Thanks for asking, but my situation is more complicated because my passion for reception has caught me in the flat where I live, i.e., in the apartment block. I had to limit myself to a "proper" antenna in the analog days for physical, administrative, and regulatory reasons.
The passion for reception came along without my having proposed it, just because I had to find a solution to install the antenna myself. And where you think it will amuse you, even on the balcony. I was not allowed anywhere else, plus I could not install a bigger antenna, physically speaking, on the balcony except at the risk of collapsing under pressure and weather. Under my balcony, there is a lot of traffic, so I had to consider safety, not so much for the antenna, but to avoid human accidents caused by a possible fall.
I won't go into details; it's too complicated because it depends on my living conditions and biography. Which I don't think anyone is interested in and is a whole other story.
But what I can say is that such a passion, I realized along the way, requires other living conditions, first of all, physical space, where you can be a master without affecting the existence of others. I mean in a house with a yard.
And because I don't have one, it's a bitter irony to discover that this passion doesn't fit the physical conditions in which I live. Perhaps this handicap has made me pay attention to reception details that others with large antennas do not seriously consider, i.e., how the signal behaves on one satellite or another, how it manifests itself over a year, etc.
But to cut a long story short, given the conditions described, I would say that, having learned satellite reception techniques along the way, I feel like a professional working with amateur dishes.
But even if I have such frustrations, I console myself, perhaps a delusion, that my results are close to those of some amateurs with larger antennas. Or, as an editor of a magazine about satellites and reception, where I publish articles and reviews, told me that it is not the size of the antenna that counts but the results.
I hope you'll excuse me for talking too much when I could have got away with a dodge.
Regards.
