Reflected signal problem

Hagar

Can signals be reflected from the structure a dish is mounted on and degrade reception on what is otherwise a well aligned dish?

My dish is mounted on a balcony with an open wrought iron railing, I've noticed that if a towel or anything is left to air over the balcony the signal changes radically as if the signal is bouncing off the towel and interferring with the main signal. If this is true, is there anyway to solve the problem as I am considering "covering in" the wrought iron completely for privacy and don't want to foul up the signal permanently?

Sparky

Is the dish a mesh one, Hagar?
I shouldnt think there would be a problem, it's an odd one alright.
Do you lose signal fully or does it just dip ?
Does this only happen when the towel is wet?

Hagar

It's a solid transparent dish, for planning reason transparent was the way to go. The signal drops dramatically, enough to make RTE and BBC unwatchable. Other stations like UKTV Gold don't seem to be affected, although there might be stations affected that I never watch. Funnily enough the system test signal bars do not change. I still get strangth 100 quality 80. I never thought about the dry wet thing, I'll assume wet or it would be taken in. Weird.

Sparky

It's an odd one I may say. I suppose because it's wet, it may be dragging the signal.

Hagar

I might just try re-aligning the dish. It's on a U-bracket so I have some scope to move it about a bit without altering the load-bearing bracket.

Zaphod

Is the towel placed in front of the dish? It used to be an old installation trick to place a wet towl in front of an LNBF in analogue days to get an idea of what reception would be like in poor weather. The water absorbs the signal rather than reflecting it.

Also it would make sense that the signal would be degraded more noticeably for BBC/RTÉ as these would be that much weaker in southern France than the other transponders. I think that the digibox may only show a quality reading for the default transponder rather than for each individual one.

Hagar

No, it's not in front of the dish it would be off to one side may by 500mm at about a 40 deg angle.

Sparky

Zaphod wrote:

I think that the digibox may only show a quality reading for the default transponder rather than for each individual one.

Your correct. It shows the reading for 11.778 V

Best way to find how much your signal drops is to do Services---4---0---1---Select.
Option----5

enter 10.744 H 22.0 5/6

A signal screen comes up before you see the channels on that transponder.