Thread: Rescreening a mesh dish?

My dish's mesh has hail dents, sagging in a few spots, etc. But anyway, my wife is doing a screened in porch, and she just brought 2 rolls of aluminum screening from Lowes home. That got me to thinking, maybe I could use some of this to screen over the mesh that is there. Would this work? If I left the mesh on the dish, with this new screening being the top layer, would the satellite signal now be more affected by this top layer, or would it still be affected by the underlying mesh with the dents and stuff? I'd rather not have to remove any mesh. I would just as soon attach this screening over it. My dish is 7.5', and I was also wondering if there was a way, or at least an easy way to expand the size of my dish, by making it 8.5' in diameter? It would apparently need to remain round all the way around the parameter. Not sure how to accomplish that tho. Then of course I would need to readjust the feed. Has anyone ever taken on a similar project with good results? Any tips anyone can offer, assuming this project is doable?

Interesting thought, but, from what I have read the holes in the mesh must be very small or they will not reflect the signal to the LNB. If the screen holes are very fine, maybe. I would think the hard part would be to get it to conform/mold to the old mesh. As for making a dish bigger, I think I have seen that mentioned before. Best bet would be to start driving around and find a good 8 or 10 footer in your area and see if you can get a bigger one that way. I have seen about 8 dishes within 30 miles of my house after I started actually looking for them.

Originally Posted by RT-Cat

Interesting thought, but, from what I have read the holes in the mesh must be very small or they will not reflect the signal to the LNB. If the screen holes are very fine, maybe. I would think the hard part would be to get it to conform/mold to the old mesh.

Actually the screen holes are very fine. A roll of it cost around 25 bucks. I had no idea it was that expensive. The rolls are 36" wide by 25 foot. So at least there should be plenty in one roll to remesh this dish.

Originally Posted by RT-Cat

As for making a dish bigger, I think I have seen that mentioned before. Best bet would be to start driving around and find a good 8 or 10 footer in your area and see if you can get a bigger one that way. I have seen about 8 dishes within 30 miles of my house after I started actually looking for them.

There's actually tons of abandon BUDs around here I believe. But they're out in the rural areas, and I hardly get out in those areas much any more. But the last time I got an abandoned BUD from someone, I couldn't help but think people were staring and probably laughing as I was driving home with this huge 7.5' dish in the bed of my pickup truck. The laugh was actually on them tho, tho I couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed at the same time. Maybe if I could take one apart first, then haul it back home in sections where it wouldn't be as noticeable, then maybe that wouldn't be as bad. But knowing my luck, I probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to put it back together again.

Originally Posted by highskies

That got me to thinking, maybe I could use some of this to screen over the mesh that is there. Would this work? If I left the mesh on the dish, with this new screening being the top layer, would the satellite signal now be more affected by this top layer, or would it still be affected by the underlying mesh with the dents and stuff? My dish is 7.5', and I was also wondering if there was a way, or at least an easy way to expand the size of my dish, by making it 8.5' in diameter? It would apparently need to remain round all the way around the parameter. Not sure how to accomplish that tho. Then of course I would need to readjust the feed. Has anyone ever taken on a similar project with good results? Any tips anyone can offer, assuming this project is doable?

Aluminum screen can be very difficult to work with. If you are giving thought to overlaying a mesh panel, how would you attach the screen? It is so flexible and can be distorted so easily, I would think you might actually degrade your signal reception.

If you can currently receive what you wish to receive then there is no reason to worry about hail dents. Having said that, I have not seen your dish, and if it is really bad, then you might not be getting all of the signal that you wish to get.

One time I did overlay mesh on a paraclypse dish with mesh from another dish. The holes of the overlay mesh were much smaller, and I thought it might increase the signal quality on my dish. It had no effect. My ku signal was the same before I overlayed with that newer mesh. However that overlay mesh was much stiffer than window screen. I attached it with thin wire pulling it tight against the existing mesh then twisted the wire to ensure conformance with the original mesh parabola. If you used that method, you would severely distort the screen mesh and might degrade your signal. Not to mention get sore fingers.

About enlarging your dish:
(Here i go again with paraclypse stuff). I have a fourteen foot paraclypse dish. If one looks at paraclypse dish information, it says that they never manufacturered a fourteen foot dish, only a 14.5 dish. This dish looks exactly like a paraclypse dish but instead of having a one piece truss which would measure about seven feet long, it has a six foot truss with a "bolt-on" extension.

The extensions did not change the focal point as I had though they would. When the dish was laying on the ground I measured the dish depth which had increased as a result of the extensions, and then used the correct formula for figuring the new focal point and F/D ratio. When it was adjusted to the newly figured measurements, I received nothing. So I went back to the measurements for the twelve foot dish (ie. the original configuration for diameter and depth), and set the dish accordingly. Bingo signals received, and all is fine. I do think that maybe some ground noise is reduced, but cannot prove it. Lesson I learned is that not all focal points will move by adding length to the struts in odrer to increase that a particular dish.

A quick search of parabolic curves, shows that some parabolas retain a given focal point no matter how long the legs (radius)

Generally, I've noticed that aluminum screening from the hardware store is made of woven wire. When I look at mesh dishes, they tend to be sheets of aluminum with a lot of holes drilled or stamped into them. I wonder whether wire mesh would work.

They use the security door kind of product, in steel, for security doors. Maybe that would be better.

FYI, mesh repair.

I've got a SAMI 7.5ft mesh dish that was given to me that had a damaged panel. Those panels are screwed on with phillips head self tapping sheet metal screws so I took that panel off to see if I could straighten it. Layed that panel on the concrete floor in my garage then took a large RUBBER mallet and began to pound on the back side with the front side on the floor. Believe it or not, that thing came out great and when I installed it, I found that it fit better upside down than the way it came off so that's the way I remounted it. That dish will come within about 4 or 5 Q points of my 10ft Winegard so I'd say that my garage floor mesh straightening technique worked.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY!