Concealment

O.K., 7.5' dishes are a bit of an eyesore and actually would never be tolerated in my neighborhood. Some of my immediate neighbors could probably be talked into it but some within sight I don't know.

So in order to be as unobtrusuve as possible, I will be placing the dish in such a way and with a wooden fence around most of it so that it will be out of sight.

The first picture is looking WSW from where the dish will be placed while the second reverses the angle. You can see a 2x4 on the wall where the fence will go. The dish will be mounted low right around where the downspout extension is located. It needs about 192 degrees azimuth and 46 degrees elevation at my latitude and longitude.

The Dish

Well, I got lucky. A fellow in town collects old satellite dishes and installs them for people on fixed income who can't afford cable or a small dish but who can still get some channels such as Hallmark and others for free. He prefers 10' dishes and doesn't use the 7.5' much therefore he generously gave me this mesh dish plus the feedhorn and LNB!

There is a slight dent in the outer rim and the mesh is coming off in one small spot but these are fixable.

He also gave me an arm to make positioning the dish easier.

What is NOAAPort?

NOAAPort is a satellite-delivered multi-channel weather data delivery system. Data included in this stream includes all surface and upper air observation, satellite and radar images, computer model data, plus much more.

This data is FREE! But the set-up is NOT trival! It requires a large satellite dish (I will be finding out how large will really work in the next few weeks), a receiver or card for your PC, a fast PC and, with the path I have chosen, getting used to a Linux based operating system.

There are a few ways to go about this and mine is certainly not the only workable way but it makes sense for me.

Some of this equipment is free or really cheap. The dish can be gotton cheap or free if you get lucky and may even have the electronics (LNB) still attached. Be cautioned that this is a C-band dish and it must be BIG; no DirecTV mini's here! In may case, the first hurdle will be trying to figure out if I can effectively conceal mine from my neighbors (Home Owners Association doesn't really allow for these, I'm crossing my fingers).

The demodulator box or card is going to run a couple of hundred bucks. The PC will be very busy injesting data and having at least 3-4 GB memory and a 300 GB hard drive would be helpful. A new one at around 500 bucks would do it.

This project might cost under 500 depending on what you already have or can scronge up or over 1500 if you must buy everything new.

I'll be updating pictures of the dish I acquired soon and then tackle the dish placement issue.