Satellite Dish Size For Hotbird (13E) & Astra 1 (19.2E) Quite a few people in Scotland with a 95cm-1m perfectly aligned dish get the badr 4 channels although some of the weaker transponders are variable at night/bad weather. A guy as far up as Loch Ness pulls it in with an 85cm dish and 0.1 dark gold lnb. Then spend half an hour peaking up. The suggested minimum dish size for Sky and Freesat is 45cm is the south and 60cm in the North of the UK.

For the azimuth angle (sideways) use a magnetic compass and swing the dish boldly sideways to find the satellite on the first swing. 1m for BADR @ 26E: An 80cm will be prone to swamping from 28E as its Beamwidth is insufficient. You might get a few TPs with an 80cm if you are lucky, but it would be a false economy to rely on it. AB2 @ 8W no problem with a modest size Dish - I get a great signal on an 80cm. Penta 85 = to 85cm round on surface area. A 45cm Sky mini-dish style satellite dish is called a Zone 1 satellite dish and a 60cm a Zone 2. For Astra Sky Satellite add +7 deg, for Eutelsat Hotbird satellite add +3.5 deg polarisation angle. Astra 2E-2F-2G -----------------28.2----45cm to 60cm---new tighter beams for UK new Astra satellites for FreeSat will make reception very difficult in Southern Europe even with 300cm dish size (Cyprus, Greece,Turkey,Southern Spain.) Badr6 no chance. A large number of professionals in the commercial satellite industry consider these dishes as the industry joke dish, many consider the shape & performance claims very suspect. Penta 68 = to 68cm round on surface area.