[Tech-Assist] STL problem now critical

[KKTY]

OK, here's my sidelobe story, & I'm pretty proud of the goober-engineering 
that I used to pull it off.

Never was happy with signal strength on the receive end of my 950 STL... 
about a nine-mile path... wasn't sure it was aimed in right.

Had to eyeball a second STL for a friend, & needed to ballpark it before 
fine tuning.

We used Google Earth for both... used the ruler function, setting one end on 
transmit and the other on the receiver. It draws a line over the satellite 
photo, and over local landmarks... which you can use to aim the xmit dish. 
We nailed both dishes on the first shot.

And yes, my 950 was very obviously on a side-lobe... where it was aimed 
would have been several miles off by the time it reached the receive dish.

Dennis Switzer
KKTY
Douglas, WY

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Allen Sherrill" <kj4mdg at gmail.com>

> Side lobes!  Got bit by that recently on a 5.8GHz link I installed.
>
> After everything was done, I was getting a fraction of the predicted RSL. 
> The original rigger swore up and down that he had swung the dish at least 
> 180 degrees and had the signal maxed out.
>
> It didn't look quite right from the ground, so I had another rigger go up 
> and look at it.  The original guy was running into some mechanical 
> interference on the tower and didn't swing it far enough in the one 
> direction it really needed to swing.  Second guy realized this and took 
> the extra effort to swing the dish around.  Problem solved!
>
> Allen Sherrill
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:46 PM, <donroden at hiwaay.net> wrote:
>>Quoting "Burt I. Weiner" <biwa at att.net>:
>>> Make sure the dish is properly aligned and not on a side lobe -
>
>>in the spirit of ... " don't kick it if it works"
>