TIL the hard way that a cheap TV dish won't catch weather satellite signals...

I used to just grab any old DirecTV dish off Craigslist for my builds, but after spending 2 months trying to lock onto NOAA 19 with a 18-inch one, I switched to a 36-inch offset dish I found at a ham radio swap meet near Denver last spring. The difference was night and day, I started getting clear images of cloud patterns on the first try. Has anyone else had trouble with small dishes for L-band signals?

3 comments

3 Comments

roberts.leo20d ago

night and day" seems a little dramatic man. I've picked up NOAA sats with a 90cm dish just fine, the 18-inch was probably just garbage or your LNB was fried.

the_fiona19d ago

Huh, I actually read somewhere that the 18-inch dishes are pretty hit or miss for GOES specifically because the beamwidth is so narrow. Like you need to be dead on with the pointing or it just falls apart. I mean a 90cm dish gives you way more margin for error, so it makes sense you had better luck. Maybe that's why your buddy in Phoenix got static, could be a super tiny misalignment thing.

kim_ramirez320d ago

My buddy in Phoenix tried a 18-inch dish for GOES and it just gave him static lol.