Using dish satellite wifi

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Suddenly a light bulb came on. I grabbed some wrenches, took down the dish and held my cell phone next to the antenna's horn and pointed the dish in various directions. I was amazed to find that I got full signal in one direction. I could not believe my eyes. I went from no signal to full signal and had not spent a dime or changed anything on my cell phone. Just to make sure I made a call using speaker phone and found that this thing truly did work.

The next test came when I took the assembly inside the house to try it. With aluminum siding on the house I have problems even getting a television signal using a rabbit ear antenna. To my surprise, I got two to three bars inside so long as I pointed the dish at a double window in my living room.

I no longer missed calls and I didn't have to leave home to talk on my cell phone. Using a blue tooth headset really worked well. It isn't an ideal setup but it worked and it didn't cost me anything.

It was also a great way to recycle that old satellite antenna that would have ended up in the trash otherwise. I had a friend give me another old dish that I used for wi-fi. I mounted it on the pole the other dish came off of. After some tweaking I found several really strong wi-fi signals that I could not get without the dish thanks to some really great neighbors with unsecured networks.

You would think it would be simple to align a dish antenna with a signal source, but it isn't. Even trying to explain this without a lot of complicated math formulas is a bit difficult. The problem is that satellite dish antennas, like the one I use, are of the offset design. This means the dish doesn't "look" where it would seem to.

In the graphic there is one line that shows the apparent view of the dish. That one comes right off the front of the dish. That is not where the dish is "looking" so don't try to use that to align the dish.

If you do you won't get any signal. The other line shows the "actual view" of the dish. Notice this line is a bit offset from the center. This is the line you must point towards the signal source wifi router or cell phone tower. Keep in mind that dish antennas are very directional.

Even moving the dish an inch or two in either direction can make you go from no signal at all to five bars. Also, the further away the signal source is the more difficult the alignment will be. It is a lot easier to find your neighbor's wifi signal than it is to find a cell tower 3 miles away.

You will need to play with the antenna alignment to find the signal and fine tune it for maximum signal. Patience is a must. First I held the cell phone in front of the dish's horn and turned around in the yard to see which direction I got the strongest signal from. Google Assistant Smart Home features require Google account and compatible devices. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Other: All packages, programming, features, and functionality and all prices and fees not included in price lock are subject to change without notice.

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I can't measure at this moment how far it reached. The effectiveness depends on the size of the dish and the shape of the parabola. I don't have any satellite dishes to try this out on though you can bet I'll be scrounging one up the next time I'm at my parent's house , but a quick Google search reveals a lot of similar, but much more complicated DIY hacks, so this might be a less-involved option.