C-band Skew polarizer servo

Skew Meter2

How about an informative tool that will tell you when your satellite feed is vertical or horizontal. I made this “Skew Clock” in about 30 minutes. This Skew meter is perfect for: trouble shooting skew problems, DSR-905s are notorious, DXers that forget their polarity while controlling several slaved units.

I remembered my first C/Ku band feed horn had a Ku feed that had been added to an existing C-band feedhorn scalar ring. The Ku feed was added by drilling through the side of the scalar ring. That feed horn had separate servos for C & Ku band, hooked in parallel. So why not make a “Servo/Dish Meter”. I’ve been running my “Skew Meter” for about three months with no problems. Just hook up an additional polarizer motor at the receiver. The three wires are parallel with existing servo wires. If you want, just add a servo with some whiteout on one side of the stud. Or get fancy and integrate it into a clock body. I was able to secured a small one inch screw to the shaft, epoxied an hour hand to the screw.

If you want to get real fancy, add an LED to the 5 volt (red wire) (add a 900 ohm to 1.2k ohm resistor in line). Hook up the LED’s longer wire to +5 volts (red), and the shorter end to ground (black). LED’s have very low current draw (30Ma) and shouldn’t cause any harm. This LED will Light whenever the Sero motor is activated. While you’re at it, you can add a two color LED to sense dish movement. Put a 5volt or 3volt zener diode and a two colored LED across the motor wires. The dish movement LED lights up green while the dish moves West, Red as the dish moves East. (Drawing, picture, and Mpg clips below)