Snipe v3 camouflage

[OldGoat]

 misunderstood....

Edited December 12, 2019 by OldGoat

[Sea Dog]

36 minutes ago, Andy Durnin said:

 @Sea Dog i use a mifi with a 3 unlimited data card which costs me £17 p/m.  The mifi has an external aerial and you can have up to 6 devices connected .  Tethering can have issues and may affect your data speed.  

Thanks Andy.  I simply haven't found much difficulty in using tethering with my phone. Of course, it may be that the mifi with a higher gain aerial would be able to receive in a weak signal area where my phone thinks there is no signal and neither of my TV aerials work either, but I have a feeling this is a pretty rare scenario which doesn't justify (for me) the extra expense of a second mobile account. 

[WotEver]

4 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

I've yet to graduate from the status referred to in brackets and, particularly when both bearing and elevation are changed...

Ummm... you need to see how you’re fixing your dish because the elevation never changes, only the bearing relative to your boat. 

[dor]

I really can’t justify a grand on a glorified aerial.

 If I use the dish, it barely takes a minute to set up. That’s with an Aldi dish and sat-finder.

 Check Nicholson’s to find the south east, set dish pointing down slightly and rotate  slowly to the left. There is another German sat close by, but easy to differentiate.

[Sea Dog]

18 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Ummm... you need to see how you’re fixing your dish because the elevation never changes, only the bearing relative to your boat. 

Only if I don't travel north or south - there's about 2.5 degrees difference in the elevation of Astra 2E when viewed from, say, Ellesmere Port and the Slough Arm, isn't there?  Someone who actually does bother with satellite TV and cruises the network is sure to know more.

[ditchcrawler]

10 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Only if I don't travel north or south - there's about 2.5 degrees difference in the elevation of Astra 2E when viewed from, say, Ellesmere Port and the Slough Arm, isn't there?  Someone who actually does bother with satellite TV and cruises the network is sure to know more.

But you are hardly likely to cover that distance from one day to the next

[Sea Dog]

10 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

But you are hardly likely to cover that distance from one day to the next

True but, as an example, last time I got my dish out, the elevation was maybe a degree and a half out - almost literally miles out. I was up near Chester and probably last used the dish at Crick. Travelling north-south or vice versa would make the elevation require adjustment every few days I'd guess.

[ditchcrawler]

30 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

True but, as an example, last time I got my dish out, the elevation was maybe a degree and a half out - almost literally miles out. I was up near Chester and probably last used the dish at Crick. Travelling north-south or vice versa would make the elevation require adjustment every few days I'd guess.

If I paid £1000 it would be on within ten minutes of mooring up every day. Have to get my money's worth

[Andy Durnin]

1 hour ago, dor said:

I really can’t justify a grand on a glorified aerial.

 If I use the dish, it barely takes a minute to set up. That’s with an Aldi dish and sat-finder.

 Check Nicholson’s to find the south east, set dish pointing down slightly and rotate  slowly to the left. There is another German sat close by, but easy to differentiate.

Useful info. Cheers

[Dr Bob]

8 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

Spill the beans, Bobby!  Kit and method. 

 

 

 

Last year I used a cheap sat finder £30 ish.

It gave a signal strength when locked on a satellite. Ok to use most of the time and <1min to line up BUT didnt always work if trees nearby and you couldnt see the nearby sats. It was easy to pick the eastmost one of the three close together if you could see all three. If one was obscurred it was not always easy to guess which one was which. The problem with our sky system is that sometimes it took the tv to take 1 min to show a pic once on  the satellite, so if trees nearby and confused over which sat is which, you had to find one and wait a minute to see if the box displayed the picture. We changed moorings most days so lots of experience doing this.

This summer I bought a Primesat FS 700 for £100 ish and it is sooooooo much better. You set it for Astra 2 and it only lights up once you are on the Astra 2 - and no need to have the sky box on so it is dead easy. Just look on the map to work out which way to start pointing it or use the sat finder sundial that was posted on here last year.

Sometimes the elevation needs moving up or down depending on whether the sat is pointing off the side of the boat or to the front or to the back.

It is really so much better with the decent sat finder.

[OldGoat]

I deleted my original post when I noticed that the Snipe was a motorised version of what I was reccommending.

To my mind the flat panel on its own is good value. With one port, the price compares well with a more conventional dish plus arm and has the advantage that it's easier to store (for those who actually take down antennae when cruising).

Similar arguments apply to terrestrial antennae - A log periodic device is flat and easier to store that the traditional type with arms and IMHO has about the same gain.

 

[Dav and Pen]

I used freesat all over france and belgium with a bigger dish than the standard sky one. To find the satellite I would start from the East and turn the dish towards the south, the first movement on the sat finder was the astra and a bit of fine movement got the 2 sats they now use lined up. A satellite finder app on my iPad was a useful tool to check elevation which did need to be pretty accurate and it also gave a line for the dish to point. Only tall trees ever stopped us getting tv.

[Dav and Pen]

On the rivers we could leave the dish up but on the canals it was taken down and tied on as we lost one overboard in a strong gust of wind which came on suddenly and caught me out.