I just wondered for reference for anyone looking at buying a dish how everyone got on with the recent snow and reception.

To kick the ball off:

1. 85cm dish and 0.2 Quad LNB - Pennine Region

I've had no loss of signal or picture breakup at all, in fact signal never dipped below 80% quality even in the heaviest snow.

On Monday I was surprised to find my Freesat reception was fine with the dish looking like this:

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...1321-small.jpg

I'm sure that this re-enforces my decision to put up a zone 2 dish here in Surrey

Glyn

A very Christmassy dish Glyn.

Amazingly we have had only an odd flake of snow in Ayrshire, it's all clear here.

I don't think I noticed any signal drop with the snow using a Sly minidish, it's only very heavy rain/hail then makes it go wonky.

10mm coach-bolts will stop the dish from going wonky - it'll be solid as a rock, even if it rains cats and dogs.

I must admit I'm surprised it worked with the LNB snowed under.

Yes, i noticed no loss of signal on my 60cm dish. The bottom half was covered in snow, as was the entire LNB assembly. It would seem that perhaps snow has different characteristics compared to rain when it comes to potential signal loss. That all said, I wonder what the result would have been on performance if the snow had actually frozen? In my case, the snow was on the dish for most of the day (last Monday), but by the evening had gone.


Clem

Uncompacted snow is far less dense than liquid water or ice. Even compacted snow has a considerably lower density. If the snow melted it may only create a thin film of water.

That being said, it doesn't take a lot of water to block a satellite signal, so I suspect something else might be going on. This may be that uncompacted snow, having a very open structure, also allows the signal to pentretrate by diffraction around, or reflection from, the water molecules it contains. Does anyone know any more about this?

I suspect the actual amount of H2O that the signal would need to pass through on a snow covered LNB would be insignificant in comparison to the amount it would need to pass through in a really heavy downpour.

The only time I ever noticed a weather induced problem was for a few seconds when there was a short burst of monsoon intensity rain (literally, I've experienced monsoon rain).

I don't know but I would imagine that the signal passes through a considerable distance (in total) of water during typical heavy rainfall that does not affect it to the point of disturbing reception.

But is that true?

Very heavy rain has no effect on my reception and I would imagine that in the thousands of feet the signal passes through the rain it must pass through a fair few inches of water at the very least. Or am I overestimating the amount of water in the air during heavy rain?

Suspect the answer is that even in heavy rain there is lot of open space that the microwave signals get through. As the dish collects and focusses this energy the bigger the dish the more microwave energy is collected, which is why a bigger dish works better in heavy rain

Yesterday evening turned on the Foxsat to watch a recording during a blizzard. You know the sort that the flakes look nearly as big as golf balls and they are the right consistency to stick to anything. It had been snowing for about 30mins and my car windows had about one inch of snow cover. Foxsat was tuned to 108 and the picture was fine, as it had been during previous similar conditions. Watched my recording for about 45 mins during which time it continued to snow. When I stopped the recording was greeted by the no signal message. Don's wellies and souwester trudges round to my dish (It's only 6ft off the ground). Unlike previous occassions there was very little snow on the lnb and arm, but the surface of the dish was about 80% covered with around 2" of snow. Brushing this off restored reception. Conclusion snow on your dish is worse than snow on your lnb

I must admit Graham I'm surprised that more people haven't had problems.

I always remember our local pub suffered terrible breakup on Sky with an 85cm dish during a snowstorm a few years ago. Obviously LNB's have got better since then and maybe it was analogue not digital, I'm not sure, but the current robustness surprises me especially on the small standard dishes.

If this weather continues might invent a brolly for sat dishes

Obviously the wrong sort of snow.