timo_w2s
Retired moderator
- My Satellite Setup
- Vu+ Duo 4K SE
Dr.HD F15
- My Location
- Maidenhead, UK & Helsinki, Finland
Last night I was testing a dish setup on a balcony which has panes of glass to close it off and turn it in a mini-conservatory. Location Helsinki, southern Finland, clear skies.
I was a little surprised by the results and wondered if anyone else has experienced this.
The dish was looking at quite a steep angle through the glass for the satellites at 28.2 to 13 degrees east. Using a 75cm dish on all these satellites I was getting decent strong signals from all horizontally polarised signals through the glass (quality of about 70-80% on a TM1500). With the glass removed signal quality increased by about 10%.
However, this is where it gets weird. I was getting no usable signals at all on any vertical transponders through the glass. The receiver would not lock on to anything no matter how I tried to fine tune the dish or skew the LNB. As soon as I removed the glass, signal jumps to 80%+ quality like on the horizontal transponders.
The glass panels can be removed in sections. What I found even stranger was that if I only half covered the dish with glass I'd loose all reception from horizontal as well. I would have thought V channels would start coming in a bit and it wouldn't have effected the H channels, but no, I get nothing.
So to sum up...
- Through glass I could get horizontal signals only with minimal loss in quality.
- With no glass I can get both H and V signals as normal
- Half covered by glass I get nothing at all, just as if I was standing in front of the dish blocking the signal.
When I tried picking up Sirius and Thor I was getting similar things through glass except I could just about get a weak lockable signal on the V channels of around 30% and near full again on the H channels.
I guess this is probably down to the stronger signals of these satellites in my area and perhaps helped a little by a more favourable angle of the dish looking through the glass (the balcony faces west so in Helsinki Astra 2 is almost due south and the rest are west of south).
So it seems like the glass is polarised. Presumably for sunlight but why would it also effect radio waves? I kind of assumed I would either just get no signal or some signal but not with such a huge difference between polarisations.
I suspect this might be a silly question, but is there any way to get vertical channels through the glass without removing it? Or will my satellite viewing be restricted to horizontally polarised signals only during bad weather (ie most of winter!)?
I was a little surprised by the results and wondered if anyone else has experienced this.
The dish was looking at quite a steep angle through the glass for the satellites at 28.2 to 13 degrees east. Using a 75cm dish on all these satellites I was getting decent strong signals from all horizontally polarised signals through the glass (quality of about 70-80% on a TM1500). With the glass removed signal quality increased by about 10%.
However, this is where it gets weird. I was getting no usable signals at all on any vertical transponders through the glass. The receiver would not lock on to anything no matter how I tried to fine tune the dish or skew the LNB. As soon as I removed the glass, signal jumps to 80%+ quality like on the horizontal transponders.
The glass panels can be removed in sections. What I found even stranger was that if I only half covered the dish with glass I'd loose all reception from horizontal as well. I would have thought V channels would start coming in a bit and it wouldn't have effected the H channels, but no, I get nothing.
So to sum up...
- Through glass I could get horizontal signals only with minimal loss in quality.
- With no glass I can get both H and V signals as normal
- Half covered by glass I get nothing at all, just as if I was standing in front of the dish blocking the signal.
When I tried picking up Sirius and Thor I was getting similar things through glass except I could just about get a weak lockable signal on the V channels of around 30% and near full again on the H channels.
I guess this is probably down to the stronger signals of these satellites in my area and perhaps helped a little by a more favourable angle of the dish looking through the glass (the balcony faces west so in Helsinki Astra 2 is almost due south and the rest are west of south).
So it seems like the glass is polarised. Presumably for sunlight but why would it also effect radio waves? I kind of assumed I would either just get no signal or some signal but not with such a huge difference between polarisations.
I suspect this might be a silly question, but is there any way to get vertical channels through the glass without removing it? Or will my satellite viewing be restricted to horizontally polarised signals only during bad weather (ie most of winter!)?
It's scary enough just looking through the glass without hanging on outside trying to unscrew it. ;)