Idea for finding a good antenna location

[mchomicz]

I was wondering it anybody would care to comment on the following reasoning:

I have a lot of tall trees in my neighborhood. In order to find the best spot in my back yard for a motorized dish, I observed shade in my back yard on March 20 (or 21st) - Equinox - or one of the two days of the year when sun “is” directly above the Equator. I then picked the spot with least amount of shade throughout the day to place my motorized antenna.

Does this sound crazy? Or am I right on the money?

Thank you,
Michael

 

[carload]

That's pretty much correct for your true south satellite. For the others, you need to hit the time of day when the sun's lined up with it. For those calculations, I'd been using a French site (http://perso.numericable.fr/~gjullien/satellite.htm) earlier this week, but it was down just now when I checked it.

 

[SatelliteAV]

You are correct! The sun will track the Arc twice a year. Here is a calculator to determine when the sun is lining up with the Clark Belt for your location: http://www.panamsat.com/global_network/calc_sun_outage.asp