New uses for old dish?

[DanH]

Hey everyone, first post here. Just got my new Superdish and 811 the other week, and now I'm curious. Has anyone come up with new/resourceful uses for their old dish? I know I could stick it on ebay or just let it sit up there on top of the house, but that's just too simple for me! It's got to be good for something, I've seen posts of using old P* dishes for WAN's but I don't need or use a WAN. I've had a few thoughts, but bird baths or lawn ornaments just aren't my style! Giant Frisbee maybe? There's gotta be something more useful for it. Any ideas?

[P Smith]

You could make a copper 1/2" coil in place of LNBF, glue aluminum foil to the pan and using small electrical pump circulate hot water for your water heater tank. :)

[SimpleSimon]

Actually, your best bet is to keep it handy - your SuperDish 110/119 performance may not be that great - what are it's signal strength numbers on transponders 11 & 12?

Also, it could be used to drive more receivers. Or, it can be set up as a portable unit t take on trips (depending on your lifestyle).

[FTA Michael]

You could point it at a side bird to get a few extra channels, such as Classic Arts Showcase.

[DanH]

So far my signal is what I would consider strong. On sat 119, trans 11 is at 117 and trans 12 is at 116. I assume from your response that Superdish has encountered some troubles in the past - I have yet to read up on it's history. The lowest signal I have is on sat 105, trans 6 & 7 they average between 70-72.

[SimpleSimon]

DanH - you're in good shape! Top-notch signal strength! You got lucky and got an installer that actually cared (or at least was also lucky).

BTW, I forgot to welcome you aboard - so welcome aboard!

[DanH]

Thanks SimpleSimon, the installer I got was fairly knowledgeable about his job in general, although I had to show him how to hook up the 811 receiver -- it was only his second HD install. I did do some tweaking of my own. At first my signal (on 110 and 119) was anywhere from 100-110, and I thought that I could probably pull some more out of it, so I checked the specs and adjusted the elevation, and it brought every transp. up 5-15 steps, so I was feeling quite proud of myself. (105 #6 started out at 58, I got lucky and ended up at 70). Although it did require about half a dozen trips out to the dish to fine tune everything.

Oh one more thing -- P Smith I like the water heater idea! lol :) Maybe create some sort of camp oven with the same idea! Now we're getting somewhere!

[SimpleSimon]

DanH - good job!

For future reference, transponders 11 & 12 are generally used when talking signal strength - they are on every E* bird and never a spot beam. Makes for good apples-to-apples comparisons.

[DanH]

I appreciate it Simon. I'm starting to grasp the subject a little bit at a time as I read through the other posts on the board. There is definitely a lot I still don't know about the way these DBS's work, but I'm sure I'll learn about it one way or another. -- Even if it is just a little bit at a time! :)

[robfwb]

Use the old dish to scan the sky. Get an mpeg 2 fta receiver and find out what you can get for free up there

Rob

http://www.robfwb.com