Cable lengths

barney115 said:

i have +70 meters cable length as long as you do not have any joints it will be just fine , my long sat cable moves my 2 meter prime focus dish just fine for quite a few years now same cable length for my 1.2 meter channel master dish too and i do not loss anything signal wise worth talking about my cable goes inside a good thick plastic tube to protect it from any water all the way around back of my house along a very long wall back down towards the house up the gavel wall along the attic and into my room and sat box
i might have about max 15 meters at the most left from a 100 meter roll of sat coax just to connect up 1 sat dish
You'll be just fine use good quality Sat coax and everything will work great for you : )
GOOD LUCK !!

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hi barney what coax type brand do you use?.

I've been using WF125 for about 10 years or so. Low loss very thick large outside diameter but very rigid ie difficult bending where and when necessary. Great if you need to keep any signal loss very low due to large lengths.

barney115 said:

WF125 is more expensive but to be fair it is more rigid and worth it if you can afford it :thum:
than CT100 but i do use WF125 for my other smaller dishes where i only need about 30 meters length it also does work
really well but it simply wont bend like RG6 for love nor money

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will buy the WF125 as my longest run is only 30m to my big dish.:thum:

barney115 said:

WF125 is more expensive but to be fair it is more rigid and worth it if you can afford it :thum:
than CT100 but i do use WF125 for my other smaller dishes where i only need about 30 meters length it also does work
really well but it simply wont bend like RG6 for love nor money

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To be honestly fair I only bought it because in one local shop it was heavily reduced in price. Otherwise the price is too high for very long runs and it is not the easiest of coax to work with. Its not too far off my RG213 I use for ham in diameter.

Eyejob said:

Thanks for the replies, certainly gives hope of a good end result. I will update the thread when I have got sorted.

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If you do decide to purchase WF125 coax be careful where you get your connectors from. Last time I purchased some online they were well undersized and I ended up carefully hand drilling them out. Just about did it (centre core contact mainly), but watch out.

barney115 said:

i have +70 meters cable length as long as you do not have any joints it will be just fine , my long sat cable moves my 2 meter prime focus dish just fine for quite a few years now same cable length for my 1.2 meter channel master dish too and i do not loss anything signal wise worth talking about my cable goes inside a good thick plastic tube to protect it from any water all the way around back of my house along a very long wall back down towards the house up the gavel wall along the attic and into my room and sat box
i might have about max 15 meters at the most left from a 100 meter roll of sat coax just to connect up 1 sat dish
You'll be just fine use good quality Sat coax and everything will work great for you : )
GOOD LUCK !!

Click to expand...

I've not yet updated my original motorised system but now have everything to do so in the spring post-Covid-19!

I only have a cable run of about 10m (if that) and I've bought WF125, WF100 and even WF100 Twin as I'll be fitting a TM Gold Quad LNB.

One thing I have noticed with the standard RG6 cable is that the feed from the cable that powers the motor is significantly weaker than the ones not powering the motor, and that of course is down to the fact they don't have cable joints whereas the one that powers the motor does.

Over such a short run, am I wasting my time with WF125 and should I just stick to the easier to install WF100?

Blade said:

On a 10 meter run WF125 could be seen as an overkill but for the extra money involved id use Wf125 over Wf100 you no you getting as much amperage to the motor and lnb as you can and the received signal back will be the best it can be.

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...much obliged Sir - thank you!

*edit to my previous post:

I'll actually be fitting an TM-8 Gold Octo 0.1Db LNB to my main dish which is a Triax 110cm. I was in touch with the UK guy selling Gibertini OP125 dishes, but he said that the TM-2600 motor I have would need some 'Heath Robinson' adjusting to fit on the Gibertini OP125 which has put me off gertting one.

I've bought some 9ft x 48mm scaffold poles of 4mm thickness and will be fitting 2 x 'K' and 1 x 'T' 24" offset brackets to hold it all in place. Last Jan/Feb it was very windy where I am, and the pole was moving around quite a bit which I hope will be avoided with the scaffold quality pole.

I've also bought a second 80cm dish to replace a standard Sky sat dish that was pointing at 13°E. The second dish will have a TM-2 Gold LNB but won't have a motor and will be pointing at either 7°E or 10°E - does anyone have a view on which of 7°E or 10°E would make most sense? many thanks in advance of any pointers

net5ua said:

I was in touch with the UK guy selling Gibertini OP125 dishes, but he said that the TM-2600 motor I have would need some 'Heath Robinson' adjusting to fit on the Gibertini OP125 which has put me off gertting one.

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I've obtained that Gibertini 125 dish from the UK vendor, and have the same TM-2600 motor. The weight of the dish is perhaps a bit too much for that motor, but I'll see how it goes.
I was able to clamp the dish to the motor using 8x aluminium shims: short lengths around 25mm wide x 50mm long, about 4mm thick, all bent into a tight U-shape to fit over all edges of the Vs in the back clamping plate. It wasn't necessary to use the included duplicate back clamping plate, supplied as an extra ~ 25mm standoff: with those 4mm shims, the dish *just* clears the smoothly rounded corners of the TM-2600. Omitting the included backing V-plate spacer will bring the weight of the dish closer to the centre-line of the motor output shaft, and so reduce the torque/load on the motor's bearings, or so I hope.
Performance after a quick install is on a par with my TD110, but that'll only improve as I tweak it.