45cm Fiberglass DBS Dishes

Most DBS dishes you'll see have a reflector made from stamped steel, but these two are fiberglass. Fiberglass dishes have the advantage of being more dimensionally stable, especially in high winds, but they're also more expensive, which explains why these are so rare and unusual. There wasn't any labeling on these, so I have no idea who made them. A Winegard elevation bracket from a common steel DirecTV or Dish Network dish fits these dishes, so that's the most likely possibility. I also don't know whether these were made for DirecTV, Dish Network or both, but I think they're very early DirecTV dishes circa 1994. The LNBFs on the two I have were made by CalAmp and NJR, both made in Japan, and both work perfectly, with a signal to noise ratio about 4 dB better than a brand new Dish Pro LNBF.

These antennas were in pretty good shape despite their age. After a thorough scrubbing with a wire brush and hot TSP to remove any lingering dirt, I sprayed them both down with a coat of flat gray Rustoleum Universal paint. The elevation bracket and feed arm got a coat of high gloss gray. The hardware was in good enough shape I didn't have to replace anything.

I'm not actually using these for anything in particular right now, but it's nice to have a couple of high quality DBS antennas around for testing purposes.