I started playing with my new 5' mesh last night

[Shawn95GT]

When I went out back last night the first order of business was to figure out where I was going to put the new dish. I was pacing around the back yard with my compass in hand when I decided that I really did pick the sweet spot when I put the little pole in the ground for the Primestar.

It was a hard decision, but I decided to take the Primestar down and plant the bud where the motorized P* was.

I took the P* & SG2100 down and was about to rip the pole out of the ground when I decided to trial fit the polar mount on the existing pole. Once I got the mount on the pole I decided to hang the dish on the mount.

Much to my surprise, the 5' mesh doesn't noticeably deflect the 2 3/8" fence pole at all! It's still plumb as can be with the 5' mesh hanging off it. Another surprise was that such a short pole would probably work out just fine for this dish.

While the dish feels solid on this pole I think I'm still going to dig it up and put the 2" schedule 40 galvanized pipe in the ground. The existing pole is only about 18"-24" in the ground and I believe it only has a single bag of concrete holding the pole up. I think a healthy wind might topple the pole with the bigger dish on it.

I'm hoping that I can get away with hanging the motorized P* on the same pole below the BUD.

For now, I'm FTA-less . The fixed Channelmaster you see in one of the pics might need to get parked on AMC3 so the kids can watch PBS kids tomorrow morning .

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

Are you going to use this new dish just for C Band then?

 

[ACD]

2" sounds a bit undersize for that dish. For me a 3" would give me the POM for stability when it gets windy.

 

[Shawn95GT]

2" sounds a bit undersize for that dish. For me a 3" would give me the POM for stability when it gets windy.

I was thinking the same but the way the mount is the biggest pole you could fit it on would be 2 1/2". This polar mount mounts to the pole a LOT like a SG2100 does. I'm betting that this mount would be VERY nice for the 120cm dish guys.

The 2" schedule 40 has an OD of 2 3/8", just like the fence pole I have it hanging on now. I figure the heavy wall pipe filled with cement will be about as good as I can easily do for this dish. I'm shooting for 4' in the gound and 6' above.

Shawn

 

[Shawn95GT]

Are you going to use this new dish just for C Band then?

I have a CalAmp C/Ku feedhorn / polarotor as well as the ASC421.

For now I think I'm going to use this dish for C-band with the ASC421 and use the little dish for Ku.

When I get around to picking up a Pansat 3500s or better (I can hope ) I'll swap in the C/Ku feedhorn. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to want to upgrade the LNBs for DVB use but I'll try it with what I've got (C band - CalAmp 'Mini-Mag' 140011 20K / Ku Band CalAmp 150262 0.7 NF LNBs) .

Shawn

 

[CbandLover]

That is the sweetest dish for the size I have seen. Sure wish they were still readily available. I have looked all over the internet and not seen one.

 

[pro96]

That is the sweetest dish for the size I have seen. Sure wish they were still readily available. I have looked all over the internet and not seen one.

Yeap, I bought that dish back in 1994 direct from Winegard and never used it.
I Sold it to Shawn as you can see.


Shawn95GT: Good job putting that dish together pal

 

[Shawn95GT]

More work for the mesh...

First order of business was to get the old pole out of the ground.

Whoever said you can just rock the pole and yank a pipe with a single bag of cement out of the ground needs to come try it in AZ . I dug all around it.. I beat the snot outta it. I rocked it, I kicked it, I shook it.... nothing was budging it.

I called a buddy over with his 4x4 Expedition and wrapped a strap around the pole. This rocked the cement base only slightly more than I was able to do by hand... and managed to do little more than fold the pole over.

I took a hose to it, did more digging, rocked the bent pole, bent it back straight - lol. It was very stubborn.

Eventually me and a couple friends were able to get it loose enough to lift out of the hole. It didn't come out without a fight - hehe.

I measured and the old pole wasn't but 18" or so in the ground! The 2 3/8" fence pole gave way LONG before the cement base was even phased.

I dug the hole down to 3' deep and at this point it was rock hard clay. I figure the first pole was solid as can be with one bag. This one will bulletproof.

I noticed that my old pole was already rusting in the part of the pole that was just buried (exposed to dirt). I decided to wrap this new pole up past the ground level with pipe wrap to protect it. I drilled two holes and put some criss-cross 3/8" rebar in the base of it. I stabbed the new pole and started mixing cement in the hole. 3 1/2 80# bags of cement later (280 pounds!) the new pole is set.

Tomorrow I'll mix up several smaller batches of cement and fill the pole up with cement. I'll probably go ahead and get the SG2100 mounted up on this pole when I get that done. I ordered a 50mm down tube for my SG2100 so I'll probably hold off on mounting the dish until that comes. While I'm out working with the pole, I'll get the P* reflector you see free standing in these pic ready to go on the SG2100.

Good Times

 

[bigOleB]

Good luck with the new BUD!

It looks like you are well on your way.

 

[drhydro]

Have fun with your new BUD. If you need any help on finding strong cband TP's to help in aiming let me know :-D

[edit] only 3.5 bags of concrete? you got away lucky, i ended up using 17 80 lb bags (1360 lbs) for the pole mount for my 10' BUD ;-) [/edit]

 

[Shawn95GT]

I'm dreading the day I decide to do a 'real' bud.

First off digging up this pole will be a bear... I'll then have to dif a big hole to plant a much bigger hole.

Last night I was seriously concidering doingup some forms and making a little pedestal - hehe.

I think I can get away with less in the base because the ground is so rediculously hard here. We'll see how it goes. If it's wobbly I'll just cut the pole down some.

 

[ACD]

Just wait until you see the mount I have for the BUD I picked up! It bolts to a slab. The polar mount itself weighs in at about 150#.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Just wait until you see the mount I have for the BUD I picked up! It bolts to a slab. The polar mount itself weighs in at about 150#.

Yeah it's almost a stretch to call this a BUD. It mounts with 2 u-bolts much like a SG2100 does. It still uses an actuator etc. It's more of an uber Ku dish that might do some C-band too .

 

[tdti1]

You should get C-band many on the east.

 

[Shawn95GT]

Not much progress up to tonight.

The base concrete is nearly 100% dry and I filled the pole with cement tonight. It is suprising just how much concrete it takes to fill a 10' pipe! It used nearly half an 80# bag of concrete!

I'm waiting for parts to move forward. One of my boxes is stuck in georgia at a UPS facility . That section of the US has bigger things to worry about than getting me my actuator... I can wait.

 

[ken2400]

Nice I have a 5' mess also. Have not tried digital yet. Analog was good on it.

Have fun

When I went out back last night the first order of business was to figure out where I was going to put the new dish. I was pacing around the back yard with my compass in hand when I decided that I really did pick the sweet spot when I put the little pole in the ground for the Primestar.

It was a hard decision, but I decided to take the Primestar down and plant the bud where the motorized P* was.

I took the P* & SG2100 down and was about to rip the pole out of the ground when I decided to trial fit the polar mount on the existing pole. Once I got the mount on the pole I decided to hang the dish on the mount.

Much to my surprise, the 5' mesh doesn't noticeably deflect the 2 3/8" fence pole at all! It's still plumb as can be with the 5' mesh hanging off it. Another surprise was that such a short pole would probably work out just fine for this dish.

While the dish feels solid on this pole I think I'm still going to dig it up and put the 2" schedule 40 galvanized pipe in the ground. The existing pole is only about 18"-24" in the ground and I believe it only has a single bag of concrete holding the pole up. I think a healthy wind might topple the pole with the bigger dish on it.

I'm hoping that I can get away with hanging the motorized P* on the same pole below the BUD.

For now, I'm FTA-less . The fixed Channelmaster you see in one of the pics might need to get parked on AMC3 so the kids can watch PBS kids tomorrow morning .

 

[Shawn95GT]

Lots and lots of fun.

I went out and thought my pole didn't quite look right... and it was because it wasn't plumb. It's leaning 1 1/2° west and 1° south. Now I need to fix the pole - working on that.

I decided to take a break from the pole fixing today since even if I did have a nice plumb pole I'd still be waiting parts to hang the dish (namely the actuator!).

I decided to get to building my feed supports. I got a set with the dish but upon test fitting them it because glaringly obvious that they were not the right ones for the dish. No matter, I picked up two 10' lengths of 1/2" conduit and went to work.

After messing up the first one, I built the next four identical. They turned out perfect. The angles for either end was a crapshoot... and my 'in the shop guess' was WAY off, but with a little tweaking of the angles, everything looks awesome. All I used was a bench vice to crush the ends and facilitate the bending, a tape measure, an air drill, and a sawz-all to trim the tubing.

I'm hoping that some hardware store is open tomorrow morning but if not I'll deal with checking the focal length on Tuesday.

I modeled the feed support to scale on paper and calculated the length needed to achieve the correct focal length for this dish.

I'll post up some pics once they are painted and on the dish.

 

[Shawn95GT]

update, and some pics

I got the feed supports painted and now they are on the back porch cooling off. I left them out in the sun to cure the paint and they are almost too hot to handle!

I noticed last night that not all scaler rings are the same or interchangable. I planned on installing the scaler ring for the ASC421 and swapping in the CalAmp C/Ku feedhorn later. This would have been fine except that the ID of the scaler ring is noticable smaller on the ASC421's scaler ring vs the CalAmp one.

I'm going to install it with the CalAmp scaler ring now. The only problem is that on the CalAmp scaler ring the holes that I used to bolt down the arms aren't threaded, just holes. It isn't too big of a deal, just four more holes to drill in the arms.

They are looking good though! This first pic is when I got done doing the crimps / bends for all four arms. The second pic is the trimmed / drilled arms in paint cooling off on the patio.

 

[Shawn95GT]

I knew things were going too smooth .

I put the feed support arms on and attached the scalar ring. It looks great!

I checked the focal length... and it's off by about four inches.

I double checked my numbers and everything looked right. I then remembered that I didn't calculate the feed arm length but rather I scaled it up from my drawings. I mis-counted the squares on my graph paper and in-advertantly built the arms 32" long instead of 30" long. I think losing two inches of length plus the flattening of the pyramid that the arms support form will get me pretty much dead on my focal length. If not I think it'll be close enough to bend the ends enough to get it just right.

In other news, my VBOX showed up today and well as the 50mm tube for my SG2100. I'm still waiting on the actuator.

That's ok, I've got more hole digging to do and some feed arms to shorten up .

 

[CbandLover]

I knew things were going too smooth .

I put the feed support arms on and attached the scalar ring. It looks great!

I checked the focal length... and it's off by about four inches.

I double checked my numbers and everything looked right. I then remembered that I didn't calculate the feed arm length but rather I scaled it up from my drawings. I mis-counted the squares on my graph paper and in-advertantly built the arms 32" long instead of 30" long. I think losing two inches of length plus the flattening of the pyramid that the arms support form will get me pretty much dead on my focal length. If not I think it'll be close enough to bend the ends enough to get it just right.

In other news, my VBOX showed up today and well as the 50mm tube for my SG2100. I'm still waiting on the actuator.

That's ok, I've got more hole digging to do and some feed arms to shorten up .

Thanks for continuing the updates on your project. I really find this one interesting.
"Now if I could just find one of those myself..........."


Edit.... BTW, Ken, where did you get your 5ft mesh? Did you just get lucky and find it, or have you had it for a long time?