Old sky dish

[frund]

I have a little friend who would like to watch Hotbird. He has an old sky largish, round shaped dish. I know nothing about them. He is unemployed and intends to buy a tm 1500.
Question would the old sky dish be ok. thanks.

 

[rolfw]

Yes it would for many of the satellites, but he needs to check that the LNB is a Universal, the earlier ones were single band and no good for many of the digital transmissions. It will normally say Universal on it if it is.

 

[frund]

I have a 6 db universal he can have [from when I went to 3db] and I will lend hand if needed. His dish is already mounted, 3m ish up, on his parents house and only needs moving a bit. I expect he will, eventually, become motorised. But not having to buy a dish initially will help. Thanks for that, I will pass it on.

 

[wod]

might be an idea to replace the cable aswell if your changing the lnb

 

[frund]

Good idea thanks

 

[jeallen01]

I have a little friend who would like to watch Hotbird. He has an old sky largish, round shaped dish. I know nothing about them. He is unemployed and intends to buy a tm 1500.
Question would the old sky dish be ok. thanks.

I have one of the neighbour's old 80cm Amstrad mesh dishes - with an MTI grey (not the best of the MTI range!) 0.7dB LNBF it works a treat on Hispasat (80%+ signal strength and quality)!

Just picked up another 80cm Amstrad solid dish from another neighbour - will need to find a use for that (once I can get the rusted fixing bolts apart, and derust some parts of the surface of the dish!).

Analoguesat uses a number of dishes like these!

Well worth a bit of effort - dirt cheap (= free!) and work well.

Note: be very careful undoing the screws which clamp the old LNB as the plastic LNB collar gets very brittle and breaks, and then it is difficult to find replacement clamps! Can write-off an otherwise perfectly serviceable dish.

 

[rolfw]

The shame is, that there are loads of these dishes thrown away, some in excellent condition and some very high quality ones. Must confess to having thrown a few away myself, there's only so many one can store in the garage.