“Well there’s your problem!”

[Dee_Ann]

I spent the day in the sun, it was sooooo miserably hot today. OMG..

But it was worth it!

For a few months I've had problems with my PC tuner. I couldn't quite figure it out. I've messed with all the dishes, wires, switches, tried all the meters I had. I really thought that the tuner card in the PC had gone kaput.. It just didn't make sense to me.

So I got out my big floppy hat and my new AI Turbo S2 meter and I set about figuring out this mess.

Step one was detangle the years of messy wires.

I cut all the wire ties and disconnected everything from everything.




After that I stripped the switches out of the boxes.
I then had a bunch of dishes connected to nothing at all.

Then I rerouted all the wires and coiled up the excess and tied everything up nice and neat so I don't have to worry anymore about hitting them with the mower or weed eater.



I remounted the switches in the boxes so they are much easier to access. Before they were very difficult to take wires on and off because they were mounted flush to the wood. I put them several inches off so I can reach behind and turn the connectors.



But before I reconnected everything I sat down with a wrench and my new meter and I discovered in just a matter of seconds that the dish I had aimed at 97w was out of alignment, quite a bit.
I tweaked it up and BOOM! , got the missing channels back!

I also discovered a polarity problem with my 10' C-band and fixed that too.

Another old Direcway dish I have been trying for more than a year to aim at 125 for PBS, I got it lined up too. I never once before was able to aim that dish at 125 and find a signal. I tried and tried and tried soooo many times and I never could find it. Today, I did.

This new meter is wicked cool !!

I still need to retweak all of my dishes properly. Today was sort of a whim thing. I really started out just wanting to figure out why I couldn't get vertical KU channels in my PC tuner.
But when I looked at the mess of wires I knew I had to just stop and clean that up, first.

This week I will work on the other dishes, one by one until they are all working right.
After all the years of struggling with this stuff it's all starting to make sense now.

I also need to go fix my dad's dish, he needs his PBS.

 

[TheHamNerd]

Nice work Dee...The new meter is working good for you!!! Good work!

 

[TheHamNerd]

I spent the day brewing a fresh batch of beer! Honey Wheat! I had to dodge the rain, and the humidity! Now I have to wait about a month before it is ready....but when it is, maybe i will have myself a couple new dishes and I can celebrate my victory with my home-brew...I will drink to your success!!! Cheers Dee!!!

 

[Stargazer]

With the right tools such as a meter that you have you can get the job done much easier. This is why I bought a Super Buddy 29 recently myself and it is a great meter, far superior to the other meters I have had in the past. Hopefully someday the AI Turbo meter will become affordable.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I am going to be honest and indulge in a little self celebration here, I have to admit that when I aimed that dish at 125 and I got "LOCKED" on the screen, I cheered a bit and I was overcome with a tremendous feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. Seriously, I have been so annoyed at not being able to work with S2 and with so many networks/channels switching over to it I really needed this.

I'm also looking forward to tweaking my rather large, oversized and definitely unapproved D* dishes soon. And since I have three separate dishes it's a cake walk, I just set the meter for Legacy Dish 300 and I'm good to go. I had only been able to set them up using the silly little beepy meter built into the Dish STB..

I did quite well for my first time with this thing. I'm sure as I learn more about it I'll keep messing with the dishes until they are like 10% above perfect.

 

[Nov-01]

Good on you Dee! I've been following your 'frustration' post. It appears the new meter and a re-work was just what the Dr. ordered.

What sort of box/enclosure are you using for your switches?

Thanks (and congrats again)

 

[Dee_Ann]

Good on you Dee! I've been following your 'frustration' post. It appears the new meter and a re-work was just what the Dr. ordered.

What sort of box/enclosure are you using for your switches?

Thanks (and congrats again)

Well after almost having a heart attack over the price of a cable utility box I went in a search for another way.
Long story short, I stumbled upon some very cheap plastic tool boxes at Lowe's one day.

I put a 1x4 board along the bottom of the box, then inside I put another 1x4 cut the same length.

On the outside, between the bottom of the box and the board, I laid two super giant zip ties so that they would be trapped/locked between the board and the box.

Then I ran some of those 'work anywhere on anything" deck screws through the inside board, through the bottom of the box and through the board on the outside.
This allowed me to strap the board/box to the pole. Then inside I screwed a little piece of wood to the bigger piece of 1x4 wood to which I attached my switch.
The little board holds it up off the bottom and lets me get my fingers behind it so I can unscrew the cables with my fingers.

I went through several variations of this until I found one that actually worked.

I repurposed the little tool trays that were in them and I removed the little clear covers on the top meant to keep screws and nails in storage.
I made some heavy wire squiggle things to put through the padlock eyes on the lids because I don't trust the little plastic latches to hold in storms.

I think I've had these up maybe 3-4 years and so far they are holding up better than the giant zip ties which recently gave out.
I need to take the boxes down and put fresh boards on the back and new zip ties.

I think I paid about $6 each for the tool boxes. I found the zip ties in my garage, no idea where they came from or how old they were.
I have seen them for sale at Lowe's recently so that's good.

This toolbox thing isn't really the best way but it works I suppose. I would like to have a proper box to put switches in but they are too expensive and I haven't seen one that I really can't live without.

 

[navychop]

I suspect your plastic box fix will outlast "proper" steel boxes.


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[Arion]

A lot of people have given up on FTA just because they couldn't aim the dish. With the right tools almost anyone can do it. Matter of fact several years ago I bought a used Hughesnet dish/modem, got another company to register it for me and did a self install. Never would of been able to do it without a good meter. [First Strike FS1] Have saved a lot of time and effort and the dishes do need to be tweaked now and then. Turns something you dread into not any worse than vacuuming out the car.

 

[jorgek]

Aw c'mon now. Where's the fun in struggling for hours in the blazing heat with the STB and monitor at the dish (which you can't see due to the bright sun) to get that elusive 125W?

 

[Dee_Ann]

OH. MY. GAWD.........

MONTHS and months and months of struggling with my dad's dish are OVER... DONE!

But, it's more complicated than a simple aiming problem.

I put a 1m dish at my dad's house over 2 years ago. I never could get it aligned. I fought that stupid thing dozens and dozens of times, more times than I can even count.
I tried three different meters. A Birdog (pre-USB model), some Chinese clone thing labeled as a KPT-966 (which means NOTHING except to the Chinese clone company) and a cheap little squealie meter (one of those $5 ebay things). I brought two different STB's with a TV set out to the dish. I could not get the dish aligned so it tracked across the arc. I had an especially miserable time with 83 and 125.
I could get 97 like gangbusters but then the others wouldn't come in right. So I would mess with it and get 83 in and lose 97. And so on... I fought with it and several times I told my dad to just trash it, that I was done with it. And it sat, not working right for months.

So today I went out there with my new meter thinking this would be a cake walk. Nope. Not so much.

I tweaked the dish on 95 and then moved it over to 125. SOME of the channels would come in but not all of them. HUH???

So it was a few hours in the sun going back and forth and getting nowhere. I finally reached the point where I decided to tear the whole thing completely apart and start over from step one.
I removed the LNBF which is not the factory LNBF. Last year I had replaced the original Primestar LNBF with a SL1PLL. My meter was still connected to it and it was on tone.
As I pulled the LNBF away all of a sudden I got tone. OOOOOPSY.... So I held the LNBF out in the air away from the mount and I got a lock on the transponder that I had been hunting all day!

I knew in that instant that the focal point was not where the SL1PLL could reside at. The focal point was about 3 inches behind the aftermarket LNBF.
BOOM! Well there's your problem!

So I had my dad drive me back to my house and I brought back a bin full of old LNBF parts. I have several Primestar parts in there. I found the right one that belongs on THAT dish and BOOM!!
It was banging out all the transponders on my meter! I had to put a 3x4 switch in there to combine the polarities into a single wire. The good thing about it though is that let me have my meter connected to the dish at the same time that the STB is connected.

I went in the house and rescanned the satellite and EVERYTHING was coming in! EVERYTHING! Even the ever elusive Montana PBS! And it was rockin a strong signal!



I jumped around and scanned a few other satellites and tons of channels were coming in that have never worked before! For the first time we got LPBS on his system.

I was amazed at how well everything comes in. It's very, very fixed now!

My dad can now watch his PBS and there will not be any more issues, it's a crazy strong signal now.

Next thing I need to do, like next week, is go back and wipe out ALL the channels and rescan the whole sky from 72 to 125.
Then I need to dump that into a laptop and edit the channel names into something better than "ch-1" and what-not then set up a proper favorites list for him.

At long last, this nightmare is over.

And riding on the coat tails of this success story, I decided to take another look at my personal nightmare(s)...

I have a nearly identical setup at home. A slightly different Primestar dish on the same motor using an SL2PLL LNBF.
I have had the same nightmare with finding PBS. Bla bla bla. Ditto same problems with mine as my dad was having.
So I pulled the aftermarket LNBF off and replaced it with the original Primestar LNBF then did a quick tweak with my meter.

I went back in the house and wiped out everything stored in the MicroHD and told it to do a normal blindscan on everything from 72 to 125.
It's going to take a few hours but I'm confident that I'll soon have my motorized dish working right, for the first time ever!

That's right, my HH USALS dish has NEVER ONCE worked right. It has never once been able to tune in everything across the arc.

Just before I wiped it and started a new scan, I did a quick scan of 103 and it was tuning in those fonky channels that used to be skewed weird. I guess they have already done something with the SES-3 changeover because it saw it.


So, after all the really miserable hours spent in the sun over the span of TWO YEARS, I have finally realized that you should not try to reinvent the wheel.
Changing the LNBF out from the original to an aftermarket type was a bad move on my part. I didn't think about the focal point. And being that they ~sort of worked~, well, sort of, sometimes, I just never could figure out what the heck was going on. I wouldn't have ever figured it out without this meter. I had three other meters and two STBs and I didn't figure it out before.
But this thing locks on a signal like a kid on a candy bar, that quick.

Also, earlier today while I was waiting on my dad to come pick me up, I tweaked my Dish Network dishes with the meter.
Rather than use one little dish to pick up three birds, I use three dishes.
Previously there was no way for me to tweak the dishes except to bring the STB out into the yard with an impossible to see TV and use the stupid little Dish align "meter" utility built into the STB.
You can see this meter in full sunlight! Oh yeah!! (pictures of when I was messing with Galaxy 19)



So I set the meter for Dish, legacy single LNBF and at each dish I selected the appropriate satellite and tweaked the dish for the best signal possible.
Every dish, I had THOUGHT that there were aligned properly, I had never had and real problem with them before but I was quite surprised that I ended up moving all three dishes a bit and one dish I moved a good bit from where it had been. Now my Dish signals are crazy insane strong! And with the trees gone forever, and these massively oversized dishes, I'll never have to worry about rain fade again !
I very rarely ever had rain fade issues with them before. Now that they are super-tweaked I'll be in real good shape even in really bad weather.

And finally, I decided that enough is enough with the wiring mess. I bought a little cable tester thingie from Amazon that has a light and a beeper. You connect the "pen" part of it to one end and you use the base of it to find the other end of the wire. When it makes a loop it will squeal really loud and light up on the other end. I LOVE IT !! And it was only $14.



Then I bought a Brother P-touch label machine. I bought a roll of bright yellow label tape. It will print black letters on the yellow tape so it will be really easy to see even in low light.
The label maker will be here Friday. This weekend I'm going out in the yard and track down every stinking wire and label the end over every one of them! No more guessing or trying to remember.
No more sharpie scribbles on wires. I'm doing it properly.

Before this is all over I'm going to end up tearing apart every single dish and rebuild them all from step zero.

FTA has been an exceptionally frustrating "hobby" for me. But I'm too hard headed to let it go and enough was enough.
I want it to work. I'm tired of fighting with it. I want to sit inside in the AC and watch TV.
I'm almost there. Soooooo close now to having everything work right.

I still have some big things left to do before I can declare total victory but I can see light at the end of the tunnel now..

I my new meter !!

 

[primestar31]

Wow, so now you need to go do some dish tune-ups for PAY for some people, and get that meter paid for!

$40 each, wouldn't take that long.

That's all the best way to conquer fear of something in the first place: become an EXPERT at it!

 

[Dee_Ann]

No no no!! I really do not enjoy this! I'm too old to be doing this, I don't like the heat and I do not like heights.
It's gone beyond a hobby and has become an obsession/compulsion and I'm determined to make all this stuff work right.
It's cool that I'm learning nerd techy stuff but I'll never use it outside the little bubble I live in or for my dad's stuff.
I don't even have any friends that have satellite. This is cable country around here for the most part and the few friends that I do have are cable subscribers.
Doing this as a profession? NO WAY JOSE! It's hard work and not fun.
But, when you make it work, it is deeply satisfying to claim victory over inanimate objects.
I really don't like being bullied by machines, it gives me a sense of power and control when I can make a machine do my bidding.
Which is about the only power and control I will ever have in this world beyond fussing at my dogs for digging in my flowerbeds ..

 

[eurosport]

Congrats DeeAnn! You learned the same valuable lesson I did a few years ago about Primestar dishes. The original lnb will always outperform any of these new Chinese plastic junk things being peddled online! I don't care which one either, they will work to a degree but fall far short of the performance provided by the original Japan radio unit. Glad to hear that new meter is helping!

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[Titanium]

Dee Ann, to clarify...

The factory scalar and feedhorns are matched and designed to pick-up signals only from the reflector surface and not over illuminate. This is why I always suggest that folks use the scalar/feedhorn that whenever possible to use the matched scalar/feedhorn that is packaged with these dishes.

While the electronics are often better on newer LNBFs, the scalar/feedhorn design is universal and will not have the performance of a matched scalar/feedhorn. The performance gains that you are seeing is primarily to using a reflector/feedhorn combination that was designed for optimized performance and little associated with the LNB or LNBF electronic performance.

I certainly do not support Eurosport's generic comment on LNB Chinese plastic junk. Seriously! There are some great consumer LNBFs that do not deserve to be associated with such a sophomoric broad statement. The issue with retrofitting is to place the feedhorn at the exact sweet spot signal convergence position and use a scalar that matches the reflector shape and dimensions. Been developing LNBs long enough to have observed some serious product advances available at low cost for consumer distribution. Yes, there is some cheap junk out there, but there are some of us that carefully design our products, select quality components, use manufacturers with excellent QC and guaranty specifications and performance.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Brian, yes, I believe you are spot on with your assessment. I believe that the PLL LNBFs are excellent gadgets but in ~my case~ I have misapplied them and because of my lack of understanding, they did not perform as I anticipated.

Over the past few days I have had an awakening to the nature of focal points on satellite dishes. Last night I was sitting up watching TV and I came to the realization that every single dish I have that I retrofitted with aftermarket LNBFs, are not performing as well as they should/could. I have three large (1m and up) Prodelin dishes that I replaced their LNBFs with Dish Network circular types. They do work really well and rain fade is a non issue for me with them but when I was looking at the constellation readings on my new meter I could see they were still not "right".. Yes, they perform far, far better than any stock dish provided by Dish Network, nothing they supply to people can do as well as the honking huge dishes I have but I've realized that they can do soooooo much better than they already do.

The PLL LNBF's that I have, I have decided that what I will do is rather than have them as the primary, I can mount them off to the sides with one of those multi-adapter things (I have one that lets you mount five on one dish) so that I can adjust them to be at the optimal spot. Trying to clamp them down in old Primestar or Prodelin dishes is not the best thing to do.

I can not believe that it took me so many years to figure this out.

Now I have to dig through boxes of junk and find all the old Primestar stuff and try to put it back like it should be.

I don't have one but I assume that pretty much every commercially available FTA dish is designed to use these type LNBFs, that the focal point is optimized to hit the sweet spot on pretty much every retail type linear FTA LNBF that is out there.

My problem has been that I've been trying to marry yesteryear tech with today tech and while it looks good on the surface, it's far from right..



YEARS, years and years I have been bashing my head against the wall, struggling with dishes and signals and bla bla bla bla.. And all that time it was me, not getting it.

I ASSUMED that the focal point was some spot right inside the little funnel out front. I though it hit in the funnel and the funnel bounced it down the tube until it hit the antennas.

No, I think that's not it. I am now assuming that the focal point is the actual antennas inside the LNBF, not somewhere along the path.




In this monster mash rig I made up, it doesn't work for diddly. I assume that is because in the proper LNB above, the antennas are back about an inch and a half from the face of the can.
But in the LNB that's attached to the feed horn, the antennas are about a 1/4 of an inch from the face. So the antennas are too close to the dish and the signal is not focused on them. Right?

It is true. You shouldn't try to reinvent the wheel.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I wish there were aftermarket PLL LNBs that could bolt onto the old Primestar stuff and work properly.
And then there's that old problem that involves wishing in one hand and........................

 

[jorgek]

Well Dee Ann I had a similar experience with LNBFs. I did a comparison test between the Avenger PLL and the GeosatPro PLL LNBFs. And this is not scientific data or testing simply aim the the 33" dish at 125W and try the 2 LNBFs. The Avenger locked on and pulled all the PBS and the elusive Montana nicely. Put on the GeoSat PLL and vertualy no signals. I finally got the Geosat to work but not as well as the Avenger. If I had a strong Q on Montana then all the others were weak and vice versa. I was really disappointed that the GeoSat was sooo critical to adjust whereas the Avenger seemed more forgiving.
Glad to hear you got most of your issues sorted out.

 

[Titanium]

The signal convergence (focal point) is just inside the feedhorn opening. The cavity is tuned to carry the signal with correct phase issues to the probes. The reason that non-matching feedhorns might have better performance in front or behind the focal point is because there is a balance between seeing all of the reflector surface and gathering as much of the reflected signal. If a non-matching feedhorn is in the convergence point but the scalar is only seeing a portion of the reflector, the signal quality may increase by moving the feedhorn away to see more of the surface or closer to avoid seeing past the reflector edges, but slightly out of the focal point.

Depending on the design of the LNBF scalar feedhorn and the shape and focal point of the dish, one off-the-shelf LNBF model may be better matched and perform better on one brand and model of dish. It is difficult to only compare one LNBF against another LNBF as the dish model will also play a big role in the matching. Testing results need to include the dish model so like comparisons can be made. As Jorgek noted, the Avenger PLL performed better on his dish model than the GEOSATpro PLL. While another tester will find that the GEOSATpro PLL will be better matched to their dish model. This likely translates to the scalar and feedhorn design of the Avenger PLL was better matched to the shape, size and focal sweet spot of Jorgek's dish used for testing.

More wild cards... All of this, of course assumes that the reflector is not warped, the LNB support arm(s) not damaged and the azimuth and elevation settiings are exactly aimed prior to adjusting the focal point or feedhorn position...

Dee Ann, there are PLL LNBs that bolt right onto the Primestar WR75 flange mounts. They are not inexpensive! You may add waveguides for additional LNBs and positions. Warning, before you get too creative with the waveguides and angles, all additional plumbing will attenuate the siganl.

 

[navychop]

Do you folks ever get to watch TV?


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