6' vs. 8' C-Band

[bobvick]

I am considering installing a C-Band system for a hobby sometime in the near future. I prevously had a C-Band dish from 1986-2001 it was a 10' mesh dish and I no longer have it up, I took it down in '01.
At any rate, is there a significant difference in the performance of a 6' sold dish vs. a 8' dish.

Thanks

 

[Lak7]

At any rate, is there a significant difference in the performance of a 6' sold dish vs. a 8' dish.

Yes.!:
6' = 28 sqft
8' = 51 sqft
10' = 78 sqft

 

[tvropro]

Bigger is always better

 

[Anole]

not created equal:

Bigger is generally gooder. -
But there's more to it than just feet.
There's accuracy and efficiency.

What are you going after? C-band only?
Do you have a space concern? Wife concern? HOA concern?
Six feet will get you going.
However, there's a reason some members have 10 and 12 foot dishes. -
One of those reasons is spelled: S2.

But on Ku-band, a good accurate solid is probably superior to a mesh that's several feet larger.
eg: 8' Birdview to a 12' Paraclipse?
An average mesh of gigantic size might get no more signal than a 1.0 meter Primestar (which is a fine dish, by the way!)

So, be sure you are comparing apples to apples when you consider two dishes.
There's size..... and then there's quality.

edit:
Oh, you only wanted C-band? Get the bigger one and be done with it! - :up -

 

[bobvick]

I can have as large of a dish as I want, live in the country, NW Alabama. I was looking at the Fortec dishes at Sadoun because I don't want to sink a fortune in a 10' or 12' dish, it will just be a hobby. I will look into the 8'.

 

[pendragon]

Why not rescue a 10' or 12' dish for free?

 

[ikki]

Try Craigslist, at least monthly here in MN someone is selling one from 50 bucks to FREE.

Free is a good price.

 

[Anole]

JonnyNobody asked the same sort of question a couple of weeks ago.
The answers in that thread might be helpful to your decision making.

In the end, he spent a lot of money on a large new dish.
While that wasn't the solution I'd have come up with, it made him happy.
Explore all the options offered in that thread - find one that is right for you. :up

 

[Phottoman]

Heck, I just brought home my THIRD 10 footer last Thursday.

I can hardly wait to get started on getting that baby up, even Phottoette is getting excited about this one.

I put an ad in Craigs List and within three days had offers on three different dishes, this was the cream of the crop. I just mentioned on Craigs list that I was looking for a "large satellite dish" if anyone had one they didn't want any more.

Oh, and there was never a mention of any payment.

Try that, you'll hopefuly be pleasently surprised.

Photto

 

[bobvick]

Thanks for all of your replies. You have given me a lot of good suggestions to think about.

 

[truckracer]

an 8' performs considerable better than a 6'. The 6' will get most everything (ask iceberg).
dvb s2 signals have problems on smaller dishes and S2 is the future for now. a 6' or 8' will blast on Ku band if the dish is not warped and in good shape, the mesh is not torn and has small enough holes, and you have a good chaparall feedhorn and lnb's.

 

[ZetaMale]

JonnyNobody asked the same sort of question a couple of weeks ago.
The answers in that thread might be helpful to your decision making.

In the end, he spent a lot of money on a large new dish.
While that wasn't the solution I'd have come up with, it made him happy.
Explore all the options offered in that thread - find one that is right for you. :up

When you got it, flaunt it. But seriously, since I have insurance that'll cover replacement, why not get the biggest (that the city will allow me to install)? If my insurance didn't cover the replacement of my 12 footer I'd be looking around for a used one that someone wants hauled off.

 

[Greg Mueller]

Yah go for bigness

I learned because of troubles with the 129° bird when I subscribed to DN

You get guys that say "It's digital and either on or off" and that's sort of true, but that does not take into consideration that there is a "threshold" that the digital signal needs to pass before it is "on". If the signal falls below that threshold it will be "off". So you need a certain amount of digital signal to be on. That's where the capture area of a bigger dish comes in.

In my case I am on the edge of the signal for the 129° bird. If you watched the signal strength it would rise to a maximum and then slide back down to a minimum. It was in the 70s at max and in the 30s at min. Once it fell below a certain signal level the digital would lose it's lock and the picture would be lost. The cycle took about 15-20 minutes. This was with the DN Dish 1000 setup. I went out and found a 1.2 meter Primestar dish and attached the lnb to that. It gave me max signals of almost 100. It still did the signal roller-coaster thing but the signal level never fell low enough to lose lock so you could not tell it was going on.

So I say get the biggest dish your wife and neighbors will let you have

 

[truckracer]

If buying new, the cost differences between a 6' and even 10' are minimal imo. I think a new sami dish 6' mesh is 500.00+, a new mesh 10' is 700.00 or so.

 

[Corrado]

I tested my 21 year old 10' Unimesh vs. my 6' Prodelin offset dish on some known C band DVB-S2 feeds. I found nothing with the 6'er and 85-88Q on the 10'er.

Ice said he was able to lock some 5/6 FEC, S2 feeds on his Fortec 6' on C band after some tweaking. With that in mind I haven't given up yet.

 

[truckracer]

8' will perform a lot better than a 6'. The 8' has a tighter beamwidth 2 degree view of the sky where the 6' sees almost three degrees. that means the 6' is very suseptable to neighboring satellite interference. the satellites are 2 degrees apart. this is critical on digital reception as the noise floor is raised and it lowers your signal quality. tighter fec feeds and a lot of dvb s2 signals will be unattainable on a 6' dish.