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28 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

 

@Onoff any reason that threaded bar can't be used to stabilise the dish if it's that battered by wind ?

 

What, from the rim say back to the wall? Shouldn't cause a problem. The sat signal reflects off the parabola onto the lnb so keep that clear.

 

Some stainless steel wire might look a bit more attractive than studding.

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35 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

What, from the rim say back to the wall? Shouldn't cause a problem. The sat signal reflects off the parabola onto the lnb so keep that clear.

 

Some stainless steel wire might look a bit more attractive than studding.

Would have to be a dowel wouldn't it. Compression not tension. ?

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2 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Would have to be a dowel wouldn't it. Compression not tension. ?

 

You mean a strut I think? :)

 

I was envisioning one wire either side. Is the dish being blown against or just worried by the wind?

 

You used to be able to get mesh dishes. I wonder if that would help with the windage issues, probably not, still a lot of surface area there.

 

The (mad?) idea I had was to copy the wartime acoustic mirrors:

 

dungeness99.jpg.6b82a5bd185635f2910d1ca8872cff01.jpg

 

So you have a concrete block and the dish sits in that. It'd work a treat. In the case of the acoustic mirrors the parabola focused the incoming sound of enemy planes (pre radar) on a microphone. For satellite use you could glue on tin foil, takeaway containers or even metallic paint the concave face as long as the lnb was positioned right.

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Don't expect a cheap sky dish to last more than about 5 years on the coast.  Even here on the East, the coastal ones rot away in no time.  being inland a bit it seems okay here and I am still using the same one I took down from someone's chimney 15 years ago.

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The usual weakness on many dishes is the LNB arm. Not helped by the design of some is a U shaped hollow tube specially designed to fill with water and rot from the inside.  I have 3 "guy wires" on mine,

dish.thumb.jpg.e248ecf7d72fb428edfe61dadd8c5df9.jpg

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I bought a cheap'ish, fairly large dish (larger than needed for our area) and I was surprised to find that the LNB arm was made from a pretty robust alloy box section, complete with a built-in spirit level.  The dish and mounting bracket seem to be powder coated zinc plated steel, and there's a neat plastic socket inside the steel bracket at the base of the dish where the LNB arm bolts, presumably to prevent galvanic corrosion.  I bought it from ebay for around £40, complete with a quad LNB, and it looks like it will last for many years.  TBH I was a bit surprised, as the quality of the powder coat and the bolts that hold it together look as if it may well have been made in Germany - it has that well-engineered German look to it.  I'm no doubt that it would be fine in an exposed location, as long as the mounting tube was secured to something very rigid.

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Once in Edinburgh my dish stopped working in high winds. A quick investigation revealed that the dish remained attached to the house and instead the winds had bent the dish!

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7 hours ago, AliG said:

Once in Edinburgh my dish stopped working in high winds. A quick investigation revealed that the dish remained attached to the house and instead the winds had bent the dish!

 

Thought you were going to say the house had been blown away with the dish on it!

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2 hours ago, Onoff said:

 

Thought you were going to say the house had been blown away with the dish on it!

 

Happened at the radar station at Saxa Vord years ago.  There was no radome over the old early warning radar up there at the time, and the anemometer recorded some silly wind speed, well over 100mph, and then the screens in the bunker went dead.  It was too windy to venture outside until the next morning, when there was no sign of the radar antenna or mast - it had been blown off the hill down onto the beach below.  IIRC they had to hire in a Sky Crane helo to lift it off the beach.  By the time I went up there to do some trials work they'd built a big "golf ball" radome on the hill, but even then it was tough going transferring to and from the Landrover to the radome door - they used to have to tie the Landrover down and there was a crawl rope that you grabbed hold on so you could cross the gap between the door and the Landrover on your knees, hanging on to the rope.

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Many years ago on a site in Bracknell a CCTV monitor went down one howling, wet windy night. The security guards decided it was a glitch. If they had been doing their foot patrols they would have noticed the scaffold that had broken loose and taken the camera off the wall before landing in the car park. Sackings ensued. :)

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