It just depends, really. If you're looking at the hobbyist point of view, you can certainly try a 6ft dish. Will the signal go out when it rains? Maybe. For guaranteed reception, a 12ft or 14.5ft would work...and even then it's possible that a transponder or two might not be picked up depending on where you're at. I'm assuming you're wanting a blunt, sure fire answer, but unfortunately we're not at you're location and we don't know what equipment you might have access too and haven't tested out that equipment. And THEN, we don't know what satellite you want and what channels you want to receive.