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Last Changed 11/14/2010
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Our Winegard AS-2003 had stopped working because a problem with new
satellites in space and a hard-wired control board that could not be
updated.
See
Tech Changes
for what can happen when technology changes but nothing is broke.
We took advantage a program Winegard offered to buy
the new style Trav'ler SK-1000 automatic roof dish.
This SK-1000 is a triple headed dish so the disadvantage of the
single headed
AS-2003
only being able to look at one satellite at a
time is eliminated.
The design of the Trav'ler SK-1000 also shows that Winegard designed
future upgradeability/changes so problems like the new satellite can
be resolved with a complete system replacement.
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The first thing was to remove the old AS-2003 dish. Nothing
special, just scrap the old caulk away to access the screw heads,
remove the screws, and disconnect the cables. |
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We then cleaned the area to remove old caulk.
Then we filled in the old holes with caulk. The new dish will cover the old holes but we wanted to
make sure the holes could not be a source of leakage.
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click on images to enlarge |
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click on images to enlarge |
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This
is the new SK-1000 dish. We started to prepare to lift it up
to the roof. We wire tied the cable to the arms and then added
some rope at the center of the dish to create a handle. |
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We used Mark Shelly's ladder and Mark
S. carried the dish up to the top
of the ladder. Mark B. grabbed the dish from the roof.
You can see the rope used as a handle as it was being removed. |
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click on images to enlarge |
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click on images to enlarge |
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We ran a double bead of caulk under the edge of the new dish and
then screwed in down. We then caulked the heads of the screws
and the edge of the dish plate. We then went back and filled
is with caulk between the screw heads to eliminate places for water
to puddle.
We made the decision to use the existing coax and
control cables with
the new dish.
The existing
control cable had 9 wires and the new cable has only 6.
The wire colors in the new cable were all present in the old signal
cable which made for an easy connection later. |
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The original cables were long as they had to move with the AS-20003
dish as it rotated around.
The new dish handles cable rotation internally so the existing
cables had to be shortened..
We started with the coax cables, cutting them and installing new
compression ends. |
click on images to enlarge |
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We temporarily connected the control box with the new
control cable so
we could elevate the dish arm.
With the arm elevated, we could attach the reflector.
We could also caulk
the base edge under the arm. |
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This is the control box temporarily connected with the new control
cable.
We used an extension cord to get AC voltage up on the roof for the
temporary install. |
click on images to enlarge |
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We ran the dish up and let is lock in on the satellites and checked
with the TV before cutting the control cable.
Testing before cutting the control cable and splicing makes trouble-shooting
easier. |
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Then we stowed the dish before continuing with the rest of the
cabling.
We cut the new control cable and spliced to the existing control
cable. we use
Rescue Tape to seal the splices as we have found
it to be superior to electrical tape. |
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click on images to enlarge |
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click on images to enlarge |
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This was the original control panel. Travel Supreme built
this box to hold the control panel and mounted it inside a rear
overhead cabinet.
We had hoped to reused the box to hold the power brick that came
with the new controller module but it was too small.. |
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We use wire-ties and clips to mount the power brick
for the controller where the old control
panel box was mounted.
We spliced the other end of the new control cable to the existing
control cable.
We used wood blocks and Velcro tape to secure the controller and to
elevate it a bit to make it easier to see in the overhead cabinet. |
click on images to enlarge |
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Since the Winegard SK-1000 uses a standard Dish Pro triple LNBF
head, we can now use Dish separators to use one cable to feed both
inputs to each of our DVRs. We could not do this with the old
AS-2003 as it used
voltage switching and separators could be used.
This simplified the cabling used for our TVs. |
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When we removed the old AS-2003, we found that the roller on the arm
had worn a grove in the fiberglass roof. We some epoxy
in the grove to seal it.
Then we put down a piece of Eternabond Tape where the new roller
touches the roof to act as a sacrifical wear point. It is there in
the photo, it just blends with the roof. |
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