Biggest Dish You’ve Tried for Weak Signals — Any Sweet Spot?

Hey everyone,

I was browsing around and saw that earth station dishes can go up to like 21 meters… and honestly started imagining what kind of crazy performance those monsters must have 😄 kind of became a fantasy to try one for a few weeks.

So I thought I’d ask people here who’ve actually used bigger dishes — maybe 4m to 8m or even larger.

Curious to hear from folks who’ve really pushed the limits on weak east fringe / low elevation satellites.

What’s the biggest dish you’ve personally tested?

• Dish size?
• Band (Ku / C)?
• How much real performance gain did you see as you went bigger?

Also wondering:

• Is there a sweet spot where going bigger stops giving noticeable improvement?
• At what size do returns start to diminish?

Would love to hear real-world experiences, especially with big dishes (4m to 8m and beyond), and any old stories about these “monster” setups:

• How much difference did they actually make?
• Any known record attempts or well-known satellite hunters who pushed huge dishes for weak signals?

Thanks!

Quote from Zap!

I just upgraded from a 7.5 foot to a 10 foot and it's a HUGE difference and I'm loving the new dish! The 7.5 footer had bleed over from adjacent satellites. When you go to 10 feet it precisely picks up each satellite as the beam width is so tight it perfectly nails each bird. The 10 footer also has twice the gain over the 7.5 footer and you can see the difference in amplitude on the spectrum analyzer. Another plus having so much more gain is the Signal to Noise ratio is so much better. It seem to have helped suppressed the 5G interference I was getting. I tuned into a Columbian soccer feed that was using 3710 and it was watchable and I'm in a 5G location which is insane when you think about it.

interesting stuff. Is it motorized? If no then can you tracking fine tuning alone or need someone to assit you moving dish?