Built my first dish with a wire coat hanger and tin foil

For about 6 months I was using a cheap satellite finder meter that kept giving me random signal blips. Turned out the meter was picking up interference from a old transformer box on the power pole in my backyard. Moved my whole setup 12 feet to the left and suddenly locked onto a stable signal from a bird I thought was dead. Anyone else had a nearby utility thing mess with your readings?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_christopher1mo ago

Tossed a $20 ferrite choke on my coax and it cleaned up that exact interference.

phoenix_bailey1mo ago

Hear you on the ferrite choke fix, but I've got to respectfully disagree. In my case, the transformer was putting out a magnetic field that a choke wouldn't touch, it was straight up messing with the meter's internal circuitry. Moving the dish was the only thing that actually fixed the root cause instead of slapping a bandaid on it.

jamief671mo ago

Wait, did you try moving the dish further from the pole first? I mean, @the_christopher's ferrite choke idea might work for some people, but I've had a similar issue with a neighbor's old satellite dish reflector throwing off my readings. I ended up swapping my cheap meter for a used one on eBay and that cleaned it up way better than any choke ever did. Maybe the choke is just masking the problem instead of fixing it, like putting a bandaid on a leaky pipe. Just my two cents from spending way too much time chasing ghosts in my backyard.