Monoblock and multi LNBs with larger dish sizes......

[drh]

Folks,
I've dumped my unreliable, motorised dish and am looking at either a monobloc LNB or multiple LNBs.
Some advice would be much appreciated please, as I keep going round in circles and not making a decision.

I live in Hampshire, south UK and would lie to (primarily) receive 19E and 13E.
My initial thoughts were for a monobloc LNB and a Triax 110cm dish to get the best signal.
I read that the monobloc LNBs are for dishes 75-85cm so presumably are optimised for 80cm.
Monobloc LNBs are easy to set up; I focus the 80cm dish on 13E and clamp the appropriate LNB and swing it round until I find 19E on the other LNB.

Ok, so I buy the 110cm dish and the Triax multiple LNB holder for either 2 or 4 LNBs.
I put an LNB into two of the positions in the clamps and point the dish at the midpoint 19E and 13E.
From the rear of the dish, I focus the lefthand LNB onto 19E and the righthand LNB on to 13E.

Q1). will a monobloc LNB work with dish sizes larger than 80cm ?

Q2). how easy is it to set up a 110cm dish firstly with 19E and 13E, then add 9E or others at a later date?

I'm happy with switching the signals from the receiver, it's just the dish size and LNB combinations that are confusing.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Dennis.

[Roadrunner]

Why wont you skip the monoblock then altogether? If you go for a triax 110 and multiblock lnb holder, you could use your 4x1 switch and bang 4 lnbs on there.(If you look on the well known ******* site you can get a nice holder and 4 lnbs in the set. It would give you a nice choice of sats that way. The bigger the dish the further the arm is from the dish (and the lnbs from one another, so I dont think using a monoblock on it its such a great idea but I could be wrong) Have you bought the monoblock yet? If you went the seperate lnbs way you could have both 13E and 19e +28E and set the fourth lnb to pickup one other sat of your choice (I would go for 7 or 9E (for feeds) or 39E for bulsat. As for setting up its easy. Triax multiblock comes with a handy instructions of how to space out the holders for various sats, so in theory you can set everything up on the ground attach the thing to you dish and focus a dish on main lnb , and the rest will fall in place automatically. Or you focus a dish on one sat and then slide the other holders away from it till you peak a signal on your favourite sat (which is what I did)

[drh]

Ok Roadrunner, you've convinced me.
I'm going for the 110cm dish and 4 x way LNB holder. I've already got a separate dish pointing at 28E so I will be able to get another four satellites on the new dish if I'm careful doing the alignment. It means I will eventually need a fifth Disecq channel so will need to get another switch at some time. No problem; they are cheap anyway.
I can send the monobloc LNB back for exchange; no problem.

I will reply to your pm once I've got 15 posts; until then I can't send pms.
Just a couple more now....
Speak soon.
Dennis.

[Roadrunner]

Don't worry about the PM, its better to post on here anyway :)
As for your setup if you want to keep the sly dish and be able to switch between all five lnbs automatically from your box you would need a 8x1 diseqc switch
Setup is near enough identical as the 4x1 you just use in your box (diseqc1.1) 1of16 2of16 .... instead of 1of4 etc. Unless you have two cables running to your box which would allow you to use your 4x1 switch for the triax and then changing over the cable for the sly dish (or you could get yourself a manual A->B switch, and setting the four lnbs as per my previous post and in the menu setting the diseqc to OFF for the sly dish (you would be switching yourself using the button. Funny that at some point I had a simmilar setup also :)

[drh]

Yes, I've ordered one of those too.
There aren't that many around, but if you go to the usual ******* site and search for 'Opti***' there is something make by Amiko that does the job.
I'm changing all my cables too; after a few summers the outer insulation has become hard and brittle. Done some quick measurements on my old cables and found the outer braid now has a resistance of 10-12 Ohms over 10 metres which can only be high resistance between the braid and the F connectors as the inner is 'solid'. Ok, it shouldn't matter, but the LNB is supposed to be matched to the 75 Ohm tuner impedance and adding a few more Ohms may make a difference. There will also be a voltage drop on the supply to the LNB (100mA supply to the LNB at 12Volt will drop 1 Volt). Not really important unless you have several more F connectors in the circuit like the Diseqc switch, perhaps each dropping a volt so it all adds up. Just cut off the F connectors and remade the cable out of interest and the resistance is now only 0.2 Ohm.