Sat dishes vs snow (was "Re: [BC] KFI Tower replacement ?")

[Porter, Allen]

There are forced air de-icing systems available as well as clamped on
electric element systems for just about any dish.  Other than money
concerns why would a 24/7 organization not install one of these systems,
especially on larger dishes (2.4m and up)?  I ask this not as a
sarcastic comment but as a real question to help me better understand
the operational side.  We install a few uplinks every year and we always
install de-icing but these are generally big-budget ops.


Thanks,


Allen

  

Allen Porter
Network Systems Engineer
Convergent Media Systems
770.369.9663
http://www.convergent.com




-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Dennis Cope
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 3:21 PM
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List
Subject: RE: Sat dishes vs snow (was "Re: [BC] KFI Tower replacement ?")


>  recommend a heater.   :-)

Our dish has a cover, so a heater wouldn't do much for it... unless it
blew
warm air at the cover. Believe me, I *have* thought of putting a small
forced-air portable heater out there, under the cover... but that would
mess-up the
focus of the signal, so it's not a viable option.

How would the heater mess up the focus of the signal.  GE is using this
same
thing on one of their Earth Stations
The heater is on the ground and has a insulated hose up to the dish
(about
15').  All they have to do is remember
to fire up the heater..

The dish is at a fairly steep angle. The cover is virtually flat, and
even
at
that steep angle, the stupid wet snow sticks like oatmeal mixed with
glue.
It
takes some doing to broom the thing off!

Willie...

Where are you located?

Dennis
WESR, WCTG, NOAA
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