How important is the size of the satellite dish?

Satellite Dish to small?

• This is a long shot, but I'm going to try anyway since I have no where else to turn. First, I'm in Germany so there may be a problem with getting answers. Armed Forces Network has changed satellites. I was told that my satellite dish is now to small to get a good signal. It worked perfect before. Does the size of the dish matter? Or just the LNB? He said I needed a bigger dish but could use the same LNB. Question Two, He got shocked real bad when he touched the cable at the dish and the hand railing at the same time. He said there should be 18v going through, but what he felt was a lot more than that. My cat licked the connection where it enters the house and yelled. Cats OK. Why is the there electricity going through the cable from the satellite dish to the decoder? Could some thing be connected wrong? Thanks for any help.

• Answer:

  dish size determines Gain and ultimately signal strength so it is important changing Satellites will sometimes require greater Gain and thus a bigger dish reason being the Satellite antennas are aimed towards a given area of the planet called the Satellite Footprint inside the Footprint there will be lots of signal more than adequate for that dish size outside the footprint you can still receive a signal though it will be much weaker requiring more antenna gain and thus a larger Diameter dish to achieve the same picture quality so the technician might be telling the truth you could talk to the Armed Forces Network and ask them what the Satellite footprint is [ if your location in Germany is inside or outside of it ] and what dish diameter should be good for your location sounds like your cable connections are screwed up the voltage on the cable originates at the Satellite receiver [ Decoder ]not the dish it is used to provide Power to the Down converter [ LNB translates to Low Noise Down converter reason it is B is they used to use LNAs or Low Noise Amplifiers .Down converters are much more efficient so when they switched to them the Acronym had to change since the next letter was B they used it] the DC voltage should only be on the centre conductor if your cat felt the voltage where it goes into the house then there is a short putting voltage on the outer conductor which is electrically shorted to the mounting block before it enters the house cable. that block should be grounded as well to the electrical ground or to its own Ground rod get a multimeter at your local hardware store connect the leads according to colour code [ generally red and black on both leads and meter] install batteries of course with nothing else connected measure the DC voltage on the satellite connector at the back of the decoder the outer conductor should be ground or zero volts from the decoder Chassis black meter lead to chassis red lead to measure connector voltage the Centre conductor should show a DC voltage say - 18 Volts at the cable to the dish the centre conductor should be the same voltage and same poilarity [ black meter lead to outer conductor red meter lead to centre conductor ] i suspect your inner or centre conductor is shorted to your outer conductor somewhere so there is voltage on both and ultimately no voltage to your LNB causing the problems