Post by Eric Johnston on Jun 23rd, 2007 at 8:51am
This page will help you with satellite dish pointing from Mauritius:
https://www.satsig.net/maps/satellite-dish-pointing-mauritius.htm
Sorry it was a bit cloudy the day the picture was taken!
Regarding dish size. The Thaicom beam that covers Mauritius is called the global beam. This means that it is rather wide (a circle, 17 deg across) to send its power to the whole visible earth and thus low gain.
The downlink power per unit area on the surface is therefore low and you will need a moderately large dish. Try with what you have first. For a 6 dB improvement you need a dish twice the diameter (4 times the area)
You could try asking Thaicom what size dish they suggest.
wxw
Best regards, Eric.
ps. If anyone wants earth view gif images like that above from other positions along the equator this page will do it. Just select a satellite longitude, click anywhere on the main Google map and wait till the gif image is calculated and drawn based on my coast line data. Then right click on the image to copy.
https://www.satsig.net/maps/satellite-dish-pointing-mauritius.htm
Sorry it was a bit cloudy the day the picture was taken!
Regarding dish size. The Thaicom beam that covers Mauritius is called the global beam. This means that it is rather wide (a circle, 17 deg across) to send its power to the whole visible earth and thus low gain.
The downlink power per unit area on the surface is therefore low and you will need a moderately large dish. Try with what you have first. For a 6 dB improvement you need a dish twice the diameter (4 times the area)
You could try asking Thaicom what size dish they suggest.
wxw
Best regards, Eric.
ps. If anyone wants earth view gif images like that above from other positions along the equator this page will do it. Just select a satellite longitude, click anywhere on the main Google map and wait till the gif image is calculated and drawn based on my coast line data. Then right click on the image to copy.