satellite dish

[skippy_nz]

is there any difference in Sat dishes ? ie is this one ok http://www.trademe.co.nz/Electronics-pho...461851.htm

cheers
skip

[sub]

There are some types of different satellite dish, but that will be fine for KU signals, like those used by Freeview.

[skippy_nz]

There are some types of different satellite dish, but that will be fine for KU signals, like those used by Freeview.

sweet - thanks for the quick reply - do you think in wlg i should get a bigger dish or is 75cm ok enough to stop the dreaded rain fade i hear people talking about ?

[AndyPro]

You can never truly eliminate rainfade. It's jsut a fact of life when you've got 62 miles of atmosphere between you and the transmitter and then another 22 thousand miles of space (though that actually has little effect in the overall picture).

The standard (around here in the US anyways) is 18cm. Double that to 36cm and you get a bit more than 4 times the signal gathering power. Double that again and you'll have another 4x gathering power. (about 12dB gain over a small dish, going from say 30 to 42dB of gain from the dish alone).

A 75cm dish will have about 16x the gathering power of a "standard" dish. Which still isn't that much, but it's a heck of a lot better than normal.

If you really want to reasonably "avoid" rainfade, you'll need to go with a dish the size of the old C-band goodies, or step up to an earth station class dish in the tens of meters.

You will, however, be much much better off than someone with an itty bitty dish!

--Andy P

[sub]

The standard dish here in NZ is 60cm, so its not a big difference. It'll probably help a bit, but you're likely to still see it sometimes.