Satellite Experts. Though Roof Sat Dishes

[Basil]

Hi All,

 

Has anyone any experience or knowledge of the Globesat 114 or 2010 through roof satellite dish, as this seems to be fairly reasonably priced at £219, around £140 cheaper than the Maxview Crank up and only about £80 dearer than the Grade terrestial aerial.

It's design is supposed to make it equivelent to an 80cm dish but is only 59cm and once installed all manual setting up operations are carried out from inside the van. One advantage for me over the Maxview Crank up is that it doesn't matter if you have a slopping roof, something that I have been advised the Maxview is intollerant of.

The dish design seems to me to be more satisfactory for stowage in an on roof situation i.e. all enclosed with no folding arm and a fairly aerodynamic shape when stowed, much like a Grade permanantly fitted aerial.

That combined with the price makes it the first one that seems to fit the bill for me, problem is I can find little information on it.

 

Bas

[Guest JudgeMental]

 

I was under the impression that size is everything with these dishes and to receive anything in southern France and further down you need a 80cm plus dish.....

 

would be suspicious of claims that a smaller dish can do the job of a large one as I asked this myself on an earlier thread and that was what was said.

 

Bernie, where are you when we need you! :-D

[derek500]

I think the sloping roof argument is a myth. Unless you're 100% level, highly unlikely, then a TTR dish will have have the same problem.

 

We've had our Maxview Crankup since January and we have nothing but praise for it. Our roof has a slight front to back incline.

 

As for reception, of course, where we are in Valencia we can only get south beam, which doesn't include the UK terrestrials.

 

However we have picked up the 2D channels as far south as Vinarós (Castellon) and Barcelona.

 

Last week we were in Galicia and only managed to receive south beam.

[Basil]

Hi Judge,

I accept what you are saying and that is probably why I am not jumping in with both feet, however it is said that it is designed differently to the normal dish and that gives it a better and more powerful operation. So that is why I have asked if anyone has any knowledge to see if the claims are justified. The Multimo is tiny compared to many dishes but I have seen the performance of that and it is outstanding and that is supposed to be because of the way it is designed. But I don't know what to believe these days.

 

Hi Derek500,

 

I certainly wasn't being critical of the Maxview which I considered to be a good bit of kit, only I was all ready to buy one when the person I was discussing the purchase from brought up about the roof incline on our van, apparently it throws out the verical alighnment as the dish tends to go in an arc as it is turned rather than a circle so the register marks are not accurate and then this is further complicated if the van is out of level. As I was trying to find a system that would be easy for me this put me off.

However this one does not fit to the roof and so the incline would have no affect. Also if it works as it is claimed then the smaller size and the aerodynamic profile and most of all the light weight (only 5Kg) has got to be good.

 

Thanks both of you for your input.

 

Bas

[colin]

I have no experience of Globesat, but would be very suprized if they can make a 59cm dish recieve as well as a 80cm dish, unless they where comparing with a very poorly designed and built dish! Over the years many companies have made such claims and they don't ever work out as well as they say, the Multimo is a very effcient dish but is only slightly more efficient than a resonably built 'normal' dish.

I wonder if they compared it to a transparent dish? I have one of these and it is pretty poor.

[takeaflight]

Hi I used to have a globesat, only used it as far south as middle of France.

 

Reception wise no problems, the only issue I had was the way in which it worked. A pole within a pole, you had to push the inner pole to set the angle and then turn the outer to find the sat. The inner pole was at times quite difficult to push up requiring a thump from the palm of your hand. No big deal but!! :-(

 

The other advantage was we bought the van with a through the roof flying saucer tv aerial fitted, so simply pulled that out replacing it with the Globesat.

 

[derek500]

Another reason we chose the Crankup, is that our wardrobe and the roof above is taken up with our MK directional TV aerial.

 

On occasions, when trees/buildings have blocked the view or high winds, it's been handy to have the digital terrestrial box or analogue TV as a backup.

[Bill Ord]

The reason that a Globesat works well is because it's a Cassegraine type!! similar to the multimo dish which also perforps very well.

Bill Ord

[colin]

I have a mag report somewhere but can't find it at present, from memory they concluded this dish performs a bit better than a standard offset dish.

I have done an internet seach to try and find some figures, but guess what they don't publish actual gain, with this figure you would be able to compare to a standard dish, BUT I seem to have found where the 'works like a 80cm dish' comes from and it is to my mind a very dubious statement. Basicaly someone has taken Globesat's figure of 20to25% increase in signal (no evidence given to support this) then said it has a low noise figure LNB which makes it perform like a 80cm dish, this to my mind is very missleading.

Basil, don't be put of buying by my post, it proboly performs quite well, but don't expect it to perform as good as a decent 80cm dish with a modern LNB

[Brian Kirby]

Do just bear in mind that to install any such dish you have to make a hole right through your roof. 

We had an agreed sale of our motorhome early this year that failed when the prospective buyer discovered £1,500 worth of damp damage to his own van.  The point of ingress was his satellite dish mounting.  This had been sited in a area of his van's roof that was prone to ponding: quite a common problem on many vans. 

Therefore, before agreening to anyone fixing a roof mounted dish, it might be worth looking on the roof of your own van after rain, and noting where any standing water sits.  I appreciate this will move about at different locations, but it is the home location where the van is likely to stand for the longest periods, so this is where the pond will tend to persist for the longest.  Then, try to get the dish installed elsewhere.

They are all sealed with gaskets and/or mastic of some type, all of which eventually fail and leak.  You won't want to make the same unfortunate discovery as our "buyer", just because someone sat your dish in the middle of your puddle.