41" x 40" Star Choice Dish, is it good for 110/119/129?

[saulin]

Hey guys I guess that makes that dish almost round. The person selling it says it's actually 40x41 inches. It's a good size dish to use but do all star choice dishes have big arms, meaning they need to be cut to be used for Dish Network?

Has anyone ever used this Star Choice Dish? It might be the 1 meter round star choice dish they used to make.

I would either use it for 110/119 or for 119/129, it's for a friend who wants a bigger dish than what he has which is a 30x33 Digiwave Dish.

[doggy10]

Yes you can use it for 110/119/129 but like you mentioned the arm will need to be cut and a bracket made to hold the lnb's it has been done by many people. They do that set up so the only have 1 dish up instead of having a dish farm.

[saulin]

It being round though, it might have a hard time picking up the other sat. It will be either for 119 and 129 or 110 and 119. Here where we are, we do need a 36" or bigger to get descent signal on 110 or 129. 119 can be picked up fine on a 30"

I do have a Magic Bracket. I guess is a matter of knowing exactly ho much to cut and I guess I do need to drill the hole on the arm where the LNB holder normally goes on FTA dishes. I have not seen the dish yet. So I don't know if the arm is the square type that might fit a Direct TV square type LNB, if it's the thin type of arm then I guess it needs a LNB holder like the FTA dishes have. But also the LNB has to be hitting the sweet spot or else the signal might be too weak. I guess I need to see some pics of this modified dishes to have a good idea of what to do. The dish is kind of cheap but I don't know if it will be too much work.

I was hopping the dish could be used as it's without cutting the arm.

***Update****

I found some pics on another forum of a 40" Star Choice Dish

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_vPV3ST4kvkk/Sl8jwRll9cI/AAAAAAAAA7U/zv0C4sl4fjs/s512/07152009011.jpg

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_vPV3ST4kvkk/Sl8j0_S9AiI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/Ya7qfRbxibk/s512/07152009012.jpg

[missey]

pick your self up an Invacom QPh-031 lnb and it will work great just like it is with out changing any thing.

[Terryl]

Yes for 1 satellite, you need 3 LNB's for 3 satellites.

[Gold]

I wouldn't cut a thing & I would definitely put a motor on a dish like that, & if your interested in DN sats get a QPH-031 like missey mentioned.
Galaxy Marketing has them starting at $40..

[saulin]

I have a QPH-031 we can use. Maybe I'll grab it but we don't plan on putting it on a motor. Maybe we'll try it for 129 and 119. I'm thinking it should work without cutting the arm down as well

[D-troit]

I have a QPH-031 we can use. Maybe I'll grab it but we don't plan on putting it on a motor. Maybe we'll try it for 129 and 119. I'm thinking it should work without cutting the arm down as well

You can try this mod with the Y Yoke used for 110-119. The 1 degree difference between 119-129 should work with a dish that big.

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj239/Dtroit_2007/0a14d809.jpg

[saulin]

Interesting. But since the LNB bracket is going below the arm doesn't that affect the focal point?

Anyways I wanted to know if anyone has used this dish and if it needs modification. The truth is that this dish is just big enough to get 129 with say 72-74Q here where I live so we need to get the strongest signal possible if we want 129. I think a few people have used it without any modification but they might not be getting the signal the dish could deliver; but also maybe for them a small dish is big enough too.

I was planning on using this setup if it requires no modification

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5503/dsc00382hi.jpg

[D-troit]

Interesting. But since the LNB bracket is going below the arm doesn't that affect the focal point?

Anyways I wanted to know if anyone has used this dish and if it needs modification. The truth is that this dish is just big enough to get 129 with say 72-74Q here where I live so we need to get the strongest signal possible if we want 129. I think a few people have used it without any modification but they might not be getting the signal the dish could deliver; but also maybe for them a small dish is big enough too.

I was planning on using this setup if it requires no modification

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5503/dsc00382hi.jpg

Yes you will loose a little in the lower focal point. If you are already maxed out at your location then the arm can be cut 2 1/2 in. to keep the exact focal point using the Y yoke. To get 110-119-129 on that dish use a dishpro twin for 110-119 and a single lnb for 129. This can be done by sliding the dishpro twin over so it only uses one of the D attachments on the Y yoke and the other D attachment will be outside the Y yoke.. One spot on the Y yoke is all that is needed to hold the twin as long as everything is tightened down securely. Then the other side of the Y yoke can be used to attach the single lnb for 129 to.

[jvvh5897]

The LNB mount that it has is in the right place for the dish--that pretty much has to be true, so the only reason I could see to making a mod would be to allow for a different mount. But if you can use the existing mount--why mod the arm? Doesn't make any sense to me. A quick google suggests to me that the guys that were cutting the arm of a dish were using a primestar dish not starchoice--the p*star had an odd solid mount that was hard to fit a standard LNB into from what I read.

And the pic you show looks to be an offset dish--even looks like if you take a perpendicular to the dish from the lowest center edge that it would intersect the LNB, so standard section from parabola. If it really is 40 by 41 that would be a 12.5 degree offset.

[saulin]

The LNB mount that it has is in the right place for the dish--that pretty much has to be true, so the only reason I could see to making a mod would be to allow for a different mount. But if you can use the existing mount--why mod the arm? Doesn't make any sense to me. A quick google suggests to me that the guys that were cutting the arm of a dish were using a primestar dish not starchoice--the p*star had an odd solid mount that was hard to fit a standard LNB into from what I read.

And the pic you show looks to be an offset dish--even looks like if you take a perpendicular to the dish from the lowest center edge that it would intersect the LNB, so standard section from parabola. If it really is 40 by 41 that would be a 12.5 degree offset.

I never bought this dish but I got to deal with one exactly like this one yesterday. It's oval probably 1 meter by 1.1 meter. It's huge, when I got there and checked his signal. He was aiming at 110W but the strength was only 37Q on 1 TP and lower in others and others had none. It would be jumping all over the place too. Say from 20Q-50Q. It would still lock on 2 TPs or so.

He went up there and tried to tweak the signal and we lost it. I took a TV and the receiver to the roof and we tried to find the signal. We found 91W with jumpy signal from 80-100Q, and it would lock. However we never got it to lock on 110W at all after this. It would jump from 0-87Q but because it was jumping from 0-87 it never locked. This is on a Viewsat Ultra. I tried bringing the LNB closer or further from the dish and it made no difference. I tried holding the LNB with my hand and it made no difference. I exchanged the LNB and cables and it made no difference.

I went back to 91W and it locked with jumpy signal quality again from 80-100. I replaced the Viewsat Ultra with a Viewsat 9000 and while it was on 110W with signal quality jumping from 0-87 and the Viewsat 9000 never got any quality, just signal but no quality at all.

I gave up on this Dish. It's really weird. I never had this issue before. I believe the reason it locks on 91W even though the signal jumps a lot is because here we can get 91W on 18" dish, but I do believe this dish was not meant to get signal from Bev/Dish

[anyonomus]

The round *choice dish that u have requires no modification to the arm in order to work on DN.. Although it measured 40" ...It was dubbed the 39" in our area..
It is the "oval" dishes that require the arm to be cut..not the one u have..