Lost reception due to high winds-advice sought

lightnin

Last night lost reception on all three (freesat hd,ffs sky hd,fta) receivers (0% level & quality), figured dish just needs realignment due to high winds last night. This was a self install and at the time i mounted all my gear on two used lighting poles that were being dumped and became available to me. As my site is fairly exposed at the southern end my 90cm dish felt the full force of the high winds last night and the poles fairly swayed in the high winds even though i still didn't lose any reception on terrestrial(DTT+Analogue).
My questions are, to prevent further nuisance realignments as this is the start of the bad weather season would i be better mounting my dish closer to the ground to reduce the wind capture by the dish? Would i lose signal quality the closer i got to the ground. I bought a 90cm dish as i plan to go down the multi-lnb route sometime in the future. All advice/criticisms are welcome.

Here's my current set up:

Fortec Star 90cm with Quad LNB
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Satellite/Terrestrial & Broadband setup mounted on poles behind garage
[IMG][/img]

Line of sight roughly facing SE for 28.2e reception from rear of garage
[IMG][/img]

fat-tony

Interesting set-up:)

As the view to the SE is unobstructed, you could mount the dish as low as you want - there is no degradation in signal strength or quality. The only practical issue is whether someone could accidentally knock the dish. A compromise would be to mount it about 10 feet off the ground or in the shelter of the gable.

lightnin

fat-tony wrote: »

Interesting set-up:)

As the view to the SE is unobstructed, you could mount the dish as low as you want - there is no degradation in signal strength or quality. The only practical issue is whether someone could accidentally knock the dish. A compromise would be to mount it about 10 feet off the ground or in the shelter of the gable.

I did try and mount it first time on the gable but found that the bracket that came with it had not sufficient stand off from the gable thereby reducing my turning angle towards east. My first attempt resulted in only receiving a lot of foreign channels from 19e. I figured i would try it on the pole as everything else was on them and this resulted in me being able to receive 28.2e. I might try and start lowering the dish down the pole and see how far i can go before i start losing signal quality. I'm not to worried about accidental knocks as at least at the lower level its more readily accessible for realignment.

fat-tony

I meant placing it lower on the pole. You won't lose quality, even if it's practically on the ground, unless you stand in front of the dish. The satellite is over 40,000 kilometres away - a few more metres are not going to affect quality. Best signal is obtained by pointing the dish accurately and adjusting the skew of the LNB in the holder until the quality bar is at max on your receiver.

kbell

If your budget allowed, i'd get a ground mount pole set up for your dish and keep it just a bit away from the gable end.
It would be nicely sheltered from the wind and easily re-aligned if need be.