Just Sharing This Earth Station Fisty - February 2016

[Fisty McB]

My general health both physical and mental has not been great since I last gave an update back in July so progress on my set up has been slow. However things bit by bit have been getting done and I've managed in the last few weeks during valuable days where it's been clear & dry with no threat of rain with a bit of sunlight thrown in for good measure.

So since the last update I've got the 1.2 metre dish up on the Diseqc motor - even with the perforations the weight of this dish compared to the 97cm is significant, and where I can I don't drive this much further east than 42 East as the motor struggles to move it back west otherwise unless I go outside and give it a nudge!

I've also decided to paint all the dishes to try a combination of (a) blending with certain backgrounds, and (b) adding a bit of colour to give a bit of brightness to things particularly at this time of year.

So as it stands today, this is my current set up...



Four dishes in use, three for fixed reception, and one motorised.
Closest dish is 97cm dish aimed for the main European constellations.
Next one is a repurposed Sky Zone 2 dish (previously used for direct 28E reception)
Behind that is an 80cm dish aimed for satellites over the Caucasus & Middle East.
Farthest dish is 1.2m perforated offset dish on Diseqc motor.



Front face of the 97cm dish showing a somewhat "camouflage" paint job, the neighbour's pair of jeans being hung out to dry in the background(!) plus a 7 LNB set up that is supported by two lengths of of M6 threaded bar to help with stability and allow for small multi-LNB bracket adjustments. Back of the dish is painted a solid bottle green (can be seen in 1st photo).


The 7 LNB setup on the 97cm dish. I had mentioned back in my July post that I was going to experiment with an Inverto Black Ultra for 28 east to see if it would make improvements, unfortunately the size of its face made it an awkward fit against the 23.5E LNB and so in practice gave no better performance and I decided to reuse the IBU elsewhere and got instead a couple of Inverto Eco LNBs with one of them placed at 28E. If you notice on the 28E holder there is a bit of a tail from a cable tie sandwiched between the holder and the bracket - this is to tilt the holder & LNB up slightly to optimise by giving a roughly 1db SNR increase. The 13E LNB also has a cable tie attached to it to pull it towards the 16E LNB (which is at the centre focus) as well as attaching its holder behind the bracket to allow more movement, to optimise its SNR figures especially for some of the weaker transponders. The 4.8E LNB can get everything in the 11.7 to 12.5GHz band, though the signals in the 12.5 to 12.75GHz band are too weak to usually resolve - not a big deal.


The Sky Zone 2 dish was reused to provide a feed for the satellites roughly due south & south-south-west, with the main focus on 15W and a second LNB on 5W. Dish face has been pained black & grey.


Rear of the Zone 2 dish, painted a solid metallic blue. The dish brackets & arm were painted silver.


The (currently?) two LNBs on the Zone 2 dish. The main focus LNB is a Mk4 LNB made by MTI while the 5W LNB is the original Mk3 LNB also by MTI. Why do this? It's to do with skew adjustment. Even with the main focus at 5W, using its original LNB was a pain to get the skew involving the LNB done well. In its place is a Mk3 40mm LNB adaptor with a Mk4 LNB that has 15 layers of insulation tape wrapped around its neck to bring the diameter up from 37mm to 40mm to fit snugly and as a result the skew can be more easily adjusted using an LNB designed for Sky dishes rather than a universal LNB. It's original LNB is used for 5W reception using a spare multi-LNB holder where the hole in the spigot allows a nut & bolt to clasp & adjust, the dish originally had been modified to accept a nut & bolt instead of the normal plastic plug to hold the LNB in. Even being nearly 8 years old, the LNB performs better than a Zinwell J1S LNB that I first used with a different holding clamp. It appears to me that the wider face of the MTI LNBs give an advantage here over the small Zinwell faces.


The 80cm dish that was originally used for where the 97cm dish is now, is nowadays used to look towards satellites at the far eastern end of the arc. Yes, the dish does appear to be facing downwards, but it does clear the fence a short distance away. Again the dish face is painted with grey/silver and a black vertical line through the centre. The back of the dish is painted solid black, and can be seen in several earlier photos.


The dish is focused on 46E; due to my location on the western edge of Europe (7.3W longitude) the elevation for Azerspace 1 is less than 12 degrees. Another effect is that the positioning of the satellites on the Clarke Belt gives a steeper line compared to satellites that are more due south. The main focus LNB is the IBU that was originally intended for 28E on the 97cm dish. Originally the LNB set up used an Alps LNB for 42E, and Inverto Eco LNB for 46E and an Opticum narrow LNB for 52E, but with an LNB arrangement I chose to optimise it better performing "less narrow" LNBs which has given an improvement on all three positions for SNR levels and consequently their rain margins on weaker signals, particularly the Turksat 3A West beam signals that are notably weaker here than those on 2A & 4A. As noted in the photo the 46E LNB also receives (yes, spelling mistake!) 45E quite comfortably with SNR levels equal to better than that from 46E! Not mentioned on the photo, but the 52E LNB is actually aimed at 52.5E but even allowing for that it picks up 52E better than what the Opticum did! I have tried to pick up 39E even with narrow LNBs but no luck, so the bracket has been set to try for a possible future reception test from 57E but I don't think this might be possible, as I think regardless of theoretical signal levels there are some trees blocking the arc this far east.

More to come...

 

[Fisty McB]

...on to the motorised dish. This is a 1.2m (actually 108cm by 117cm) perforated dish that was originally white, but I decided to paint it red at the back and yellow at the front.



The yellow colour was chosen to help it blend better against the dividing wall. While it is glossy, it was *very* slightly sanded to etch some gloss off and given the climate here (compared to say the Canary Islands), strong sunshine is highly unlikely to focus on the LNB even during the sunniest days in summer to cause LNB heat problems or melt the cap! The semi-gloss surface actually helps a little with rainwater as it runs off quicker compared to using matt paint where it hold rainwater more easily than even an unpainted dish, and takes longer to evaporate. The LNB is an Inverto Black Ultra Quad, with a little plastic 'hood' made from cutting out a bit of a 2 litre soft drinks bottle - I still think there's room for improvement in this regard, but is does help against rain fade on weak signals in light rain.

And yes, that's my shadow.



The back of the dish on its motor (Dark Motor) on a patio mount painted grey. Not really seen here is that the tilt of the mount can be adjusted with adjustable bolts to make it perfectly straight again should it be needed but after installing the new dish this has not been necessary especially as the paving stone is some 50kg itself along with additional heavy stones.

What improvement does this dish give over the 97cm? Signals from Badr4 at 26E are much more stable & stronger in the BSS band with a much better rain fade margin only now cutting out in very heavy showers, no more than a handful of times a year - even the Kuwait channels on the FSS beam now come in but they're around 2db down on the rest. In general it gives more reliable reception on weaker transmissions wherever they are news & sports feeds or fringe signals from the likes of 21E, 7E, 10E, 3E, 1W, 24.5W etc. There is a hint of a signal from 7.3W on a couple of transponders, but so far nothing to get above the threshold steadily.

Eagle eyes might spot the old car tyre lying in the distance on the right next to the fence, inspired by Analoguesat's initial exploits!



The wiring arrangements into an EMP-Centuari 16x1 Diseqc switch set for 1.1 operation. The Zone 2 dish downleads (not easy to see here) could do with a little trimming once I'm satisfied with it. The output feeds into a conduit that goes underground & out again towards the receiver in the living room.



And a final close up of the switch. The two Zone 2 downleads can be more easily seen here being a little "looser" than the rest.

So what else can be done. Well first some of the small amounts of bird shite can be washed off the dishes (a hazard when you have bird feeders currently present next to them!) and also to touch up the paint when the weather gets warmer. On the 97cm dish, the threaded bars could do with a coat of paint as well as excess trimmed off, some fish line could be used to hold the multi-lnb brackets firm and also potentially look at a large "hood" to cover all the LNBs. I might also look at replacing the 9E LNB from an Alps to another Inverto Eco given that there's enough space for the latter's face and it gives a better SNR on signals over the Alps as the Swiss Romande feeds from France require a high SNR (DVB-S2 8PSK 3/4) and they suffer from rain fade easily in light rain. From experience I've grown fond of the Inverto Eco LNBs as they perform better than the Alps & Opticum narrow LNBs while still not having a wide birth on its face and having a reasonably long body for focal adjustment (though not as long as an IBU single) - however I might wait until Eutelsat 9B is fully in service with 9A moving elsewhere to see if it'll be worth doing. Adding an extra LNB for 1W could be done, though with that amount of offset from what I have tried only signals from the T2 beam from Thor 5 can be received, and the FTA content from that beam can all be received elsewhere. Might also use some transparent fish line I have to keep the multi-lnb brackets from possibly sagging in additional to the threaded bars support, though this hasn't been a problem yet.

On the Sky Zone 2 dish, performance is a little limited as might be expected - even on 15W the weaker signals like the MSNBC feed doesn't get above the receiver threshold and there's fewer channels of interest now compared to this time last year. Similarly on 5W performance from the France Televisions transponder is solid but the other French FTA's (TMC, TV5 etc.) are a little weaker though can still be found elsewhere, where the transponder with the Berber channels, RTI etc. is the weakest of the lot. I do wonder wherever the current France Televisions SD channels will remain after April or wherever a HD equivalent will appear, otherwise interest here would diminish here for me. I might look to see if reception from 22W & 30W on offset LNBs can give satisfactory results.

OTOH, there's not much more to really do on the Eurasian 80cm dish unless the spots between 50-53E start to really get busy where a better LNB like an IBU could give better fringe results. Near enough the same for the motorised dish except as previously mentioned look at seeing if trying a different rain hood can give better results against rain residue.

I do have a spare Sky Zone 1 Mk4 dish in store if there is any call for it, though space to put one up is getting limited and I think I may already be taking the piss with my current set up! I still have to take down the old Zone 2 dish that is high up on a side wall doing nothing. Maybe trim off the top of the steel pole that is painted black holding the Zone 2 & 80cm dish and also the Diseqc switch,

 

[archive10]

Thank you, Sir, for a much entertaining read-through of your account.
I can only applaud the amount of care that has gone into making these humble object of reception equipment go much further than they were originally intended to.

This is truly (in my opinion, at least) the spirit of this board/forum - can-do reception of stuff on equipment available to normal people.
And can I say, I really appreciate the lore of LNBs and reception - this is the stuff that inspires to "well what if I try X on a Y"...

Keep up the good work!

 

[A nonymous]

Thats a very impressive setup, very much like the one i had when i first started playing with Digital satellites. Unfortunately for me kids got in the way and after having two 1m dishes damaged by them i ended up just going for a motor instead.

 

[Llew]

Hats off to you FM. looks like you've covered most bases with that setup.
It's obvious you've put a lot of thought and patience into getting the maximum count of satellites available at your location with those dishes. The seven LNBs on the 97cm dish is excellent going.

 

[timo_w2s]

Excellent setup!! I like your M6 threaded bar side arms idea. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Vipersan]

Nice setup buddy ...
I admire your dedication to the cause ...and the fact that you have achieved so much in the face of adversity ..
Something I know a little about myself..
Keep 'plugging' away Fisty...
..and yes that _was_ an intended pun..
;)

 

[Analoguesat]

Fab stuff - I like the car tyre

These sorts of set ups where folk are pushing the limits as I do with my hotch potch of battered dishes and miles of cabling are always fascinating

 

[Fisty McB]

Thanks for all the feedback folks, I've only just realised how horrible my spelling and grammar was in those posts! That'll teach me to type up long posts when half tired.

The idea for the dishes being close together came from this thread from whom I though had a nice & tidy set up covering a wide arc of popular satellites. The idea for using the car tyre came from reading about Analoguesat's experiences when he got his first dish to experiment with! The idea for the threaded bars came from seeing another photo (I don't know if it was here or elsewhere) of someone doing the same for their multi-LNB set up.

Altogether the costs have been kept minimal where possible, the most expensive item there is the 1.2 metre dish which I bought from an online retailer in the Irish Republic - similar dishes from Britain could be bought cheaper but the shipping costs to Northern Ireland from all such retailers at the time were eye watering, whereas the cost of shipping from across the border added to the dish's cost worked out cheaper. Aside from the Inverto Black Ultra's, plus the Alps narrow LNBs that were about £7 each shipped from Germany, all the LNBs used cost £5 or less. The 16/1 switch was bought on eBay after the old 10/1 switch got water ingress back in October. Unfortunately I haven't really got contacts available locally for getting cheap second-hand bits like old scrap dishes that are still usable, LNBs etc. so shopping around online has been a work in progress over the last two years, the patch leads between the LNBs and the Diseqc switch are reused where possible. Overall the total cost is a fair bit, but in terms of what you could spend on many other potential hobbies, it's not a huge amount for what you get out of it.

I've certainly learned a lot from experimenting with fixed multi-lnb set ups and also from working with the USALS motorised set up over the past couple of years, and even before then when I did a few experiments with the Zone 2 minidish that could pick up 53E! Like many other things it's always best to know how to walk before you even try to run; start with a minidish for 28E, then use it or something similar (60cm) again to try for 19E & 13E - try adding a second LNB to learn about the offsets needed for multi-lnb reception, and then find when you try to add a third one it's not as easy as you might assume at first. Overall it's about learning, experience, and reading/listening to others whom have done similar work. But don't think it is completely impossible unless the arc is completely blocked for you! Family and friends have came and looked at my set up thinking it's OTT, not that I can blame them but there are days I don't even watch TV! I fooled an aunt of mine into thinking that I had the dishes set up to listen to encrypted Ministry of Defence satellite communications.

Also many of the regulars here have been great with talking about their set ups and what knowledge they can share. Thank you all!

 

[Analoguesat]

Ive still got one dish on a tyre - its the 36E one buts its off beam so needs realigning again.

This normally means giving the tyre a good tap when wearing my steel toe capped boots

 

[Lazarus]

Radial, or Crossply?

 

[Analoguesat]

Dunno . But after 10 years outside in the garden its not in very good condition.

 

[pgh13]

Dunno . But after 10 years outside in the garden its not in very good condition.

I once bought new tyres from a local dealer because he told me that tyres above a certain age would shortly become an MOT fail. I've never bought from them since

 

[A nonymous]

Its law in certain parts of Europe, thats what the DOT codes on the sidewall are for. They allow you to find out the country of manufacture, the plant where they were manufactured and also the week and year they were made. The EU were going to try and force this on us also making tyres over 5 years old illegal.

My winter tyres on my MG were made in 2011 so in Europe they are considered illegal and past there designed lifespan but not in the UK. Got all four for £120 which isn't bad. If they are stored properly they are fine and have gone through the last 3 MOTs and still have plenty of life in them as they are showing no degradation or cracking.

Its just another loony EU directive. The spare on my wifes car went on for the first time last month. Its the original spare the car rolled off the production line with in 1996 and its sat in the spare wheel well since then. The particular model of tyre in question went out of production in 1998 .

 

[Analoguesat]

I did have an issue with tyres on the car a while back where they always looked soft. Even when I put air in them in a few days later they were back to soft again.

The sidewalls had perished all the way round so I was running on about 10psi on both the fronts! The others were going too so all 4 had to be done.

 

[Fisty McB]

APRIL 2016 UPDATE - 14 LNBs, 1 FISTY

Just over two months later and a few things have changed. I've decided to name the dishes rather blandly, with the 1.2 metre motorised dish "Dish A", though the other dishes are all "B" to reflect the tuner on the VU+ receiver they all feed into. On to Dish B1 which is the 98cm dish with seven LNBs...


...the 9 East LNB has been changed from an Alps single to a new Inverto Eco single. Although it doesn't stop the Swiss-French channels from completely cutting out in the rain, the threshold for this to happen is now higher than it used to be with the Alps with the 9A satellite in place as opposed to 9B now. On 13 East, the only transponder giving problems is 12476H - the 8PSK modulation with 3/4 FEC is quite sensitive to raindrops on the feedhorn though 10911V which has the same parameters (only FTA channel is Stars TV) is perfectly fine. It's a shame that the former easily cuts out as it carries a number of interesting channels in HD, so a hood for both 9E & 13E will be looked at to keep the raindrops off. No other changes elsewhere here. Now on to Dish B2, the 78cm one look at the far eastern end of the arc...


...the dish was recently raised around 20cm to give a little more elbow room for 46E which seems to have done the trick. However getting the LNB back to focus on 42E especially those on Turksat 3A was turning into being a right pain in the arse so for now the LNB has been moved to view 39E instead. While there isn't a huge amount FTA there that isn't available on 45E or 13E (and none of it in English - The Media Office UAE channel is too weak) it at least provides for that position OK. So now on to Dish B3 aka the Sky Mk3 Zone 2 dish where there are significant changes...


...the dish has been moved. It's previous position was not able to get the whole dish to see over the oil tank guard so I decided to relocate it just above Dish B1 where it has clear sight. As a bonus, two additional LNBs have been added...


...22W and 30W have now been added to the mix. The moving of Dish B3 has helped increase SNR ratings on 5W & 15W by around 1db though it still isn't enough for the VU+ to lock on to 12690H on 5W. 22W has been specifically set up for the Reuters Live feed which comes in well on this offset LNB except in heavy downpours. 30W can't pick up some of the weaker transponders, but nothing critical unless I start getting a fetish for Spanish speaking tarot readers! Not noted in the photograph is that like 45E on the 46E LNB on B2, 14W can be picked up quite well on the 15W LNB.

And as a bonus...


...I had a local aerial rigger come this morning to take down an old Sky Mk4 Zone 2 dish from the side wall left by the previous occupants that I wasn't able to reach up to and not able to use, as well as remove an old bracket for a Sky dish that was there prior to that dish itself! In an effort to recycle, the really old bracket I determined was not reusable without some serious work that wasn't worth investing quite a bit of spray paint & time in so it's gone in the skip (the pole was rusting so badly that I think some birds were breaking bits off to build nests with!) but the bracket of the latter dish and the dish itself is worth saving. A little bit of inspection showed that whoever installed the dish originally did a half-arsed job as the LNB used, a Zinwell quad) didn't even have its LNB connector rain hood pulled down! The result was one LNB connector that was clean broke, and the other three could not be loosened at all, I think the screw connections had "rust-bonded", so all I could do was thrown it in the skip as well.

In the meantime I broke off the plastic LNB bracket (I've a couple spare from the LNBs used on Dish B3 for 22W & 30W), took off old insulation tape and chucked out the unusable WF65 shotgun coax and gave the dish a good wash with warm, soapy water to help remove green mould and bird shite off it. What can't be easily seen here is that not surprisingly many of the nuts and bolts are rusty - I haven't tried taking them off yet but along with a couple of Zinwell J1S LNBs, I've ordered some replacement bolts & brackets to fix the dish up again. I'm not sure what colour to paint it yet - the weather forecast for the next few days doesn't predict fine dry weather, indeed the last 48 hours have seen sleet & snow showers come & go here (unusually late in the year for those not familiar with the weather in Tyrone) in between periods of mild sunshine. One thing I noticed recently was that an overhead "drone" video of the village done earlier this month is up on YouTube and the only dish of mine that can be easily made out from its height was not surprisingly the big Dish A with its bright yellow face, so the camouflage of the "B" dishes is working from that distance at least.

I'd say at this stage the fate of the potential "B4" dish is that it'll be aligned on to 42E to replace the tricky offset on Dish B2 that is now on 39E - however I'm not sure if even a Sky Mk4 Zone 2 dish will have enough rain fade margin to accommodate signals from the Turksat 3A's west beam (the TRT HD transponder in particular) satisfactorily. I guess there's only one way to find out, and it might result with the car tyre coming back out for temporary work! Potential LNB offsets from a dish focused on 42E are 36E (this is likely to be borderline) and maybe 50E if anything interesting ever shows up there! There's two spare ports on the Centuari 16/1 switch, so some expansion is possible. To be fair the title of this post did kind of give that away!

 

[Lazarus]

Phew!

Fab installation.

 

[Analoguesat]

APRIL 2016 UPDATE - 14 LNBs, 1 FISTY

I'd say at this stage the fate of the potential "B4" dish is that it'll be aligned on to 42E to replace the tricky offset on Dish B2 that is now on 39E - however I'm not sure if even a Sky Mk4 Zone 2 dish will have enough rain fade margin to accommodate signals from the Turksat 3A's west beam (the TRT HD transponder in particular) satisfactorily. I guess there's only one way to find out, and it might result with the car tyre coming back out for temporary work! Potential LNB offsets from a dish focused on 42E are 36E (this is likely to be borderline) and maybe 50E if anything interesting ever shows up there! There's two spare ports on the Centuari 16/1 switch, so some expansion is possible. To be fair the title of this post did kind of give that away!

Go for 42E - I dont have too many problems with it on a zone 2 Sky dish.

 

[timo_w2s]

Nice one. What's Reuters Live feed? Is it worth getting?

 

[Captain Jack]

Excellent write up!