dishpointer obstacle questions

[xilbus]

Hi everyone,

I have a question on the dishpointer site. How accurate is the obstacle option ? I want to setup my dish on a pole at the end of my yard but my house could be in the way. I zoomed into my location onthe map and put the marker at the end of my yard and with all the sats that i choose i never got a red flag caused by my house. By the way its a 2 story house. If my house was a problem would dishpointer tell me ?

 

[boom]

dishpointer is pretty accurate...you have to click "show obstacles" and drag that second marker to your house. It'll tell you how high an obstacle must be to mess up your signal.

 

[xilbus]

Thanks, I did a few tests around my work building. My work building is 13 storys high and i put the marker on the street infront and i choose a few sats that would go past the building and the obstacle marker did pop up on the building roof and it didnt for my house so i guess im ok

 

[rgk]

I don't believe dishpointer knows how tall the obstacles are. You have to figure that out yourself.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Hi everyone,

I have a question on the dishpointer site. How accurate is the obstacle option ? I want to setup my dish on a pole at the end of my yard but my house could be in the way. I zoomed into my location onthe map and put the marker at the end of my yard and with all the sats that i choose i never got a red flag caused by my house. By the way its a 2 story house. If my house was a problem would dishpointer tell me ?

dishpointer is pretty accurate...you have to click "show obstacles" and drag that second marker to your house. It'll tell you how high an obstacle must be to mess up your signal.

Xilbus,

As Boom stated, the obstacle marker does not appear automatically. You must select the "show obstacle marker" by checking the option that is off to the right side of the image somewhere.

After you have that option selected, the red flag appears and you can move it around with your mouse. Position the flag along the green LOS beacon (line) to wherever you see a possible obstruction. The pop-up window will tell you the maximum height that the obstacle can be without interfering and the distance from the dish to that obstacle.

You will have to use some trig to determine the TRUE height of the obstacle yourself. This is fairly simple. From your proposed dish installation site, you need to determine the angle to the top of the obstacle and the distance to that obstacle. Then take the tangent of the angle multiplied by the distance to determine the height of the obstacle. You will, of course, have to add in the additional height of the point where you took the reading for your angle (normally your eye level height).

To determine the angle, you can simply use a small tube and an inclinometer. Look through the tube to aim at the top of the obstacle and have a friend measure the angle of the tube as read on the inclinometer. You can use something like the cardboard tube for a a paper towel roll, but the smaller the diameter of the tube is, the more accurate you will be. I used a square metal tube with about 1/4" inside dimensions.

RADAR