Home mounting of WiFi antenna - advice sought for a too-short antenna mast

I wanted to go with Dish Networks originally. They carry UCTV (the last remaining educational TV station), but DirecTV didn't. However, I have to shoot through a hole in the trees to see 101. No view of any of the other birds as they're either behind the trees|hills, or require placing a 2nd dish in an awkward location to go through the hole:

The photos were taken during the previous solar outage, where the sun gets behind the satellite and temporarily trashes reception.

I've been with DISH for four years. In that time, they've had to replace a DVR at least five times and they still suck; freezes, lost sound sync, dropped picture, and all. That's with a perfect sky! When it rains there's a 50/50 chance we'll lose signal for at least some period. I have *none* of that with DTV (a big thunderstorm caused a LOS for maybe five minutes, once). I like the DVR setup much better, too, though I don't have a "Hopper".

Do the math. The CONUS geosync birds vary in elevation from 41 to 47 degrees elevation at longitude 122. In order to clear a 150ft tree, one would need more than 150ft of land clear of trees to the south. On the local postage stamp size lots, that's unlikely. (One acre is 208 x 208ft). However, if the slope is downward to the south, that effectively shrinks the trees a bit, which will help.

I've gone through 2 receivers and am now on my 2nd DirecTV DVR. The first two receivers had serious sensitivity issues and an incredibly slow remote control response time. The first DVR developed lousy noises from the Seagate SATA drive. Rather than have it fixed, I opted for a better model. I wanted to get the HD model, but without the HD service. However, they wanted $100 for handling and another 2 year contract extension, so I declined.

Incidentally, when I hear symptoms like the one's you describe, I usually assume that the dish mounting is loose, the dish misaligned, the coax is soaked with water, the connectors are falling apart, or various combinations of these. It's not unusual for me to find a dish that has very loose lag screws into the beam or a flimsy pipe.

I've also seen LNB's full of water. I used to do some rather profitable work cleaning up the mess after the installer put in his allocation of 1.0 hrs maximum installation time. I have an ancient Sathawk 3000 meter which is a big help. Dish alignment has to be within 0.5 degrees, which is really tricky. The bigger dishes are even more critical, especially since there are about 8 birds scattered around each major (101-119) 3 degree slot.

Note the photos at:

The LNB is a hand picked 1.7dB NF device. The dish is an 80cm diameter dish. The added 4-5dB gain from the larger dish gives me a much better rain fade margin. Rain fade in Santa Cruz CA runs about

Incidentally, an easy way to see how much rain fade your system can handle is to put a wet towel (absorber) in front of the dish. Covering half the dish is 6dB. 1/4th of the dish area is about 3dB loss. This also works for wi-fi links.

Nope. After we went through the third DVR within a couple of months, I insisted that they give me a *new* one, not one that's been recycled and not fixed. They had a technician come out to deliver it (evidently they always ship out "refurbs" but the installers have new ones, also). He went through the entire system and may have replaced the LNB, as well. He was mucking around with it for quite a while. Nope, still happens.

Good idea. The DISH dish is at ground level. The DTV dish is hanging off the deck. Both are pretty easy to get to. BTW, half is 3dB.

I got that Channel Master dish off of Craigs. It's a nice one. I think the company has been sold once or twice. It was an Andrews product, then some other company bought it out. When you have to compete with Chinese junk, a molded fiberglass dish isn't very competitive.

Did you get the DVR? How much a month? How many TVs.

I recently shut down my DTV, mostly since sis was paying for it and I didn't want her to have to. For a while, I watched DVDs, but then had to move the TV &c, and didn't bother to put it back. So, I'm TVless again at least for a while. I do notice that I get more things done without it and haven't gone into withdrawal.

Until all this shakes out it will be difficult to choose. OTH, people have Netflix, DVD and/or streaming and like it.

Yes, it's fantastic; far better than the DISH DVR (not Hopper) and any cable DVR I've ever had.

Don't remember how much I pay. The cost structure is impossible to decode and I haven't looked at the bill lately.

Three TVs, two HDTV, one not. The non-HD TV box can't access the DVR so it can only show what's on now.

I might have to remove the mount anyway because I just now, belatedly, realized WHY it's tilted. See picture below:

Notice I'm slightly off in my holes, hence, the dish is actually mounted crooked. Up 'till now, I thought the J arm was bent - but it's my mind that was warped.

Funny how the FIRST time you do stuff, the 'obvious' suddenly becomes obvious!

As Jeff well knows, the winds in the Santa Cruz mountains are terrific, so, I'm sure this temporary rig of my spare Ubiquiti Nanobridge M2 will fail his calculated wind-load tests!

Verizon 4G just got here!

I'm not familiar with how it works, but a neighbor put an antenna on his car roof and drove up to my house and he was getting 15Mbps down speeds with it.

My problem is I'm confused how you SHARE the connection to all the computers. I'm not sure how that works ... but if it does, it could KILL the WISPs out here who make a business because Comcast doesn't serve us and DSL is far too far away.

Exactly my concern!

I just bought 100 feet of parachute cord at the surplus store. I bought it for shoelaces, but it will work just fine for the ladder tie.

Funny, I hadn't even thought of tying the ladder down!

Here's an install I just did at a different location:

I've done that before, using an old satellite dish stem as the mount point. Poles are ugly though. And the guy wires tend to flip the kids as they run through them, forgetting about them until the last second.

One thing that is driving me crazy is that I have to climb the ladder to disconnect the Rocket M2 to run tests with my (now spare) Nanobridge M2.

Funny the things you learn only AFTER doing stuff for the first time!

The problem with Netflix is that they don't have all their movies online.

I bet they have some kind of boot you can put over the splice.

The two "U" clamps holding the dish are slightly twisted.

Once I tie myself off with a safety belt, I don't have to keep one hand on the ladder, or risk my life using both hands on the antenna. Throw an 11mm rope over the roof and tie it to something really sturdy. Get a safety belt, sit harness, or just tie yourself off with more rope. Then, you get to use both hands.

No such thing. Shove some clear silicon waterproofing grease (the same stuff used by the phone company) into the RJ45. The best place to find that is at the local scuba dive shop. It's used to seal camera housings. Don't use too much. When done, just wrap some clear cellophane wrap around the coupler, and then embalm it in electrical tape. If exposed to sun, spray with clear acrylic to keep the tape from crumbling.

Learn by Destroying(tm). Remember, you have only one life to give for this project.