Quote:
Originally Posted by HD-man
Hi all,
I have a question regarding dish orientation. My house is backing trees (I live in Northern Virginia). The distance from my house to the trees is approximately 80 feet. I am assuming the height of the trees to be around 80 feet. So a the calculation would give me an angle of 45 degrees. Thus, I would not be able to overcome the trees. However, if I install the dish on the roof of my house, This would reduce the height by 30 feet and thus the angle would be reduced to 30 degrees. Since miost satelites have an elevation of 40 deg. (from where I live), I should be able to capture a signal. Am I correct to assume that? My ultimate question would be: If some branches of tree are in the line of sight between the dish orientation and the satellite, is it possible to still get a signal? Do any of you dish expet have any thoughts on that?
Thank you for your help
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If you can hold off another month, and wait until about the last couple days in September, about 10 days after the equinox, the sun will be following the arc that the sats are in, and you can tell exactly where you will and won't have a view. Alternatively, someone posted a nice little home-made angle meter that you could use to measure the angle to clear the trees.
Don't forget that while the elevation of sats to your south will be around 45 degrees, that the sats to the east or west will be lower, so it is nice to be able to watch the sun through the day, and find a place that always has sun, and if you are interested in specific sats, you can know exactly where specific sats are.
Re signal blocked by trees, I agree with the other response. I am located in the woods, and my view of the sat is over some trees, and under other trees, and it has been a constant struggle to cut off limbs to get a view. Pine trees are a killer. A few light leaves don't completely block the signal, but dense leaves and/or wet leaves is a killer. When I first moved here, I cut limbs, and had a view from C4 to somewhere around 20 deg over the atlantic, but now I can only get sats west of G5 (or whatever it's called now) in the winter, and can't get much east of PAS9. I couldn't even get AMC6 or SBS6 until I recently cut down a pine tree.
But if taking off specific limbs is an option, I've had pretty good luck with one of those rope saws. Ie I'd use a fishing rod to throw a line over a limb, often some 30 or 40' up, even higher once, and then I'd pull the rope saw over the limb, and cut it off. This kept me going for a few years, but it turns out that when you cut off a limb, trees tend to grow a whole bunch of smaller limbs to replace it, and my view is now blocked again. But that helped for about 8 years.