with the Smart but insufficient to get a tuner lock. This points to the Smart outperforming the Invacom on weak signals but it's hard to gauge how much. You'd need to delve into BERs and C/N ratios to get a firm idea.

JoyPad

Hey Zaphod,

Where can I go for one of those 0.2dB LNBs? Is this it?
I need one for exactly the kind of signal you're talking about: 12697V on Sirius (the FSS beam).

Thanks,
JP

clearlyn

You mentioned multichoice Johannesburg reception! I did not think that it was possible to receive in Ireland. Are you picking up the c band signal, please let me have some details.



:eek:

hansov

Ronan/Raven: Your bracket is exactly what I need. Mind me asking where you got it or if you had it made - what are the dimensions? Thanks h

Tony

Ronan|Raven wrote:

Zaphod whats the performace like off those fortec star dishes? I was reading elsewhere they are pretty poor in comparison to other dishes of the same size. Would be nice to know what they are like as they are pretty nicely priced and am thinking of getting something a bit bigger .

I would rate the performance around the same as a 1.8m fibreglass in terms of channels received

Zaphod

JoyPad wrote:

Hey Zaphod,

Where can I go for one of those 0.2dB LNBs? Is this it?
I need one for exactly the kind of signal you're talking about: 12697V on Sirius (the FSS beam).

Thanks,
JP

Yeah it's a Smart Titanium TSX Single 0.2dB LNBF for an offset dish. Manufacturer is smart-electronic.de. I got mine from satellite.ie

Zaphod

Tony wrote:

I would rate the performance around the same as a 1.8m fibreglass in terms of channels received

What sort of signal strength and quality are you able to get with 57E? The footprints suggest that it is much stronger than 53E, but I found it to be the complete opposite.

Tony

Zaphod wrote:

What sort of signal strength and quality are you able to get with 57E? The footprints suggest that it is much stronger than 53E, but I found it to be the complete opposite.

Sorry I dont have anything set up just at the min, hope to get the 1.8 back up soon

Ronan|Raven

@hansov. I got the brackets from a guy I bought my main dish off. All they are though is a piece of 2inch angle iron about 24 inches in length with another one foot piece welded at the back. T&K bracket is the correct name? I think! I will get you the exact measurements when I go home tonight. Anyone half decent with a welder could make them.

JoyPad

Ronan|Raven wrote:

T&K bracket is the correct name? I think!

Correct. Maplin's are selling 10" and 16". There's also the standoff bracket, but I dunno how sturdy it is.

Cheers,
JP

byte

That Standoff bracket you've linked to Maplin isn't anywhere near as strong as teh seperate T&K brackets. OK if dish is to be mounted inbetween the 2 U-bolts or nearby but otherwise, the seperate T&K's are the way to go. They can be bought in your local electrical retailer or from aerial install company.

digiking

its great having a second house that you rent out to foreigners,,,Everytime clients vacate...we always end up with a dish or 2...But if its a crappy sky dish i just leave it there...

Greenman

Thanks to Mr Byte

He spotted in the latest issue of What Satellite a few words on my set up, they just got one thing wrong re Arabsat 26.0 E.

Ronan|Raven

Congrats man

byte

No probs Greenman.

Must notify Wotsat to trawl ICDG also...

Zaphod

Some more tests on the Smart Twin 0.2 dB from here:
http://board.satbook.de/wbb/thread.php?threadid=423&sid=5fb4b8be3887efbb227d40319771e21d&threadview=0&hilight=&hilightuser=0&page=5

---

Smart TWIN 0,2 dB LNB:
10832 H Bitfehlerrate : 3,4*E-5 S/N 12 Verst. 73 dB 170 mA Stromaufn.
10818 V Bitfehlerrate: 5,0*E-5 S/N 10,5 Verst. 72,5 165 mA Stromaufn.
12670 V Bitfehlerrate: 3,6*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 70 dB 171mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Bitfehlerrate 4,4*E-4 Ausgang 1 S/N 10 Verst. 64,5 dB 172 mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Ausgang 2 Bitfehlerrate 1,5*E-3 S/N 9,0

Inverto Silvertech TWIN 0,3 dB LNB:
10832 H Bitfehlerrate: 8,5*E-6 S/N 12,0 Verst. 70 dB 130 mA Stromaufnahme
10818 V Bitfehlerrate: 4,6*E-6 S/N 12,0 Verst. 72 dB 130 mA Stromaufn.
12670 V Bitfehlerrate: 7,0*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 66,5 dB 135 mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Bitfehlerrate 5,8*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 64,5 dB 137 mA Stromaufn.

---

Smart TWIN 0,2 dB LNB:
10832 H Bitfehlerrate : 3,4*E-5 S/N 12 Verst. 73 dB 170 mA Stromaufn.
10818 V Bitfehlerrate: 5,0*E-5 S/N 10,5 Verst. 72,5 165 mA Stromaufn.
12670 V Bitfehlerrate: 3,6*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 70 dB 171mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Bitfehlerrate 4,4*E-4 Ausgang 1 S/N 10 Verst. 64,5 dB 172 mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Ausgang 2 Bitfehlerrate 1,5*E-3 S/N 9,0

Inverto Silvertech TWIN 0,3 dB LNB:
10832 H Bitfehlerrate: 8,5*E-6 S/N 12,0 Verst. 70 dB 130 mA Stromaufnahme
10818 V Bitfehlerrate: 4,6*E-6 S/N 12,0 Verst. 72 dB 130 mA Stromaufn.
12670 V Bitfehlerrate: 7,0*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 66,5 dB 135 mA Stromaufn.
12692 H Bitfehlerrate 5,8*E-5 S/N 12,0 Verst. 64,5 dB 137 mA Stromaufn.

Invacom TWIN 0,3 dB:
10832 MHz H Bitfehlerrate: 3,3*E-4 S/N 10,5 Pegel 70 dB 193 mA Stromaufn.
10818 MHz V Bitfehlerrate: 1,9*E-4 S/N 10,5 Pegel 68 dB 190 mA Stromaufn.
12670 MHz V Bitfehlerrate: 2,7*E-4 S/N 10,5 Pegel 65,5 dB 198 mA Stromaufn.
12692 MHz H Bitfehlerrate: 9,5*E-6 S/N 12,0 Pegel 64,0 dB 200 mA Stromaufn.
dto. Frequenz am Ausgang 2:
12692 MHz H Bitfehlerrate: 7,9*E-5 S/N 12,0 Pegel 63,5 dB 235 mA Stromaufn.

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Zaphod

Musical chairs with satellite dishes. We recently moved the Channel Master to a new pole and the Fortecstar was then installed where the CM previously was.



The Fortec was made mobile with a Jaeger horizon-to-horizon Supermount with an elevation jack. Doesn't appear to be any strain on the motor even dragging the dish up from low elevations, although it'll probably need to be locked into place in high winds.

Zaphod

Another pic, this time of the CM pointing at Intelsat 902 62East. One of the channels it carries is the FTA Romanian Prima TV, which shows a fair share of english language films and used to be available on 18West. The signal is strong, about 70% quality, but occassionally it drops down to zero. Probably some branches blowing around and blocking the LOS. The pic looking out through from behind the dish gives an idea of what an elevation of 2.8 degrees entails.



Intelsat 906 at 64East is theoretically possible, but there's nothing registering on the meter. Perhaps in winter when the foliage dies back, it might scrape through.

Ronan|Raven

You win!

Exteremly impressive! 42 east should be possible but you might need to get the digger out and clear the LOS I didnt think it was possible to mount that fortecstar dish.

Congrats on the great setup.

Zaphod

I was doubtful about getting a suitable mount too and was initally thinking of making a polarmount which, on paper at least, should be straightforward enough. But I saw on a different forum where some Aussie guys had mounted 3M mesh dishes onto the Jaeger mounts. So I reckoned the windloading and weight of a solid 2.4M would be comparable to 3M mesh.

For anyone else interested in these mounts, they have come substantially down in price recently.
http://www.satshop24.de/pd1114867673.htm?categoryId=55