So... hmm... I am confused.
Where my dish is at the moment, I cannot lock a single* transponder from 55E. 12522 comes in at just over 7dB but no lock
So, I thought I'd check signal footprint on the dish on this sunny Sunday morning...
Now, correct my if I am wrong, but would I be correct in assuming that I am getting around 2/3 of dish coverage? If that's the case, it would at least be equivalent to a 1m dish, maybe even 1.2m. So why am I getting worse signal than I expect? I haven't really monitored 55E since my Fibo 90cm went down at my old place last year, so I don't know if signal strength changed or what. I am getting nothing at all from 57E, where signal coverage looks thus:
Again, I would expect at least a blip of a signal but I am getting nothing... nada. So the question is, do trees 'radiate' some noise, which cause the signal to be worse than it would be otherwise if I was to cover the same area of the dish with some cardboard (or some other microwave blocking material)?
Sadly, the tree is an evergreen, which is apparently over 30 years old and has sentimental value to the neighbour, so no way that's going down. I will have to convince her to trim the apple tree a little, growing next to it, but it's not really causing any issues at the moment.
* OK, I am lying - I can lock 11550V, which is a data one at 7.7dB but... kind of pointless...