Big dish vs small: how much better?

[Terencek]

For aesthetic reasons in a bush cottage I use one of those small portable Elsat dishes you so often see with caravanners. But it only takes a bit of cloud cover to kill my picture. Is this also a problem with the large (standard) dishes, or is it worth my while to upgrade?

 

[Leftfoot]

A bigger dish will help but remeber....if you are so much as 1 degree out you can miss the satelite by 300km. Peak alignment is critical. Its not like TV Aerials, point in the general direction. Blocks of flats have larger dishes for a slightlt stronger signal as they have losses (cable lenght and amps) to contend with. Having said that, Even a Large dish has dropout in severe storms.