Dish line of site

[turbonetuk]

got a 1.4 metre dish
pointing at 1 west in the pic

not very good signal ( about 60% ,used to be 99% last year )


is the tree the problem ?

its about 20/30 feet away


just want a second opinion before i start checking other things

should be larger pic if you click on it


63757

[Mickha]

It could be the tree, but it's difficult to judge, from photographs.
Why not try dishpointer.com, type in your location, or postcode, select Thor, 0.8W, from the drop down satellite box, zoom in on the map, moving the green icon, to where you have the dish sited, then use the obstacle checker option, and move the red icon to where the Tree is located, this should give you an approximate height of how tall an obstacle needs to be to cause you any problems, at about 20-30 feet, 6-9 Meters, the object would have to be about 3.5 - 5 Meters high, to cause a problem, 12 - 17 feet.

[Dark Cloud]

Micha has it spot-on, I have loads of trees near me and that APP shows what I can and can't get.

[echelon]

if other sats to the left are ok, then I think trees are the problem, which if they are deciduous the signal will improve in winter when there are no leaves

use dishpointer as mentioned above, but trees certainly seem to be your problem if you have ruled everything else out, especially on eastern satellites (if eastern ones are ok and you are tracking the arc correctly)

[turbonetuk]

yes east is fine .
cant get nothing past the weak 1 west

dishpointer it is

[TonyO]

Move your dish five or six feet to the left and see if the signal improves, or have a gentle word with your neighbour and ask if you can trim the edge of his tree because it interferes with your tv reception, most peeps are ok about this sort of thing.

[turbonetuk]

looked at dishpointer
the tree to the left of the mark has grown much bigger higher and wider now

63760



so i dont stand a chance of getting anything west

it says 5.9m ,but i think this is way higher than that

going to try the dishpointer on my phone now see what that says

but got a plan if i cant get west ,i will just have this large dish fixed

then another dish motorised for west

[turbonetuk]

this pic was with my phone ,dishpoiner
is this correct ?

63761

[Dark Cloud]

yip, that's it. I have about two more years on next door's trees before he trims them or they get diesel in them.

[turbonetuk]

Excellent .

thanks guys

[digicon]

deffo the tree although its not 100% accurate its good enough in most cases your distance to your object line of site is just over 10m approx which the app suggests that anything over 6m high would cause a problem, so basically if you kept the dish there you would have to elevate it higher to cut down on the necessary clearance.

Probably easier to move it over a few feet

[Scream]

Is the DishPointer app for your phone any good? The reviews aren't given it positive feedback. My signal has went down badly over the past two years and I see a few trees have grown dramatically and I was gonna blame them.

I have installed an app called Satfinder which seems to be similar.