Ref my comments in post #35 about camouflage, it seems that I should point people to my "
We see no Dishes" thread which PaulR resurrected a few days ago, and
(whilst escaping from the sun & heat this afternoon!) add a few relevant comments as follows:
- the garden isn't huge but it does stretch about 25-30m from the back of the terrace of which ours is at the end, and there's dividing fence with a couple of adjacent trees in the middle
(hence the title of the thread linked above);
- the far end of the garden has a 6' (almost 2m) high wooden fence, meaning that people walking down the private road beyond it cannot see into the garden
(without standing on a ladder!);
- the dishes were installed not much above ground level in an area of the garden which is surrounded by comparatively high fences and buildings
(the greenhouse and both my and my neighbour's garage), and so they can only effectively be seen from ground eye-level from a very limited direction;
- most of the smaller dishes are between the long high fence & garage behind them and my greenhouse & garage, and take advantage of the fact that offset dishes do not "look" straight at a sat but get the signal from directions significantly above that - and so most of mine are actually
"looking over" my greenhouse and garage;
- OTOH, one of the fixed dishes is tucked into a corner between the long high fence and the garden-dividing fence, and faces away from our terrace, so, again, it can only be seen from a very limited angle of view;
- another very low-mounted dish actually looks "around" a corner of the greenhouse and just manages to point at 30W without being blocked by the trees next to the garden-dividing fence, or the roofline of the terrace;
- the 2 steerable dishes have to be mounted higher and on poles in order to scan 40W to 53E without being blocked by the garages and greenhouse - and also because the feedarms are longish and I'd hit my head on them if they were much lower! That's why I put camo netting
(e.g. from Amazon or eBay) over them, but had previously painted both with zigzag patterns of red-oxide primer and "foliage green" matt spray paint so that they "sort of" blend into the green drooping foliage from the large tree in next door's garden (and are still fairly well screened from that direction when the foliage falls off in Winter).
Hopefully the above comments may give people some ideas as to where and how their dishes could be located and yet not be "too obtrusive" and/or fall foul of those damned "rules and restrictions"
(and, of course, the all-important SWMBO!) .
