What Is He Doing Now? Contacting Aliens?

I had the afternoon off today, so I worked some more on that usb-dish. I found an old chair outside, half of it missing, on which I mounted the dish. I also removed the receptor-thingy, or whatever that is, from the arm on the dish (attaching the usb-dongle to it didn't get me any gain, so I figured the focal point must be somewhere else.
I searched for it using the old trial & error method: moving the usb-dongle around while keeping an eye on the signal strength.

But how do you fix something in place 33 centimeters above the arm in mid-air? You can't use any metal, and it has to be weather-proof.

Piece of cake: With bottles. I bought two bottles of water at the supermarket and drank them, then I just replaced one of the caps with my usb-dongle, cut 4 holes in the bottle's bottom, taped it with tape to prevent ripping, and attached it to the arm using cable binders.
I didn't need the bottom of the second bottle, so I cut it off, then I just stuck the bottomless bottle right on top of bottle #1, thereby shielding my precious electronic parts form wind and weather.
Then I aimed the whole thing roughly at where I think the signal is coming from, and it provides me with a steady -85. That is not great, but better than what I had before, and it is a pretty stable connection.


I did all that with my old laptop.

When I checked my new laptop, I noticed that the signal pattern had changed. Instead of a constant -90, which sucks, I suddenly saw a lot of spiking up to -75. Well, you can't watch youtube with that or even listen to online radio, but you can surf the net. And at every spike even faster than the connection of my old laptop. A bit unreliable, though. But since I can't connect the dish to my new laptop without moving my whole workspace (usb cable not long enough, 2 usb cables together cause signal-loss), I think I'm okay with that.


I guess it must be from the dish outside the door. We have some kind of nook here, walls on three sides and a balcony right above. I'm thinking the signal gets reflected by the walls or something, and then bounces back onto the backside of the dish, and from there right at my computer.

But then again it could all just be coincidence.

I don't know if this is the optimum, though. Probably not. Maybe I'll work on it some more.