Antennas and frequency for long range rural connectivity

[Admin 2642]

,,,this angle is not for all dishes...it differs from one construction to another...!!!

[anoduck 3]

@AdminThis does not answer the question though, it only answers the obvious first part. Which was, what angle does the dish need to be set to? I apologize, I didn't take calculus in college. So I wouldn't know where to begin to formulate a function to find the angle. 

Regardless, I am starting another build of the bester. Iust have buggered up the first build. 

[eco32 44]

23 hours ago, anoduck said:

 

@eco32 Just restating to make sure I understand this correctly. If I hold a lazer where the bester is, the lazer should hit the dish, and reflect off the dish. Then a piece of paper can be used to show where the beam of the lazer is reflected to?

 

how to finf focal point:

you point the antenna towards the sun, and sliding cheet of paper (I couldn't find a better source to ilustrate)

LASER use:

[anoduck 3]

@eco32 I do appreciate the generosity of the assist. I stumbled upon an article explaining how to make your own inclinometer and a laser to basically do the same thing. As probably figured out by now, the answer was on the slide I had posted earlier. Offset angle is the same thing as tilt. So for my older HughesNet offset dish the answer was 16.6 degrees.

 

My second build was much more precise than the first build, but performance is about the same. I mounted the first build to a used Directv dish and the second to my hughesnet dish. Both have been relocated to the roof of my house, and will probably build a bester for 5GHZ to add to the Hughesnet dish as well.

 

Location is probably the biggest problem I have with the setup. The trees are very thick, and then there is this gigantic hill that blocks the line of sight to the target area. I am working on building a passive repeater to overcome the hill, and shopping for a deal on an amplifier with some serious wattage. Good quality amplifiers are damn expensive, which really sucks.

[anoduck 3]

Update:

I wanted to get back and write an update on the results, unforeseen complications, and unexpected success.

Over the past two years, one of the two built bester antennas has sat atop my house in what has quickly grown to be an antenna array.

The two biggest mistakes made were both fallacious assumptions:

• Assuming a brand-new, expensive amplifier would arrive free of defect from China.
• Assuming the satellite feed distance was already correctly configured.

Both caused considerable delay and wasted many hours of troubleshooting the wrong part. I rightfully should not provide advice I would be unwilling to follow, but regardless, I suggest if you are not strapped for cash, pay the extra money for quality cable connectors. Avoid the crimp connectors if possible, in favor of tension connectors. Furthermore, for larger cables, such as Rg8, use Type N over SMA. SMA simply isn't strong enough to hold up to the forces placed on it with larger cabling.

Little can be said about the experience regarding the defective amplifier, besides echoing the golden rule of the importance to test even new equipment after purchase.

To bore you with the trivial, parabolic reflectors are highly engineered complex devices with a wide range of variance. Every dimension of the reflector, feed arm, and receiver was engineered to the effect of providing a functioning unit to collect a signal and focus that signal on one specific location. If your configuration of the reflector is haphazard, and therefore incorrect, you will not receive any signal. All of this is said to stress the importance of recognizing exactly what type of reflector you are using, and to ensure you know how to configure it.

Just by sheer sight alone, the distance from the receiver to the distance became suspect, as the receiver appeared to be so far from the dish it was not receiving any benefit from the parabolic reflection. Research began, and luckily a parabolic calculating program was discovered. The program had one drawback, it was written to only calculate center feed and vertically ovular offset parabolic reflectors, while ours was an oblong offset reflector. Oblong offset reflectors are wider than they are tall, because usually they use two offset receivers. Thankfully, the Northern Texas Microwave Society published a PowerPoint presentation on how to correctly measure the dimensions of your oblong offset reflector in order to provide the correct measurements to calculate your parabolic reflector dimensions as an ovular offset dish. Which basically involved laying the dish level and filling it up with water, and then measuring the diameter of the pool. Needless to say, this provided us with several concrete answers as to how we were supposed to have our reflector setup.

Without an amplifier and working off the sheer brilliance of the bester antenna, we were able to pick up a signal located behind a hill through a heavily wooded area over 321 yds away at around 58dbs. Which is an incredibly surprising and unexpected success.

We have two new builds to work on, a small omnidirectional antenna for a ESP32 device and a semi directional paneled antenna. We also would like to further improve on the performance of our cantenna build.

I hope that this update provides information someone else might find of use someday.

Edited April 15 by anoduck
Corrected Grammar