Dish interference ?

[scannerbum]

Will running my antenna coax along my Dish coax, cause intrference? How about the dish itself, If I say attached my antenna to my dish hardware?

One more question. I have just found out there will be a cell tower going up about a block away from my house. I already have a killer intermod problem with what seems to be a antenna field around my house for as far as the eye can see. Will this cell tower be the straw that broke the camels back?

 

[Thayne]

You must live near a good spot for antennas, so it will probably make it worse.
My 2nd floor shop was right in the beam from some verizon panel antennas located about 5 blocks away at a lower elevation. (But they were on a church roof that made them aimed perfectly at my elevation) After a friend brought over a service monitor and showed how strong the RF was, they re-oriented the panels slightly to the south, and it helped a lot.

 

[zguy1243]

There should be no problem with running your scanner coax along the same path as the cable for your dish. There is no chance for "cross talk" or interference. I would not mount my scanner antenna close to the dish for fear of reflections or nulls caused by the dish. If you do mount it near it get the antenna about 5ft or better above the dish that way its up in the clear. The issue with the Cell tower can be tricky. There is no telling what all will transmitting from that tower. I'll leave that question to be answered by another member with knowledge about cell towers.
Hope this helps

 

[brandon]

I wouldn't worry about the dish. I have an FTA dish and only get minor interference in the 169-171 MHz band.

I would on the other hand be very worried about the cellular site. I have one about 1500ft from me transmitting on 854.550 and it really wipes out nearby freqs. I had to order a custom notch filter to cure the noise - it cuts the signal down but it also blocks legit stuff on nearby freqs. See this thread for more info and audio examples of the noise I was getting after the tower went live.

I find Uniden scanners like the BC780XLT and BCD996T can handle overload a lot better than a PRO-2096/PRO-96/PRO-93. The PRO-2096 is totally useless on 800 MHz and I only use it to monitor VHF/UHF freqs now.

 

[ab3ai]

When I was doing telcom work, at two sites we shared tower spce with other compines. At one site there was the county 800MHz trunk system, VW, Sprint, and ATT all on the same tower and I could listen to the trunk system fine with no crossmod or splatter. Althogth, there 160MHz transmitter killed just about everthing VHF. Same thing at another site with just VW on the tower. At another location, however, the scanner was useless. There are a couple of different things that will come into play. I would say, just wait and see what happens when they go live and take it from there. GL

 

[zz0468]

Will running my antenna coax along my Dish coax, cause intrference? How about the dish itself, If I say attached my antenna to my dish hardware?

You really don't give us enough information. Interference to what? What is this coax for? Is it carrying transmit signals? If so, what frequency? What power level? What kind of coax? What kind of coax to the dish? Even if we had all those answers, it would just be a guess.

As to attaching another antenna to the dish hardware? No, don't do it. It would be too easy to foul the dish alignment. Don't be cheap. Put a separate mount up for whatever it is you're doing.

One more question. I have just found out there will be a cell tower going up about a block away from my house. I already have a killer intermod problem with what seems to be a antenna field around my house for as far as the eye can see. Will this cell tower be the straw that broke the camels back?

You already have a killer intermod problem... sounds like the camels back is already broken.

 

[gcgrotz]

If you are very lucky, the cell tower will have only PCS in the 1800-1900 range. Power output is considerably less than 800 MHz and generally causes no interference. I can see a rooftop site maybe 1500 ft away from me and it has both 800 MHz cellular and Nextel on it. I have bigger problems with 158 MHz paging 1/2 mile away.

I have my scanner antenna feed bundled with the DirectTV cable and haven't noticed anything. Winegard makes a curved pipe mount that fits the 4 bolts that hold the dish to the support pipe and extends above the dish. If I ever get the 24ft ladder up again I'm going to put that on and mount the scanner antenna on it so I can use my other pipe for a dedicated VHF/UHF ham antenna.

 

[scannerbum]

Thanks...

Thanks for the info.
I to have a pager problem, as well as two hospitals 1 mile from my house. Like I said I live in a intermod mind field. IT SUCKS!

 

[zz0468]

A few things might help...

Try running with a low or zero gain antenna.

NO preamps whatosoever, of any kind.

There may be one or two really strong signals that are causing an overload condition. Find 'em and filter them out.

The intermod may be generated elsewhere, in which case, you're probably stuck. If things clean up considerable or completely by using a desk top antenna, you may have an overloaded receiver, in which case you may be able to take steps yourself to clean it up.

 

[scannerbum]

Still a little new...

Without knowing alot about my hobby ( yet ) . I hear alot of problems with noaa. When I am searching I will come across frequncies with noaa on top of them. Or known frequncies will have what I beleave to be pager interference. Like I said I dont yet know enough to know what I am hearing.

What I do know is 146.0 - 170.0 is a mess, around my house.

 

[OpSec]

Without knowing alot about my hobby ( yet ) . I hear alot of problems with noaa. When I am searching I will come across frequncies with noaa on top of them. Or known frequncies will have what I beleave to be pager interference. Like I said I dont yet know enough to know what I am hearing.

What I do know is 146.0 - 170.0 is a mess, around my house.

NOAA transmitters that are running a full 1,000 watts could be a problem, so check and see what the local frequency's are running. Check here:

NWS ILX (Lincoln) NOAA transmitters by callsign: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/nwr/ilxnwr.php

Statewide IL list, with callsigns and RF power: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrIL.htm