aceb
Specialist Contributor
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 1,537
- Reaction score
- 842
- Points
- 113
- My Satellite Setup
-
Prof Tuner 7301 /
1.25m Gibertini + Inverto B.Ultra/C1W, Moteck H180, 68.5E-67W Ku/C-Band /
1.8m Precision PF + ESX241/Inverto Black Pro, 66E-63W Ku/C-band /
2.4m Fortec Star+Titanium C1W/Pride plate, 49E-58W
- My Location
- Sussex
So I've had this Precision 1.2m dish in my garage for a few years having been donated it from a friend who was downsizing. It was one of those things that I never thought I'd really use but didn't want to get rid of it, just in case ... Having recently reclaimed some of the garden it seemed like a nice spot to plant a dish and then along came Vipersan and all his mad experiments with SUDs 
The dish mount spent the morning at my friendly welders having the actuator arm moved from one side to the other so I could get all the way round west, it should allow me to get 40E, maybe a bit more with some modification but trees will certainly spoil my chances of 49E. As I missed my solar noon window with the dish in situ I used the string and post trick lining it up with the shadow cast to give me a fairly good idea of where south is. Squared the mount, nipped it up and inserted an old Best Ku LNB into the C band feed. It's not exactly the preferred method of finding a satellite but short of a meter or even a C120 Ku LNB it's all I had. Anyway, 5w was found quite easily, I've been driving the dish using an old 12v PSU which although slow does mean I can just flick a switch to move the dish. A swap of LNBs, change to Crazycats Crazyscan spectrum software and very quickly a few humps appeared in the trace. I blindscanned the satellite and up popped some signals!
This is a copy of the blindscan results
1=3646,H,2169,34,QPSK
2=3727,H,29950,78,QPSK
3=3731,V,11960,23,QPSK
4=3743,V,1680,34,NBC_QPSK
5=4076,V,3000,12,QPSK
6=4111,V,2141,56,NBC_QPSK
7=4114,V,2142,56,QPSK
8=4154,V,2289,78,QPSK
9=4160,V,1944,78,QPSK
10=4162,V,1499,34,QPSK
11=4168,V,2222,56,NBC_QPSK
So here's a few pics of the installation, it's still work in progress but now I've actually had signals from 5W I think I can say I've joined the C banders
Explanation of the pics
1+2 The ground mount, the ground it's in is actually only a few years old, previous to that it was about 3ft lower but I escavated some of the garden and built it up at the top, although it's been compacted I wanted to make absolutely sure that it wasn't going to move especially if I can get a larger dish.
3, Setting the focal length for the dish and working out how to attach the feed.
4 A close up of the brackets, I'm not able to get near my workshop at the moment so everything is having to be done on a workmate with some simple tools. Once I can get to a lathe I should be able to make up some new shorter support arms, I've already made the straight brackets to hold the feed onto them. I did think about using threaded bar, the same as the ground mount but it's just a lot of extra weight as they are steel.
5 My first C band signal! STV Cameroon has special significance for me as I received their channel 2 VHF transmitter a few years ago via Sporadic E in my other hobby of DXTV.
6 Tele Africa, quite a respectable signal.
7 Now this is a strange one, a scan of 3727, showing quite clearly there's something there with a 6.4dB S/N ratio, in fact a spectrum sweep shows it is one of the stronger signals on 5W but when I switch to DVBDream it absolutely fails to find any hint of signal even though I'm using the results of a blindscan.
8 My shack with a view lol Don't think I'd be doing this in January.
So that's it for now, if the weather holds till tomorrow I'll be back out and venturing a bit further west. I still need to 'tweak' the dish, play with the dielectric plate to see what difference it makes and I may even make a new one of VSs design. I need to buy a V box and run the coax and motor cabling back to my room and generally tidy everything up.
I just want to add at this point how much Vipersan has inspired me to try this, I would never really have thought C band on a 1.2m would work, I definitely wouldn't have bothered setting this lot up to try it had I not read his threads and followed the disaster thread from start to finish so cheers VS :-righton:-righton:-righton
The dish mount spent the morning at my friendly welders having the actuator arm moved from one side to the other so I could get all the way round west, it should allow me to get 40E, maybe a bit more with some modification but trees will certainly spoil my chances of 49E. As I missed my solar noon window with the dish in situ I used the string and post trick lining it up with the shadow cast to give me a fairly good idea of where south is. Squared the mount, nipped it up and inserted an old Best Ku LNB into the C band feed. It's not exactly the preferred method of finding a satellite but short of a meter or even a C120 Ku LNB it's all I had. Anyway, 5w was found quite easily, I've been driving the dish using an old 12v PSU which although slow does mean I can just flick a switch to move the dish. A swap of LNBs, change to Crazycats Crazyscan spectrum software and very quickly a few humps appeared in the trace. I blindscanned the satellite and up popped some signals!
This is a copy of the blindscan results
1=3646,H,2169,34,QPSK
2=3727,H,29950,78,QPSK
3=3731,V,11960,23,QPSK
4=3743,V,1680,34,NBC_QPSK
5=4076,V,3000,12,QPSK
6=4111,V,2141,56,NBC_QPSK
7=4114,V,2142,56,QPSK
8=4154,V,2289,78,QPSK
9=4160,V,1944,78,QPSK
10=4162,V,1499,34,QPSK
11=4168,V,2222,56,NBC_QPSK
So here's a few pics of the installation, it's still work in progress but now I've actually had signals from 5W I think I can say I've joined the C banders
Explanation of the pics
1+2 The ground mount, the ground it's in is actually only a few years old, previous to that it was about 3ft lower but I escavated some of the garden and built it up at the top, although it's been compacted I wanted to make absolutely sure that it wasn't going to move especially if I can get a larger dish.
3, Setting the focal length for the dish and working out how to attach the feed.
4 A close up of the brackets, I'm not able to get near my workshop at the moment so everything is having to be done on a workmate with some simple tools. Once I can get to a lathe I should be able to make up some new shorter support arms, I've already made the straight brackets to hold the feed onto them. I did think about using threaded bar, the same as the ground mount but it's just a lot of extra weight as they are steel.
5 My first C band signal! STV Cameroon has special significance for me as I received their channel 2 VHF transmitter a few years ago via Sporadic E in my other hobby of DXTV.
6 Tele Africa, quite a respectable signal.
7 Now this is a strange one, a scan of 3727, showing quite clearly there's something there with a 6.4dB S/N ratio, in fact a spectrum sweep shows it is one of the stronger signals on 5W but when I switch to DVBDream it absolutely fails to find any hint of signal even though I'm using the results of a blindscan.
8 My shack with a view lol Don't think I'd be doing this in January.
So that's it for now, if the weather holds till tomorrow I'll be back out and venturing a bit further west. I still need to 'tweak' the dish, play with the dielectric plate to see what difference it makes and I may even make a new one of VSs design. I need to buy a V box and run the coax and motor cabling back to my room and generally tidy everything up.
I just want to add at this point how much Vipersan has inspired me to try this, I would never really have thought C band on a 1.2m would work, I definitely wouldn't have bothered setting this lot up to try it had I not read his threads and followed the disaster thread from start to finish so cheers VS :-righton:-righton:-righton
