There's your problem - dropping antenna gain

Acorn bank ?

Greg

Cute. I frame grabbed the least out of focus section of the video. I'm not certain but the uniform color of the nuts and oblong shape seems more like peanuts in the shell, than acorns:

Acorns: Peanuts:

"Boris Mohar"

They're plainly not acorns, squirrels cannot change themselves into woodpeckers and video cameras are not waiting when you discover a freakish thing.

Pwned again.

... Phil

Squirrels also need something made of wood to climb. They can move across metal and wire structures, but can't climb a metal monopole without something to sink their claws into. There's also no available perch or foothold for the squirrel to use to maneuver from the antenna mount to the front of the dish. If on top, it would just slide off to one side. Much the same applies to a woodpecker.

Dropping acorns into a hole in the radome is not very clever as it's unlikely that the squirrel or woodpecker can later recover the acorns. Woodpeckers also pound their acorns into a hole, to keep them from being stolen by the squirrels. The don't drop them into a hole.

Since the hole is about half way up the dish, a maximum of half the dish will be blocked by acorns or peanuts. If half the dish were blocked, that would only be a -3dB decrease in signal level, which would be detectable, but well within the usual 10-20 dB fade margin. Since the acorns or peanuts are absorptive, rather than reflective, there would be little change in VSWR (reflected RF).

Heh... The ones around my yard can climb a 40' Rohn 25 tower! Last Winter I put some bird food (suet (sp?) with nuts, etc.) in a mesh bag and lashed it to a rung on the tower about 30' up. I'd had failure with trying to otherwise feed the birds and not have the squirrels take it all.

By the 2nd or 3rd day they had spotted it, and within 4-5 days the mesh bag was torn open and it was all gone.

Now to try it with a 6-10 foot yard arm at 30' -- up at a 50-60 degree angle....

Jonesy

They can wrap their paws around the 1/4" rod cross bracing on the tower. The big wide (12" ??) monopole in the video is far more difficult. Same with climbing into a small hole in the vertical face of the radome.

I have a 3ft wide circular plastic platter sitting on top of a 1.25" steel mast about 10ft off the ground. The squirrels and cats try to climb it, or jump across from a tree, but usually fail.

Oh well... nice try.

Squirrels can easily traverse a horizontal, or nearly horizontal pipe or cable. The yard arm should be easy for them. Vertical is far more difficult.

... well greased.

They do real well on my neighbor's (ugh) white vinyl fence.