I've been thinking to purchase a 1.8M Fortec dish for C band only. I knew just where I could mount the thing. When out to my motorhome and grabbed my Align-A-Site. I bought it for use in the RV. Never know where to set up a dish and have a view of the sky versus tree branches from campground to campground.
Well using the siting tool discovered my "perfect" spot would not be able to see the satellite I wanted at 99 degrees. So walked around and tried other spots in the backyard and haven't found one that has a good view of the birds. Was wanting to have the dish in the backyard and out of sight. But no spot in the backyard will work.
This morning tried a spot in front of the house. I found one spot in the front yard that looks good. But in moving a couple feet over I noticed my clear view of the sky now had a metal furnace pipe in the picture.
All my use of the Align-A-Site has been on Ku and I only worried about the center of the little 18" dish. But with the six foot dish, seems I should check where the two sides and the bottom of the dish would be also. I'd think the top shouldn't normally be a worry unless putting the dish under an eave or something.
So my question is how much should I concern myself with a 8" diameter metal furnace pipe 10-15' from the dish blocking the signal? Is there some formula for calculating the RF shadow? Seems I could just figure the square footage of the dish and subtract the square footage of the vent pipe? Then figure the signal strength would drop by that percentage.
Well using the siting tool discovered my "perfect" spot would not be able to see the satellite I wanted at 99 degrees. So walked around and tried other spots in the backyard and haven't found one that has a good view of the birds. Was wanting to have the dish in the backyard and out of sight. But no spot in the backyard will work.
This morning tried a spot in front of the house. I found one spot in the front yard that looks good. But in moving a couple feet over I noticed my clear view of the sky now had a metal furnace pipe in the picture.
All my use of the Align-A-Site has been on Ku and I only worried about the center of the little 18" dish. But with the six foot dish, seems I should check where the two sides and the bottom of the dish would be also. I'd think the top shouldn't normally be a worry unless putting the dish under an eave or something.
So my question is how much should I concern myself with a 8" diameter metal furnace pipe 10-15' from the dish blocking the signal? Is there some formula for calculating the RF shadow? Seems I could just figure the square footage of the dish and subtract the square footage of the vent pipe? Then figure the signal strength would drop by that percentage.
