jeallen01
Specialist Contributor
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2003
- Messages
- 6,674
- Reaction score
- 2,630
- Points
- 113
- My Satellite Setup
- See Signature
- My Location
- Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Afternoon.
I seem to remember, but can't find ATM, a thread where someone is/was trying to get 30W on a Zone 2 dish and questioned how get to the appropriate skew angle - which is nearly 30 deg according to dish pointer - when the existing SKY LNB can't be skewed more than around 20 deg (without mods). Then someone else suggested that it would be better to skew the entire dish so that the LNB skew can be set to around 0 deg and it can better cover the Zone 2 dish face. Thought about that and what would be needed to skew the dish - and that would normally probably mean skewing the whole dish mount on the wall, etc.
Then "wandering through" the garden, I remembered that my previous neighbour (now moved) had given me some of the steel tubes that were going to be trashed when he took down the kids' old and decrepid garden trampolene - which had a surrounding safety net supported by a ring of sloping and curved tubes. Dug one of those out of the "pile", had a look and concluded that one could probably replace the mounting pole/tube for many Zone 2 dishes (certainly the two I have down the garden) with part of one of those curved tubes because they are made of 25mm diameter steel tube - more than adequate to support a Zone 2 dish, or possibly even a slightly bigger "normal" dish.
So, did a couple of rough estimations (not calculations!) using an angle gauge to see how much "angular" deviation one would get if that tube was used - and it worked out at up to nearly 30 deg (or maybe even more) if the whole (nearly 1m long) tube was used (see photos). Thus, using that approach, one could probably skew the whole dish by up to that amount by simply replacing the existing mounting tube by a suitable length of one of these tubes.
Maybe I'll try that sometime (although not right now) - but it might be worth anyone with similar issues keeping an eye out for something similar being scrapped, or even in the skips at recycling centres as a lot of those trampolines are probably going to get scrapped as Winter approaches.
PS: normal straight steel tubes from scrapped things like trampolines/exercise bikes/etc., can make very cheap (like "free") shortish dish masts for the smaller dishes - used a few from skips like that already
I seem to remember, but can't find ATM, a thread where someone is/was trying to get 30W on a Zone 2 dish and questioned how get to the appropriate skew angle - which is nearly 30 deg according to dish pointer - when the existing SKY LNB can't be skewed more than around 20 deg (without mods). Then someone else suggested that it would be better to skew the entire dish so that the LNB skew can be set to around 0 deg and it can better cover the Zone 2 dish face. Thought about that and what would be needed to skew the dish - and that would normally probably mean skewing the whole dish mount on the wall, etc.
Then "wandering through" the garden, I remembered that my previous neighbour (now moved) had given me some of the steel tubes that were going to be trashed when he took down the kids' old and decrepid garden trampolene - which had a surrounding safety net supported by a ring of sloping and curved tubes. Dug one of those out of the "pile", had a look and concluded that one could probably replace the mounting pole/tube for many Zone 2 dishes (certainly the two I have down the garden) with part of one of those curved tubes because they are made of 25mm diameter steel tube - more than adequate to support a Zone 2 dish, or possibly even a slightly bigger "normal" dish.
So, did a couple of rough estimations (not calculations!) using an angle gauge to see how much "angular" deviation one would get if that tube was used - and it worked out at up to nearly 30 deg (or maybe even more) if the whole (nearly 1m long) tube was used (see photos). Thus, using that approach, one could probably skew the whole dish by up to that amount by simply replacing the existing mounting tube by a suitable length of one of these tubes.
Maybe I'll try that sometime (although not right now) - but it might be worth anyone with similar issues keeping an eye out for something similar being scrapped, or even in the skips at recycling centres as a lot of those trampolines are probably going to get scrapped as Winter approaches.
PS: normal straight steel tubes from scrapped things like trampolines/exercise bikes/etc., can make very cheap (like "free") shortish dish masts for the smaller dishes - used a few from skips like that already
Attachments
Last edited: