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Amiko Premium D-401

Amiko Premium D-401 Review – This Diseqc switch is pretty small and robust. The plastic casing around it not only keeps out the rain but is also used to mount the switch at the dish (or elsewhere, although this is the normal place), and it has a flange with holes for screwing to a wall and slots for a cable tie around the dish pole – however, the ridges on the back of the case don’t really ‘grip’ a normal sized pole, so this is not an especially effective method to use. The switch ‘can’ is permanently fixed inside the casing, sealed all round except at the bottom, where the connectors stick out.

Amiko-Premium-D-401 Amiko Premium D-401

Amiko Premium D-401

A sliding rain shield pulls down around them in the same way as is employed by most LNBs. However, the rain shield slides down by only about 12mm so it doesn’t completely cover each F-plug connected to the switch – it leaves about 7mm of the barrel exposed, including the end where the cable connects into it. We would recommend that you use plenty of silicone grease on the F-plug and socket, or even go back to selfamalgamating tape to make sure the switch is completely waterproofed. The connections on the switch are only 15mm apart (centre to centre) which makes fitting the F-plugs very fiddly – but then again, there are LNBs that are much worse than this. The D-401 seemed to provide next to no impediment to the signals in the test setups, and operated faultlessly throughout the tests.

Pros

  • Small to tuck away at the dish
  • Light
  • Easy-to-use rain shield for waterproofing

Cons

  • Tightly spaced connectors make installation tricky
  • Rain shield doesn’t fully cover connectors

Amiko Premium D-401 Specifications

  • Fully DiSEqC 1.0 compliant
  • For switching between 4 Satellites
  • Frequency Range: 950~2400MHz
  • Insertion Loss: 3dB
  • Power Passing: 500mA (max)
  • For outdoor usage

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