3 Dongle and Sat Dish

pa990

I'm thing of doing a bit of experimenting next week.

Heres what i had in mind

Attach a 3 Internet dongle to the arm of a small sat dish, one of the lidl camping ones.

My theory is: That it should give me improved signal, i've seen similar things being done with wifi on youtube.

SO.. before i start gathering up all the stuff i need, i have one simple question.

Am i wasting my time ??

jor el

Are you wasting your time? Probably, yes. Though I have heard of someone doing something like this before with a sky dish. The camping dish in Lidl is very small, 40cm I think, so may not do much for you.

You'd also have to make sure you point the dish exactly at the right mast, and depending on your location, you may have cover from multiple masts. You may also not be able to pinpoint the mast's position, unless you can physically see it, and even then, a degree or two out of line would cancel any benefit you might get.

Here's a guy that's done this, though not a lot of improvement. Putting a modem outside would normally see an immediate signal increase, so I'd have my doubts about the dish doing anything extra at all.

pa990

the dongle is currently outside, inside there is no reception.

i'm out in the sticks, and i know where the mast is.. dont have line of sight though.. but that shouldnt matter

Sponge Bob

A sat dish is "offset" by 20 degrees from prime so it needs to be 20 degrees below straight at the mast and apparently pointing to the ground ....unless the mast is 20 degrees above you on a level.

Then you may hit the sweet spot and it may have an effect

niallb

I've had success with this in the past.
Go to flickr, and search for Dunsany 3G for my pics.
This was a while ago, but it made quite a difference.
I used just a camping dish, and mounted it on a microphone boom stand so that I could move it in all directions to find the sweet spot. I used it to scan the entire house to get the strongest signal.

The dish makes it much easier to lock on and get a signal, but won't really improve speed as it doesn't bring you any nearer to the tower. If you're seeing a lot of dropped packets, you may improve your speed as it will make the link more reliable.
All the improvement is in one direction though, and you need to place the dongle exactly where the LNB would be in the normal way.
Most important to pay attention to Sponge Bob's advice about the 20 degrees offset.
Try to think of the dish as a section of a bigger dish that would put the LNB/Dongle in the centre, and then aim that imaginary dish... if you get my drift... :-)

it's possible to get a reliable signal that fades away completely within half a meter,
so once you get it, make sure you can put it back exactly where you find it.

My longer term solution was to put the SIM into a 3G phone which I stuck to the window glass, and then use bluetooth to connect to that.

siteviewer.ie is a bit dated, but will give you a good idea of where you should be aiming.

storm2811

If you need better signal they have this thing called a repeater,it's a signal booster,the person who sold you the dongle should have gave you one if you have crap signal!