Very interesting! thank you for that tip, we usually use a tripod but have made up a drawbar pipe only recently for our winter/North trip shortly. Think I might rig an earth connection for it now.

Something new every day.

Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and now earthing satellite dishes.

-- Edited by Phillipn on Thursday 18th of February 2016 06:05:08 AM

a tile roof, timber framed house is insulated from the earth. Power is supplied via the coaxial cable, the inner wire carrying the positive feed and the metal shroud the negative feed. the dish requires no earth or ground plane.
The tuning of the dish is critical and after installing hundreds of the buggers, at times I would have one that didn't play ball, a millimetre is all that is needed between a good tune and bad tune and 2 mm is enough at times to give no signal
cheers
blaze

ps

no offence taken just putting the facts out there

-- Edited by blaze on Thursday 18th of February 2016 07:32:44 AM

Yes after also fitting 100's of the things in a previous life too, a phurfy, no earth will change or improve or in fact do anything, as stated by blaze.

More than likely using one of the older DVB-S only rip off sat meters that cannot peak in the Vast, which is DVB-s2 signal properly, but are still sold by unscrupulous dealers as "marriage savers".

Simple answer to the conundrum - operator error.

Again no offence meant.

NeilandRaine wrote:

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Hey I just passed on something strange that happened. I know dishes work on houses (But a house is earthed) and most times my dish works on the draw bar. All I did was make a suggestion that is worth trying if you have a problem. Sorry if I offended technical knowalls 

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 If the dish works most times then it will work all the time unless there is some obstruction attenuating the signal. Shifting the dish off the drawbar and placing it on the ground does not alter the grounding. It is grounded through the caravans frame. I think that what you were actually doing was shifting the dish to where it had a good view of the satellite.

It is possible you are not looking in the correct direction to check for clearance. The dishes used in the VAST system are offset dish antennas. Have a look at that link to see the different types of dishes. The axial or front feed dish looks straight at the source of the signal. The offset feed dish has the rays of energy skew off the surface to get to the feed horn. You will note that the radiation is parallel to the support of the feed horn (the blue line.) When you are checking for obstruction in the way of the dish looking at the satellite you should look to where that support on your dish is pointing.

house is earthed via power supply,

Just to show somebody how to align a dish I once rested a dish on my foot (in shoe) and aimed it at the satellite.  

Perfect signal obtained.  

My leg didn't have an earth strap on it.