I am now into trees at my location, pointing at 45 West from southern Wisconsin, but previously was able to get acceptable signals up to 2 years ago, on 45 C-band, using either an 8 foot Paraclipse Hydro or a well-tuned 10-foot mesh antenna.
Customers in the Milwaukee area have no problem with a 10-footer on 45 West, so I would suspect that it could be the tuning on your system. Perhaps you are not tracking the arc completely, or your skew setting is off.