What do I need to consider when looking where to place my base station antenna.
The easiest place to mount it would be on the house garage roof but will the house shade some satellites, what else needs to be considered
The base station antenna should have unoccupied view to the sky from at least 10 degrees above horizon, preferably from 5 degrees upwards. I cannot see your house but I would take any satellites “behind your house” being useless.
In addition to clear view, you should avoid metal structures, walls and roofs that reflect satellites signals to the antenna (depends a bit on the antenna if it is able to block signals coming from low or negative angels.
In practise it usually is a compromise. Need to find a solid point to fix the antenna, need to arrange power and internet/radio connectivity and need to avoid a too long antenna cable to the GNSS receiver etc. etc.
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I have decided where to put my antenna and am going to mount it on a circular steel plate, is there an specific size or thickness the plate needs to be
I did read a technical document for the standard antenna supplied with ardusimple receivers, which had diagrams on the effect of ground plane size, but I can’t recall which document it was now.
The short of it was anything over 12cm diameter would be effective and there was negligable signal advantage over 20cm diameter.
I made mine out of 3mm steel plate as that was what I had to hand and is plenty robust enough, though I gather that the thickness makes little different to signal quality.
If you have time to kill But in short 10x10cm or 12cm diameter minimal over 20cm negligible improvement.
If you go too large you run the risk of birds nest.
Depending on your latitude satellites may be south or north from you. it’s good to test your base in that spot and see how many satellites you see before committing to that spot.
Even more time to kill
My ground plate is 15x30cm 2mm steel plate first thing that was flat in steel junk pile.
the best for the base is to use an antenna style https://www.ardusimple.com/product/survey-gnss-multiband-antenna/ which offers better performance and does not require a ground plane finally you can adapt the cable to the required length
Does the shape of the disc have an effect? Round, rectangular or square?
No, just size matters you can choose shape for what is easy to install in your case.