Mount Sky dish rotated 90 degrees?

W

warwound

Member
My Satellite Setup
Sky mini dish and Panasonic TU-DSB30
My Location
Norfolk, UK.
Hi all.

Just joined the forum and have a question that i hope someone can answer...

I have an old analogue dish that i decided i'd put a digital LNB on and get a PCI decoder for my PC to watch Freesat.

I asked on the local Freecycle group for a digital LNB and was given a complete Sky mini-dish and a Panasonic TU-DSB30 box - all for free of course!!

Now i've spent the past two days trying to decide what's the cheapest and easiest way to get it working.

I can't simply put the Sky LNB on the analogue dish i've found out.
So i really just want to mount the Sky dish on the existing mount for the analogue dish.

Problem is that the analogue dish clamps to a horizontal pole and the Sky dish clamps to a vertical pole.

A U shaped mount pole would do the trick but i can't find anyone locally or online that sells them - searching brings many unrelated endless results.

So i thought can i mount the Sky dish on the existing mount pole which is horizontal and not vertical?

IE the LNB would be at 3 or 9 o'clock position and not 6 o'clock bottom center.

Are satellite transmissions polarised in any plane so this setup wouldn't work?

Or would it not work for any other reason?

Anyone know where i can get a 30mm diameter U shaped mount pole?

I'm trying to avoid taking the analogue mount off the wall and drilling news holes for the Sky mount - i'm lazy, the weather is getting windier and i'm not that confident up the ladder.
(Can't afford to pay an engineer to do the job either :-cry1)

Thanks.

Martin.
 
It would work to some degree, but the horizontal and vertical polarities would be reversed, and theres no real way to overcome this on a sky box.

If it fits just stick the sky digi lnb on the analogue dish - it wont work brilliantly but it will do for the time being. Replacement 40mm collar type lnb's are cheap as chips these days from ebay or even dealers, so think about investing in a new lnb.
 
Thanks.

I somehow thought that mounting the sky dish sideways wouldn't be ideal.

I bought a used Skyware SX1019/S LNB off a local satellite installer a couple of days back.
It has a 40mm fitting so should simply fit on the analogue dish and do the job.

BUT i Googled the model number and found that the SX1019 was made for circular dishes and that the SX1019/S was actually made for elliptical mini dishes.

I might get back in touch with the chap i bought it from and see if he can swap it for a LNB that'll work on my circular analogue dish and then not bother using the Sky mini dish.
Or grab one off Ebay - think i saw them for as little as £2 plus postage.

I'll keep this thread updated with my progress.

Martin.
 
If you are hard up, then asking your local refuse tip manager nicely will get you an older style dish for next to nothing. It may actually be better as the bigger size means less chance of break up in poor weather. Though it does mean more accurate alignment is needed in the first instance.
 
U shaped fixing clamp kits in B&Q for around a tenner

regards Dave
 
Trouble is that many of these U mounts are 1.5" diameter, whereas the old Sky minidish requires 1.25" diameter.

As suggested above, a new LNB is the cheaper option.
 
Just to keep this thread updated...

No u shaped mounts at the local B&Q so i decided to buy a new LNB and re-use the existing analogue dish.

Bought one of ebay 320328697805 these on Tuesday evening from Ebay.

Still awaiting it's delivery O-zzz.

Martin.
 
Hi again.

Finally i have my setup working - seems to have taken me forever!

First problem - the new LNB got lost in the post and i had to wait for a replacement to arrive.

Then i put the new 4 way LNB on the analogue dish and borrowed a satellite finder.
Spent many days up and down the ladder searching for Astra but had no luck.
About 60% signal strength but zero signal quality was the best i could get - thinking about it now i guess i wasn't tuned in to Astra but another satellite.

So yesterday i invested in a decent masonry drill bit, some bolts and plugs and installed the Sky mini-dish (took the entire old analogue dish and mount down).

Using the satellite finder i had an excellent signal strength AND signal quality on second attempt to align it!

That's with the mini-dish's original single output LNB.
Now it's working i plan to swap that LNB for my new 4 way LNB - will do that when the weather is suitable.

I was a bit disappointed at the lack of FTA channels that the Sky box found, but after a bit of Googling have found out that the Sky box is hardcoded to Sky's own channel range and won't automatically find other FTA channels.

So i might ditch the Sky box and invest in a Freesat box - depends on how easy it is to manually find and store the other FTA channels i want to watch on the Sky box.

Thanks for all your help - no doubt i'll be posting again with more questions over the next few weeks.

Martin.
 
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