What will I miss using 33” dish?

[janz]

Hello everybody.
I am observing this forum already for a few months.
This is my first email on this nice forum.
I do not have any experience with dishes smaller then 1m and bigger then 50cm.
I am using 1m dish for FTA and 50cm dish for Bell subscription.

I am considering design of my first motorized setup with 33” dish.
The bigger dish is better but I also have to consider that there is very hard access to the place where it will be installed. I think 33” dish will require less frequent mechanical adjustments then 1m dish.

So far moving manually 1m dish I found some interesting for me broadcast on SBS6, AMC2, AMC4, AMC5, IA6, IA8 and G11.
I am located in Southern Ontario, Canada.
My question is:
What important I will be missing downgrading to 33” dish from 1m dish?
I will be using high quality 0.3db Invacom LNBF in the setup.
Should I consider some bigger dish size for my motorized setup because 33” dish is too small for my needs?

Thank you for any advice.

Jan

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

I am in western NY-not too far from your location. I have had good results with a 31 inch Winegard and an Invacom .3. I would say I can get 85-90 % of what someone with a bigger dish does. Some feeds break up and there are a few problem TPs, but I am happy overall.

 

[Tron]

The 90cm (36") dishes work well on motors; they are not too large and heavy as to cause problems with the motor and are large enough to do a good job at collecting the signals.

If you can upgrade to the 90cm model for not too much more, I'd go for that one.

 

[Mr Tony]

Janz
I use a 30” dish motorized mainly because I can’t use a bigger dish with my setup. My roofline hits bigger dishes (unless I have a really tall mast and that ain’t happening)

I also have a couple fixed dishes that are 36” and the only difference I notice is on some signal, the signal quality is lower (but still stable). As mentioned above, some of the weak signals you may not get.. But I get probably 95% of the signals with a 30” that I would get with a 36”

I might be farther North than you (Mpls, MN 45N 93W)

 

[janz]

Thank you for the valuable advice.
I will buy the 33" dish. It looks more solid then bigger dishes available locally, and the price is really low.

Jan

 

[Sadoun]

For the NE or NW of the USA, we always recommend a 36" minimum even for stationary setups.

 

[TiminMb]

Look at what your present threshold for signals is now, what signals you presently enjoy that are marginal, and consider that you will probably lose them if you go down in dish size. For me, I'd lose most of G10R without a 36" dish.

 

[janz]

Thank you for the answers.
I found locally three dishes I can consider for my motorized setup:
Winegard 76cm
Multistar 33” and Multistar 39”
The MultiStar dishes look small for they advertised size.
Winegard 76cm is in the price of Multistar 39”
The owner of the store agreed with me that the Multistar 39” he sells is close in size to most of 36” dishes.
Anybody has any experience with the Multistar dishes?
I can not find any specification of Multistar dishes on the internet.

Thank you.

Jan