6 foot dish for KU?

[MichaelFTA]

Is that 6 panel dish from WSI good for KU? Would I get better signal quality with that than the 90cm hotdish?

 

[Mr Tony]

welcome

The 6 foot dishes can be used for KU but you need a specific LNB for it. I use the prime focus KU LNB from SatelliteAV but in most cases you wont see a difference. If you were on the edge of the footprint for a satellite it would help. But you noted you're in SD. I'm in suburban Minneapolis and I have really only used the 6 footer for KU on a couple feeds that the 36" were weak on. Otherwise there would be minimal difference on most stations.

 

[MichaelFTA]

It it help with a satellite feed that is weak?

 

[MichaelFTA]

Will it help that is? Or am I better off trying to go with a larger solid dish?

 

[mr3p]

I can't say that I've done any scientific comparisons but using the lnb iceberg mentioned above without any serious tweaking, my 1.8m Ku reception is similar to my 1.2m offset dish.

 

[MichaelFTA]

Wow that would be better than my 36"er?

 

[MichaelFTA]

Anybody out there wanting to sell a 1.2 meter dish?? Nice used real cheap? LOL.

 

[Mr Tony]

It it help with a satellite feed that is weak?

it depends on the feed. The only times I've really used the 6 footer for KU were the 3 following reasons (off the top of my head)
-North Dakota state played Northern Iowa this fall in FB. The game was on AMC1 which as we all the skew for AMC1 KU is off by 26 degrees or so. SO I used that 6 footer to get the game
-A few times I used the dish for the Hawaii football games that were on KU...the 36" would have worked fine but I wanted to make sure the signal didnt go out
-North Dakota hockey the feed this year has been very weak so I use the 6 footer. No issues with it then

The one drawback of that size of dish is aiming it can be very difficult due to the narrow "beam". Half the time if I aim it where I think it should go and then blind scan to see where the heck I am on the arc

 

[Mr Tony]

I can't say that I've done any scientific comparisons but using the lnb iceberg mentioned above without any serious tweaking, my 1.8m Ku reception is similar to my 1.2m offset dish.

sounds about right. My old 1.2m dish is busy being fixed (brackets broke) but the signals are about the same on both

 

[mr3p]

MichaelFTA, if there is a single satellite which you aren't getting good Ku on your signal on your 36in dish, the 1.8m WSI dish would be an inexpensive way to ensure good signal although motorizing it will require an actuator and V/G box compared to an HH motor for a 1m/1.2m dish. Just something to consider in your decision process.

 

[Mr Tony]

The only satellite that we have issues with KU in the north is Satmex5 (116.8)...footprint is real bad the further north you go. But then again if I wanted to use the 6 footer for those couple of Spanish channels I'd use a C-Band LNB and aim at 113W for those