Had pointed out earlier that K24 did a live show The Switch in my area. I was there primarily not to see Soxxy and the Djs or the dancers but to get a glimpse of the up-link satellite dish. If you are locked on Amos 5 you definitely know that K24 leases a transponder 11075 V 3330 there. One of the technician told me they rent it from Satlink. You can see the K24 action station below surrounded by people.
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The satellite dish was approximately 1.5metres from my judgement and the reflector was made of Carbon Fiber. It was not a motorized dish and the technician explained why. He told me that the automatic Dishes stations like Citizen TV use usually give errors and to him it is better to use a manually operated dish because you can get to feel the dish and you can set it up faster than a motorized dish. Below you can see snapshots of the dish itself.
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As you can notice the dish an offset type and it is facing upwards, this is not the normal Amos 5 position? Still perplexed by this elevation up to now. Take a look at the Power amplifier and with the Amplifier removed. Every thing on this dish comes out easily, notice the wave guide connector removed on the first pic. Such Power Amplifiers pump out 100 WATTS of forward power, in this case to cover the East-West footprint beamed by Amos 5 Ku band. In comparison the signet transmitter at Limuru pumps out 2.5 Kilowatts of forward power to cover an area inclusive of a radius of 80 Kilometers to cover Nairobi, Kajiado, Naivasha, Ngong, Thika e.t.c.
The LNB and wave guide, Notice the normal Black coaxial cable with F connector at the top most left part of the LNB. The other thick black cable running down from the side of the LNB and on the LNB arm is the wave guide primarily used for up-link dishes.
I regret to never have asked what brand type the LNB was but Power Amplifier was branded Starcom so maybe everything was from the same company.
As it was being dismantled I notices that it came off quite easily by lifting some sort of latch at the bottom. All the reflector pieces were then put in that bag you see at the back of the last picture. Also all the pieces were held in place hanging by the last piece on the last picture below too.
There was no piece that was longer than half a meter that comprised the whole dish. Everything fitted on that Bus.
Can anyone tell me why the dish was facing upwards? The question answered by the technician is that it was aimed at Amos 5, nothing more nothing less. Still scratching my head on that issue. My explanation is that maybe they installed the dish upside down because the LNB arm was on the East side and my 65cm dish LNB arm pointed on the same satellite Amos 5 was on the West side.
