The Drake ESR240A
Here's the gem of my whole system, the Drake ESR240A Earth Station Receiver. It's never actually needed anything repaired but I had to re-calibrate it so much that I'd lost all the bolts to the cover. Inside there's a whole bank of trim pots for the channels so if you ever need to tune one of these grab a copy of the Wildfeeds List and have fun. There's also trimmers for the 6.2 and 5.8 audio buttons, a trim for the polarity control, another for the odd/even offset, etc... Get the point? It was built to be calibrated. Aside from that just make sure you have the wires on the back hooked up in the right places and it works. I also went through a long period of adjusting the channels every other month until I figured out what the Cable Comp was for. The Cable Comp is used to compensate for tuning errors induced by your signal cable so it can be used to adjust for any wholesale drifting of the tuner.
Here's a schematic of the back panel:
And here's each connectors function:
East/West : Actuator controller signal
+15 Volts : Power to the LNA/Block converter
Ground : Power to the LNA/Block
TM : Signal to dish peaking meter
Com : Polarotor controls
Hor : " "
Vert : " "
Pulse : Polarotor controls
GND : " "
+6 Volts : " "
TV RF Out : Channel 3 or 4 to the TV
70 Mhz In : Signal line from the satellite
IF Gain : Adjuster for IF Gain
Cable Comp : Adjuster for tuner-shift over signal cable losses
Sub Car : Sub-carrier signal to the SA24 audio tuner
Comp : Composite video output
Video Line Out : Video line out
Audio Line Out : Audio line out, duh!
Video Inv/Norm : Inverts the video signal
REM On/Off : Turns the remote on and off
Skip Tune/Normal : Skips every other channel (to save wear on polarotor)
TV Ant : Signal in from antenna
TV RCVR : Signal out to TV
ESR 240 RF : Input from ESR240A (kind of wacky, huh? Read on...)
If you can't figure out how to get it to work with a VHF antenna or cable don't feel stupid. It's kind of weird. Here's a schematic of how to wire it:
Once you have this hooked up you use the Program button to switch between satellite and antenna.
And one last bit of trivia, a guide to programming the SA24 audio receiver. I've never seen one of these but I hear they are out there.
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Thanks to Daniel Harvey ([email protected]) for the obscure info.
Last updated 2/9/00
