Dish farm renovations - new 1m dish added to the setup

[Analoguesat]

My dish setup has changed numerous times over the years - normally as another one is added into the already excessively complicated setup I call the Galashiels Monitoring Station

This morning my hobby setup looked like this. There is another dish out of shot to the left (ex analogue 60cm circular type) as well, but thats our Sky UK dish and outside the scope of this article.

Top row
1m orbital steel - 16E / 23.5E / 28E - bought new
80cm ex analogue - 13E - second hand
85cm penta - 5E - bought new

Bottom row
80cm ex analogue - 19E - second hand, note the famous car tyre mount
80cm ex analogue - 9/10E - second hand

Anyway Ive bought myself a new 1m aluminium Orbital dish for 10E - the feeds were marginal on the old dish which was well past its best and one of my "second hand and straightened up with the worst of the dents and twists knocked out of it" dishes. many of the feeds disappeared at the first hint of rain.....

I know it looks a bit tatty and a motorised system would be better but there is a belt of trees just a few feet from the garden and Id only get about 20-30 degrees of usable travel from 5E round to about 28E unless the dish was about 8 feet up and visible from the road at the end of the garden. At least the dish farm is reasonably discreet from the road.

 

[Analoguesat]

My mounts are very simple - normally a fence post banged into the ground with a sledgehammer and a couple of nails knocked through the horizontal rail to steady them. The metalwork are just cheap aerial brackets from screwfix.

Please note - this is perfectly adequate for reasonably sheltered low level installs like this (if anything breaks in a gale the worst thats going to happen is the dish will fall 4 feet and get smashed up wiping out the dishes below it)

They are not suitable for high level mounts - if anything breaks 20-30 feet up its going to land on something or someone, or go through a window!

The white plastic bag you can see is a temporary cover for the 8 way lnb switch. (Temporary = its been there 2 years! )

 

[Analoguesat]

One tip is you are working in the garden like I was - Cut the grass first - you WILL drop a nut sooner or later! Yes I lost one - its still out there somewhere....

And another tip - use the box the dish came in under your work surface - hopefully the dropped bolt will stay on it and be easy to see

 

[Analoguesat]

The aluminium Orbital dish isnt particularly heavy, but it is awkward to handle due to its size. This particular location was difficult due to the surrounding dishes. I think all of them got a knock at some point during the day - mainly when I was standing up..... I should have taken the middle dish on the top row down to make things easier.

The empty compost bag was useful for kneeling on as the grass was damp.

 

[Analoguesat]

As I dont have any proper alignment gear my preferred way of aligning the dish is with a portable tv and an old Vantage receiver. Obviously you should be careful if you try this - plug the extension lead into an RCD circuit breaker and make sure the tv is on a firm surface

For obvious reasons keep wives kids and pets away from the trailing leads....

 

[Analoguesat]

The completed install - and look no tyres! (Ive been using old tyres for around 10 years - this is the first time Ive had multiple dishes all bolted down).

The left hand dish is the same one as was in this position before and its still pointing at 19E. It is shaded very slightly by the 1m next to the right of it but not enough to bother me - 19E is a very high power signal these days and loss of a few percent of the signal isnt going to matter.

 

[Analoguesat]

The redundant dish and the old tyre have gone back into store for my next bright idea.

(In other words they have been shoved under the hedge out of the way!)

 

[satelliteman]

Nice job

Nothing wrong with fixed dishes, serve their purpose and of course instant switching. Take it that's the only area for dish mounting, otherwise I'm sure you'd be tempted to go motorised route.

 

[Analoguesat]

Yup - I do actually have a motor in store but theres trees run the length of the garden blocking out anything west of 5E and the hedge is high enough to block out anything out on the far eastern part of the arc. I can see as far as 53E, but the dish has to be up by the house! I'll see if I can find a suitable pic to illustrate.

 

[Analoguesat]

Here we go - best I can find at the moment. I'll try and remember to go and take a picture tomorrow. This was taken in the heavy snow in January 2010 The trees are visible over on the right. The dishes are to the left of the bench.

53E is just about right above the trees on top of the hill

The Sky dish (not pictured in this sequence) used to be on the side of the cottage looking through a gap in the trees. This worked well for about 5 years, then the trees grew.... Its started with every time it rained the picture broke up, (and it rains lots up here). I tried a bigger dish and a longer pole but had to admit defeat. So I relocated it into the garden where its got completely clear LOS onto 28E. We havent had any problems since

 

[satelliteman]

Okay - What a pretty picture by the way.

 

[Analoguesat]

WE had LOTS of snow in January! Thats about 11-12 inches in the garden.

The Borders was more or less shut down for a week. All the schools were a week late reopening after the christmas break and the police advice was "stay at home" :-worship

 

[Hughes]

What a lovely neat dish farm, and a great colour. My set-up is a real mess, with dishes of all sizes and colours, including Televés bright yellow. I also have cables criss-crossing between dishes and switches-a real mess! Will take some photos in the morning and enlist my computer savvy kids to teach me how to upload them for you to see how not to do installations! Funnily enough, I also have a plastic bag covering an 8-way switch.

 

[Analoguesat]

Mine wasnt planned to colour coordinate

I did have a white dish in it for a while but that one was really ropey (the lnb mount was broken off when I got it and held in place by araldite!) It was scrapped last year.

All the 80cm dishes are second hand:

Whats now the 19E dish came off the side of the road about 9 years ago. The 13E dish came out of the woods behind the cottages. The old 10E dish was a freebie from an install I did a few years ago, but the local kids had bent it double before I grabbed it so I spent an hour one sunny afternoon carefully bending back into shape!

One one of the pics you can see 2 zone 1 sky dishes and a zone 2 (all currently unused). One of these came out of a skip and one was donation from a work colleague - most of them know I never say no to any old sat or dtt kit.

If I cant use it I keep it in store until I can find a good home for it. One old Sky box I was given went to a young single mum I know so she could watch the fta stuff (already a dish on the property). Free of course - all I accepted was a cup of coffee

 

[sonnetpete]

...............I'll try and remember to go and take a picture tomorrow.

If you do take a photo include the roof, some people on here like to check for holes.

 

[hexah]

Looks good. :-rock

Decent competition for Goonhilly.

You forgot to put up a 'finished' photo with all the dishes together with the new one.

The Sky dish (not pictured in this sequence) used to be on the side of the cottage looking through a gap in the trees. This worked well for about 5 years, then the trees grew.... Its started with every time it rained the picture broke up, (and it rains lots up here). I tried a bigger dish and a longer pole but had to admit defeat. So I relocated it into the garden where its got completely clear LOS onto 28E. We havent had any problems since

So do you get 28e from the Orbital?

Top row
1m orbital steel - 16E / 23.5E / 28E - bought new

Or are you still using both the 60cm and the 1m to get 28e? I assume your reception of 28e from the 1m would be fine in the rain.

Making a total of 5 or is it 6 dishes?

 

[Analoguesat]

Or are you still using both the 60cm and the 1m to get 28e? I assume your reception of 28e from the 1m would be fine in the rain.

Making a total of 5 or is it 6 dishes?

6 dishes - a dedicated Sky dish for the sky box.

I was hoping to get Badr 4 26E off the first Orbital but have never managed to get a signal, so bumped that lnb around to 28E instead to give me the free channels on my DB.

 

[satelliteman]

6 dishes - a dedicated Sky dish for the sky box.

I was hoping to get Badr 4 26E off the first Orbital but have never managed to get a signal, so bumped that lnb around to 28E instead to give me the free channels on my DB.

There's a battered 2.5m going that'll pull BadR-4 in, would make a nice 7th dish to the collection

 

[hexah]

I was thinking he could use some dishes he already has, a zone 1 to get some transponders on 5w and a zone 2 to get some transponders on 1w & 0.8w.

So garyg's 2.5m would make 9 dishes.

 

[bigtee]

Very interesting read; I also own up to the plastic bag over Diseqc switch cleverness ; oh, and also the use of car parts (break discs) as mount (stabilisers).