Manual, cranked or dome Satellite (1 Viewer)

[scottie]

A friend is just about to switch over from owning a caravan to owning a Bessacar over 7 mtr motorhome. He is very technically very capable and a brilliant researcher. Unfortunately he likes almost totally wild camping, which he does throughout the UK and Europe. Having now retired he wants to spend longer away on his trips with his wife. He likes his creature comforts of tv in the evenings and has been looking at Satellite systems. He currently has a portable, but wont have room in new motorhome to take. He wants to know how effective are the wind up systems in terms of their ability to stand up to heavy winds. Did people for example at Chester have to lower their systems when the wind kicked in. Idid notice a few were in use, but were lowered when conditions got worse. Any advise greatly appreciated.

 

[tonyidle]

Any system, manual or automatic, that uses a conventional dish, will be affected sooner or later by wind. I suspect that stowing the dish when the wind becomes too strong is likely to be shortly after the signal disappears because the wind is moving it. The only totally windproof installation is a dome.

 

[Judge Mental]

Can buy a fully auto Snipe for under £600....

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[Brian and Jo]

Well we have an Oyster dish and on Sunday night in Malvern we could have done with a dome ,the wind and rain was horrendous we had a snipe system on the Road-Trek RV we used to have and it was a good compact set up.we were pleased with it.
Brian & Jo

 

[travelling wilbury]

i assume when ypu say 'wind up' you are talking about any dish that elevates up from the roof, whether automatic or manual, round eliptical square or whatever....IE, exposed to the elements as opposed to a dome...

...we used to have a camos flatsat which is recrangular and was pretty resistant to wind, although i do remember having to wind it down on a few occasions.

we now have an automatic 85 cm dish which, again, seems pretty well able to deal with wind but i am happy to play it safe in extremely windy conditions.

a dome would be fine for the uk but would not be able to pull in our uk main home channels like bbc/itv much into france....

however, they are possibly able to pick up Sky's premium sports/movies which are on the easier to receive Suoth Beam....but a subscription is required. without this there wouldn't be much available 'all over europe' though tuning to a different satellite would allow foreign channels....

 

[Larby]

We have a 40cm Camos dome, SWMBO gets her daily fix of Emmerdale in France down as far as Bordeaux, although it can lose signals when it rains.

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[Larrynwin]

We have a Roadpro dome , excellent , no problem with wind and once locked on no current draw on battery.
Have had dish before and when the wind gets up the dish comes down.

 

[DavidG58]

we have a Maxview dome and also noticed all of the dishes going down at Chester, we were fine except the really heavy rain on Saturday where we lost our picture completely. We did find in France earlier this year the slightest poor weather, even just cloudy skies makes a great difference, but never wind alone, although it does tend to come with rain and clouds

I was in Durness last January winds up to 90 mph. proper scary stuff, but had picture with high winds, until it snowed

 

[Ingwe]

Got a 40cm Road Pro dome. Worked very well over the last three months in France. Didn't go all that far south; went to Jura, Dordogne and Burgundy. Only thing we noticed was that Radio 4 didn't come in until about 30 minutes in the morning whereas Radio 5 worked as soon as TV turned on. Not sure why this would be.
Even in heavy rain the signal was good although the thrumming on the roof mean the volume needed to be fully up. The Road Pro exceeded my expectations.

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[Theonlysue]

Got the road pro dome as well.
Haven't used abroad yet.
Having had a dish, the time when you want to watch TV because the weather was bad, I couldn't!

 

[EuroTrotters]

I have had several. The worst being the Oyster Vision II. The box had to be sent off for new software, ended in taking 2 months to sort. Then the motors failed, had to get those replaced. then more repairs and had to go over to SatTech to get it done. Cost a small fortune.

Best I had was a Crank-up. With a Dream box and a compass, usually had signal within a couple of minutes.

Now have an old Katherien that suffices.

But for windy conditions, get a dome or take book and DVD's

TM

 

[Speve]

Dome not much cop in Southern Spain now.

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[scottie]

Thanks all for your replies, will forward on

 

[Jaws]

In the misquoted immortal words of your name sake Richard, 'ya canna change the laws of physics Jim'
A dome is excellent BUT is limited by the physical size of the dish within.
If the person intends doing much stuff abroad then an 85cm Oyster is hard to beat
There is also the issue of fuel.
I was amazed to discover how much a dome affects the wind resistance of a vehicle.. Rather thought that, due to its shape, it would be quite 'slippery'
But no, just the opposite in fact..