[BC] COVERED Sat dish vs snow

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 01/05/2006 09:32:47 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
cld at admin.umass.edu writes:

> Our cover tends to let snow to slide off even though our look angle is for 
> Galaxy 4.
>  When it does stick, a whap with a broom flexes the cover and it slides 
right 
> down onto you
>  which is always a good laugh on a 20 degree day.

I forget the name of the bird, I think it's GE-3... the look angle is fairly 
high, but with the cover, the slope is maybe 60 degrees or so. That's fairly 
steep. Even with a few good whacks with the broom, relatively little of the 
stuff falls off... like I said, it sticks like oatmeal & glue to this cover. (One 
wiseguy even suggested that I coat the cover with oatmeal & glue, to see if 
the snow sticks less to that! Hehe!) I have to manually broom it off, and I 
can't quite reach the upper 1/3 of the cover from the ground. As long as I get 
*most* of it off, the EbNo rises to the mid 7's, and we're OK. (It's normally in 
the low 10's.)

The snow actually falls off the old mesh dish more easily... of course, in 
the upper portion of said dish, the angle is steeper than that of the cover.

Anyway, I don't think I want to try that aviation spray that someone else 
suggested. It is apparently meant for aluminum or fiberglass surfaces, not 
rubber/vinyl. This cover is some kind of hard rubber-like material over a woven 
material. It's quite heavy, very thick, and so strong it could probably be used as 
a trampoline. It is a dark black, which is nice when even the weakest sun 
comes thru, as whatever ice/snow remains, quickly melts off.

If they still make vinyl-top cars, I suppose wax meant for those will work. 
I'll have to look.

Willie...