Mesh or solid dish?

[Department71]

Bit of informed assistance requested. Off to Southern Burgundy in the next couple of weeks ( 40 miles north of Macon) at the moment we have a 60cm mesh dish up on the roof to pick up Freesat which has been suitable up to now, we have been told that we should be ok keeping the 60cm dish, for the narrow UK 2E beam, but I am looking into the option of upgrading to a 80cm just in case.

Now this where I am not sure, we are at the top of a hill so any wind about we will get it, I opted originally for a mesh as my view was as it gets windy any air will go through the mesh and hopefully not push the dish out of alignment, but a solid dish would not allow air to pass through therefore there could be more of a chance of it moving, any comments on this, plus is there any difference in the performance of either dish.

Next question refers to the Sky box  and the built in signal meter if I read some of posts correctly there is a default transponder frequency that the box uses, is this transponder on the Europe wide beam or on the narrow UK beam, can this be changed to one that uses say a transponder from 2E to enable to see what the strength/quality is actually like?

Sorry for the ramble, hope you can understand me. Not a whizz kid.

[Quillan]

If you're talking about aligning the dish you will need a meter. You might get away with one of these 'in line' meters you can buy on Amazon or Ebay given where you are.

You can buy 85cm dishes in the big Brico's, I have bought one in the past. Bigger than that you will need to buy in the UK or through the Internet.

Really it is going to be a 'suck it and see', you might be in for a pleasant surprise and it works as is. If not it is best to try and deal with it from the French end rather than the UK. Even better if you have a Brit or two living locally who are permanently here and have UK TV and you can ask what they have.

[Department71]

Q, thanks for your input, yes I have one of those squawk and needle meters and  have used it on three installations successfully. My thoughts were on the upgrade option, going by some of the footprint figures I have seen my 60cm dish would be just on the edge of reliable reception for our area .And as people say the bigger the better.

My concern would be about the possibility of the wind knocking the dish out of alignment if I went for a solid dish, (not keen of having to pop up the ladder each time it moves) hence the question about using a new mesh one. If I did go for a new 80cm I would go for a French sourced solid dish but if it was mesh I think i'd have to  bring it over with me as never seen these in the Brico's. Yet!

Still looking for info about the transponder question. anyone?

[Pierre ZFP]

Canàt help with the transponder but just a thought for the dish.

It doesn't have to be on the rooftop.  The extra 6 metres or so isn't going to make a difference [:)]

I have my dish on a side wall of the house just above head height where it is protected from the revailing wind (which can be fierce) and is easy to get to as I needed one time when the LNB went Pop.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Department71"]
Still looking for info about the transponder question. anyone?
[/quote]

The transponder you are looking at is the one for the channel your looking at. The TV Guide on bother the Sky and Humax box is on the European wide beam. Annoying really as often you can see whats on in the guide but when you go to the channel you get "Not signal found", it's like they are teasing you.

I am told you can change the transponder on the newer Sky+ box but you have to use the 'Installer Menu' which you will have to research how to get in to it. Sky installers use a meter to align the dish and only look at the strength and quality on the reciever at the end of the instalation to get an idea as to how good your cable is because it is not that accurate.

The best way would be to use BBC1 SD (Astra 2E) and your meter. Once you have it aligned change to Channel 5 (Astra 2F) and see what the difference, if any, is. If there is any difference adjust the dish so you get a 'balance' between the two. To be honest if you are just on the edge of the 60cm dish area they should be roughly the same for both. It is only when you get way down south there may be a slight difference between the two.

[Department71]

Q, thanks for the reply and the options.  May update anyway to give a bit more tolerence to the signal

Pierre, did in fact have a dish on the side of the house. Arrived there once, connected all up and the box stated no signal, went outside to see if the dish had moved, infact it had moved somewhere else, some toe rag had decided they wanted the dish more then me, so its on the chimney now.

[Pierre ZFP]

Ah, yeah, that would make good reception a bit tricky

[Jonzjob]

We had a new 110 dish fitted Friday and one of the questions I asked the guy was do all the holes in an airtex dish reduce the effective size. Our old one was a 60/80 oval black mesh job. He said that it would be about the same as a solid 40/60 dish. Not only can the wind blow through, but so can the signal [:-))] Logic realy init already my boy even?

So there's an answer from a pro for the last 20 years. He used a meter plugged into the LNB and than again into the co-ax going into the Sky box.

Ours is on a wall. The wall of our mezannine so if anyone wants that one they also have a climb. A good thing about it is that it's even harder to see than the old one which was on the chimney [8-|]

[AnOther]

The difference in performance for a solid dish as opposed to a perforated one (not mesh !) will be all but immeasurable. The holes are too small for KU band signals to pass through so they will be reflected pretty well the same as they would on a solid one.

The same goes for wind resistance because the holes are too small for strong winds to pass through freely.