Nope, a 4 ft dish in 11 GHz should be pretty narrow, a few degrees and you should be into a deep, deep null. Take a look at the beamwidth or pattern for your antenna. It should be similar to an 8 ft dish in 5.x GHz.
We once used an existing 12 ft dish for an 11 GHz link and I kept having to tell the tower guy he was not going to be able to eyeball it. The beamwidth was something like 1 degree if I remember right. He ketp getting nada for signal until I made him slowly sweep the azimuth. From: That One Guy via Af Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 9:50 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] aligning bigger antennas on short paths Weve never gone above 2' we finished installing our 11ghz link yesterday and had the antennas rough aligned, one side is 3' one side is 4'. I expected the tighter patterns would make it harder to find the initial link but they actually linked up right off the bat and it was right on the projected power levels. This is only 10 miles, so we have visual on the path. We did a little rough alignment yesterday, and will do the fine alignment today. when we we roughing it there was a good amount of travel on the antenna (4') side we were on and only a couple db change. do larger antennas on such a short path give you a little more leniency in alignment or something? we will do full horizontal and vertical panning today to make sure we arent in side lobes, just curious is there is more slop in this scenario. -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
