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

I just switched *to* DTV. DTV may be bad but Dish really sucks.

Reply to
krw
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Thanks! It's kinda expensive but *much* better than Hughes. The "overage" cost ($10/GB) isn't bad either.

Reply to
krw
[snip]

What are you going to have instead of DirectTV?

Reply to
Charles Bishop

I'm not sure yet. Netflix looks good, but I'll probably get bored with it after about a year. YouTube, Hulu+, and others are yet to be explored. The local video rental store closed, so renting DVD's and BluRay disks are not an easy option. I have some friends with extensive DVD collections, so I may borrow some stuff. The downtown library also has a fair collection of what I watch (documentaries, history, science, technology, how-to, and occasionally anything that is mind numbing).

To keep from tying up a computah and screen, my initial attempt will be either a Western Digital WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, or a Windoze box running some PVR application:

I would go with Linux, but until there's a native Netflix application (that doesn't require Silverlight), I'm stuck with Windoze.

I may also go without any TV. I didn't have a TV for about 15 years of my life, and never really missed it. I'm rather disgusted with the large number of historical distortions, glorified stupidity, amazing factoids, and saturation advertising. Even so, I would have no problem paying for such rubbish if it were all content, but not when approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of it is advertising and self-promotion.

Incidentally, my all time disappointment was the Discovery channel's streaming video. It runs for exactly 5 minutes, stops, waits for the user to click "continue", and then plays a 30 second commercial. No way to get past the commercial without clicking "continue". If ever there was a way to chase away viewers, they have found it.

Another disappointment was testing a Sony and a Panasonic BluRay player with Netflix etc built in. Both of these companies seem to have a service that they sell to the streaming content provider to "allow access" which is a nice term for shaking down the providers for money to host their service. Sony had Pandora on their player, but Panasonic did not. My crystal ball can see where this is going to go, where in a few years, services will come and go depending on contract negotiations with Sony and Panasonic. No thanks.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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".

Reply to
krw

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.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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

3dB but can climb to 6dB with thick clouds, rain, and soaked tree leafs. I have an even larger 1 meter dish which I have used in the past that works even better. The problem is that the dish is sufficiently large that even a mild breeze will move it across my flat roof.

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.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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.

Reply to
krw

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.

Reply to
miso

ount it on an old Dish-TV antenna arm.

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The problem is it's about six inches too short (see= picture above). I had planned on bolting this to the wood boards framing t= he edge of a tile roof (without going on the roof itself). Advice sought: a= ) Would you just extend the mast with a pipe? b) Would you buy a new mast (= from where)? c) Is there another trick I can't think of? I'm hoping a cleve= r idea will pop out of this. Otherwise, I'll just buy a new antenna arm and= make sure it's longer somehow!

Use a yagi. I mounted mine on an old dish mount. Made it out of pvc and u= sed a 90deg fitting to put it on the dish mount. Lots of element calculato= rs on the net will give you the specs. You need to know the frequency. Wo= rks great and vety little wind load.

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I was getting 0 to 1 bar on our hot spot and now get 3 to 4. 4 is the max.

I used some leftover small copper tubing for the elements. I used a holesa= w to make a hole under the driven element to attach the rg6.

Reply to
jamesgangnc

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

Reply to
Charles Bishop

[snip unsurety]

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.

Reply to
Charles Bishop

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.

Reply to
krw

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

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For some strange reason, it didn't dawn on me (until now) that the fact the pipe was circular did NOT indicate that the location of the holes didn't matter.

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!

Reply to
J.G.

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!

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What I'm doing right now is following Jeff's advice by surveying the noise level swiveling 180 degrees (the house is in the way for the other half) ... so the mount isn't permanent.

Reply to
J.G.

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.

Reply to
J.G.

Exactly my concern!

Reply to
J.G.

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:

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Reply to
J.G.

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.

Reply to
J.G.

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