Damn Hurricanes

[John W]

Looks like my first test of the QPH-031 will be during a hurricane.

 

[Cascade]

I'm sure the Invacom will survive
Bunker down and be safe.

 

[bigOleB]

Get 'er done!!!

 

[Mr Tony]

be safe John!

 

[PSB]

At least the Invacom will weigh down the dish! ....... take care!

 

[PopcornNMore]

Being in a area that has a lot of hurricanes myself, I was wondering:

1) What is the best position to have your dish pointed during a storm? True north or at the lowest satellite?

2) Would it be worth the trouble of disassembling the dish and motor drive before a storm and bringing it inside if the winds are going to be strong? And how strong of winds can a 30" - 42" FTA dish survive?

 

[PSB]

1/ Depends on what direction the wind is blowing, I usually motor way over to the east or west. This seems to help with a lower profile.

2/ It 'MAY' be a good idea just to remove the reflector, should be just four bolts, this is the part that catches the wind..........good luck!

 

[John W]

You are definately going to see more of the storm than I will. I would pull down the reflector like PSB said. I don't bother on my E* dishes because they are small. I have gone through numerous hurricanes without any loss of signal. I was up on my roof this afternoon hooking up my brand new Invacom QPH-031 and the dish was bouncing all over the place because of the wind and it only maxed out at 30 mph so far. I couldn't find the damn arc but it probably isn't the best day to do it with the hurricane approaching.

A lot of people see those paths that they show the hurricanes take on the news and don't realize how far out the storm reaches. They are estimating that on the east coast of Florida we will get 30 - 70 mph winds and fairly high chance of tornadoes.

 

[Tron]

In New Orleans, we are still watching the track very carefully. If things stay the way they are, we will be on the west side of this b*t*h.

Cindy pretty much hit New Orleans directly earlier in the week, and that gave me the opportunity to do a field test of both dishes in ~70 m.p.h. winds. The motorized Winegard was pointed at 119w, which meant that the winds pretty much hit it square in the back, coming out of the east and then northeast. These winds were strong enough to down MANY large trees in my neighborhood and tear some siding from the side of my house. Once the storm passed and the winds died down, I motored the dish over to 61.5w, checked out the info card there, quality perfect, then motored back to 119w. Again, perfect quality. I did NOT motor the dish during the winds.

The fixed Channel Master was aimed at G-10R, so it pretty much took the wind full in the back as well. It didn't budge, but the next day when I was cleaning the debris off the roof and dishes, I had to pull leaves out of every crevice in the mount and on the back of the dish