# Plastic bag dish cover



## bobng (Jul 20, 2004)

Someone told me that if you place a plastic garbage bag over your dish it will stop the interference from rain. Anyone know of this to be factual?


----------



## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

Rain fade is NOT caused by rain hitting your dish. It's caused by the big old thundercloud between you and the satellite. A dish cover only helps to prevent snow build up on the dish. The best thing to do is to align your dish for the highest possible signal strength.


----------



## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

I would NOT recommend putting a plastic bag over your dish ....
Heat build-up and possible condensation could cause problems with your LNBs and/or coax connectors.


----------



## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

Jim is right, as always. Rain attenuation is due to the water droplets in the clouds, which are about the size of a 12 GHz wavelength, acting like little antennae, and absorbing the downlinked signal turning that EMF energy into heat, rather than letting it pass through to your dish. Since the plastic bag sees the signal only after attenuation, there is no way it could prevent that.


----------



## bobng (Jul 20, 2004)

Thanks for the input, I didn't think that it would work but wanted the experts advice.


----------

