| Converting a Primestar / Hughs satellite dish was something I wanted to do a long time. I seemed to be the only one in the world that could not find a dish until a friend forgot he had one and offered it to me.
Refinishing: I took the whole dish apart to clean it and re sprayed it flat black. I put about 2-3 coats of paint seeing the Walmart flat black was only .98 cents a can. I did not spray the mount it self since it was in good shape, but I will spray it just to match color. I'm sort crazy on aesthetics.
Shims: I grabbed a 18 inch length of Trex composite decking as my friend Spyider did in the satforums and used a drill hole saw cutting the donuts our using 2.5 in for the outer and 1.5 inch for the inner holes. Once I had 3 ready I cut a notch out so that the mount clamp would compress the Trex shim arround the motor shaft. You could also use different size of PVC pipe to achive the same purpace. It is a pretty simple project to do and the pictures are self explanitory on how to do it.
Signal: I found the signal levels 15 -20 percent less than a Wingarg 76cm dish. It is difinatly not a good choice for IA5 since there has been trouble with the quality of the transponders as of 11-20-2006. When they replace the satellite 3rd quarter of 2007 I am shure it will be much better
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