Dish 500 Conversion
Objective was to end up with a portable system that could be quickly set up and taken down.
It was known at the outset that it would get a limited amount of FTA signals.
The Dish 500 is small, only 22" x 20.5".
I first did some internet research for portable satellite sytems and found that mounting a J Pole to a piece of plywood was a pretty common and easy way to go. Then I needed an easy method to be able to make the pole PLUMB. Then I remembered the slotted j pole provided with my GeoSat Pro 90 cm kit and lifted that idea for my purposes.
First order of business was to modify the Dish Network J Pole I had. Needed to flip it end for end and make the slots for the carriage bolts to insert through into the wall plate fastened to the plywood. There are pictures of the layout and slotted J Pole below.
I left the plastic LNBF mount on the arm and modified it to hold a universal LNBF holder I had bought for this project. In the pictures below there is one named Modified_LNBF_Mount_s that shows the finished project. In that image note the hole that forward towards the dish. That was my first shot at it and was quite a bit off. The performance was weaker than anticipated and after some feed back here, I did some measurements and calculated the focal point, which caused me to make the slot seen in the picture. Here are the numbers used for the calculation and the result, in case anyone else wants to do this:
Highth : 22"
Width: 20 1/2"
Depth: 1 15/16"
Distance from deepest portion to bottom of dish: 10 3/16"
Focal Point:
12.635" from bottom of dish
21.02" from top of dish
This did get 154 TV channels and 53 Radio channels on 97W, which included Russia Today, CNC, Retro TV and Revn. The weakest was Russia Today, which had some tiling but was watchable, lost it a little later in day when some cumulus clouds drifted in.
I consider this to be a successful experiment and will use it to demonstrate to some friends.
Objective was to end up with a portable system that could be quickly set up and taken down.
It was known at the outset that it would get a limited amount of FTA signals.
The Dish 500 is small, only 22" x 20.5".
I first did some internet research for portable satellite sytems and found that mounting a J Pole to a piece of plywood was a pretty common and easy way to go. Then I needed an easy method to be able to make the pole PLUMB. Then I remembered the slotted j pole provided with my GeoSat Pro 90 cm kit and lifted that idea for my purposes.
First order of business was to modify the Dish Network J Pole I had. Needed to flip it end for end and make the slots for the carriage bolts to insert through into the wall plate fastened to the plywood. There are pictures of the layout and slotted J Pole below.
I left the plastic LNBF mount on the arm and modified it to hold a universal LNBF holder I had bought for this project. In the pictures below there is one named Modified_LNBF_Mount_s that shows the finished project. In that image note the hole that forward towards the dish. That was my first shot at it and was quite a bit off. The performance was weaker than anticipated and after some feed back here, I did some measurements and calculated the focal point, which caused me to make the slot seen in the picture. Here are the numbers used for the calculation and the result, in case anyone else wants to do this:
Highth : 22"
Width: 20 1/2"
Depth: 1 15/16"
Distance from deepest portion to bottom of dish: 10 3/16"
Focal Point:
12.635" from bottom of dish
21.02" from top of dish
This did get 154 TV channels and 53 Radio channels on 97W, which included Russia Today, CNC, Retro TV and Revn. The weakest was Russia Today, which had some tiling but was watchable, lost it a little later in day when some cumulus clouds drifted in.
I consider this to be a successful experiment and will use it to demonstrate to some friends.
