My compacted Dish Antenna

[Ron & Dee]

Rather than go back to my old thread on my portable Dish 500 antenna I thought I would start a new one showing how I compacted my antenna to fit in my small storage space


Easy storage and set up




Dial in the mumbers and point the board until the compass is pointing N


Set the antenna in front of the board


I'm good to go if I have the correct coordinance from the pointing screen

Ron

[two2go]

Some assembly required! Looks good, but a couple more questions.
How do you get it level? Do you put a shim under one of the legs?
Do you stake it down so the wind doesn't blow it over?
How do you make fine adjustments to the azimuth (aiming angle)? The dish clamp that slips around the vertical tube is a bit of a pain to loosen and tighten.

[Ron & Dee]

Setting it up takes very little time. I try to find the most level spot and if it does need some leveling I find a rock or wood chip to put under one of the legs. I don't bother staking it down, I have a piece of 2x6 that I lay across the legs and set a jug of water on that. Ocassionaly if it is real windy I use two jugs of water. I don't tighten the clamp, the dish just slips over the post. There is a slot on top of the post that a bolt slides into to keep the dish from rotating. If I need any fine tuning I just rotate the whole stand until I get the stongest signal.

It probably takes less than five minutes to set up from the time I take it out of the storage box. It takes longer to download the information from the satellite than it does to set the antenna up.

Ron

[hamguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by two2go Some assembly required! Looks good, but a couple more questions. How do you get it level? Do you put a shim under one of the legs? Do you stake it down so the wind doesn't blow it over? How do you make fine adjustments to the azimuth (aiming angle)? The dish clamp that slips around the vertical tube is a bit of a pain to loosen and tighten.

To level the tripod, we pack dirt/grass under the low legs. To keep it in place, we use tent stakes through eye-bolts in each leg.

Fine adjustments are not necessary. +/- a couple degrees works fine on our system.

[wa8yxm]

I have a direc TV dish where I drilled out the rivets that hold the LNB arm to the dish, I If you look at them from the right with the dish to the left and the LNB to your right then the top right rivet was replaced with a bolt, short bolt, Locktite on the nut

Likewise the opposite rivet on the other side of the LNB arm.. These two bolts form a hinge pin

At the left side I drilled out all 4 rivets (2 on each side) and installed one through bolt (Goes all the way through) with a wing nut

All bolts have washers on them

I pull the through bolt and the LNB arm folds into the dish, Put the bolt back for storage It now fits more or less flat.

This is a standard dish. like a dish 300

The left side I also drilled out all 4 rivets (Two on each side) and replaced two of them with s

[Ron & Dee]

I made a slot to the first hole in the LNB arm, but I'm thinking of extending the slot all the way to the second hole. Sometimes I have a little difficulty in lining up the second hole especially if setting up after dark.

My storage is probably different than most people since one of my storage compartments houses my telescope and equiptment. Therefore I have to completely disassemble my antenna for storage.

Ron

[Ron & Dee]

Here is a picture of my storage area



The dish is setting on top of my telescope and the stand and LNB is setting next to the telescope tripod. As you can see, I need for my antenna to be in 3 parts to fit in the small area in my storage compartment.

Ron