Can rain fade be reduced by installing dish in covered area

[Aleki]

I'm looking forward to my VOOM install next week and wanted to get your take whether or not installing the dish in a covered area would reduce rain fade. I have a covered balcony that faces south so I have the option of hanging the dish on the railing where it would not take up any space on my porch but would be exposed and would get rained on and the second option is to set up a mounting pole on the porch itself that would enable me to have the dish mounted under the porch roof.

Most of my neighbors have implemented the first option but my porch is in such a way that I can try option 2 and still have dish pointing in the right direction.

Would this help at all? The only difference here would be that with option 2 the dish and LNB would not get wet at all if it rained. I imagine it would help considering that water rushing down across the face of the dish and LNB possibly contributes to rain fade. I'm totally ne to this so please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance

 

[DarrellP]

NOPE! It's the density of water due to the sat being so low that is the issue, not the rain on your dish or LNB.

 

[bbtkd]

NOPE! It's the density of water due to the sat being so low that is the issue, not the rain on your dish or LNB.

The effect of rain fade on your signal depends on how much rain the signal must pass through (as mentioned above), AND the strength of the signal to begin with. If the sat is more overhead (such as with DirecTV) you would get less rain fade than with a satellite which is low on the horizon, since signals from a satellite lower on the horizon would go through more clouds/rain AND the satellite on the horizon would typically have lower signal strength and more signal noise to begin with. You can and will still get rain fade with sats that are more directly overhead, but less of it.

You can't eliminate fain fade, since you can't eliminate rain. You can increase the overall signal strength, so that when the effect of the rain fade is subtracted you still have a usable signal. If the Rainbow satellite had more power and/or was more directly overhead, we could get by with 18" dishes and would have less rain fade.

BTW - one of the reasons that satellites low on the horizon have lower signal strength is that aiming the dish closer to the earth increases signal noise, which the satellite signal must overcome. Terrestrial signal sources such as microwave towers can also interfere with satellite signals. I doubt that many installers are really aware of all of this. I work at a satellite uplink/downlink site and we have had cases where we have had to track down terrestrial interference which was impacting our signals. We hook up a spectrum analyzer, then swing the dish around to find the peak for the interfering signal, map out towers in that path, and then call the FCC to see who is active at the given frequency on the tower in question. I suspect that some home systems are impacted but few installers are capable of detecting this. Sometimes filters can be applied to reduce the problem.

 

[Aleki]

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll save the porch space and put the dish over the railing.