Installing a Freesat dish

[kiloran]

Anyone got any experience and hints/tips for installing a Freesat dish such as this:
http://www.trade-works.co.uk/freesat-di ... -kit-p8375

Sky installed a dish around 25 years ago, which we have used for Freesat for the past 12 years or so. We are suffering more and more picture break-ups over the past few years, especially if there is a gusty wind or a particularly heavy rainstorm.

I've concluded that the problem is the conifers at the end of the garden. They are now 50-60ft, obviously grown over the years. I've worked out where the Astra 2E sattelite is. I built a wooden template so I could check the 20deg elevation above the horizon and it lines up about 6ft below the top of the trees. Using a mobile app, and also the position of the sun to get the azimuth, the largest tree is definately the main culprit.

I've had a look at the other side of the house and it looks like there is a pretty good line of sight to Astra 2E, so I reckon I could install a zone 2 dish there without too much trouble. The cable run from the dish to the TV would be around 25-25m which seems OK from all I have read if I use good-quality cable.

Any thoughts/hints/gotchas I should consider?

--kiloran

[Infrasonic]

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDis ... able-guide

[mc2fool]

Sky installed a dish around 25 years ago, which we have used for Freesat for the past 12 years or so. We are suffering more and more picture break-ups over the past few years, especially if there is a gusty wind or a particularly heavy rainstorm.

I've concluded that the problem is the conifers at the end of the garden.

It may be so, but have you tried giving the dish a jiggle realigning the dish? After 25 years it might not be pointing quite spot on any more.

I built a wooden template so I could check the 20deg elevation above the horizon and it lines up about 6ft below the top of the trees. Using a mobile app, and also the position of the sun to get the azimuth, the largest tree is definately the main culprit.

If it is indeed the tree, an alternative would be to lop off the top ten feet or so.

[Laughton]

Please be careful.

I know three people who suffered life changing injuries as a result of "just popping up a ladder to fix the dish or fix the guttering".

[Mike88]

The dish should point 28.2 degrees east of south so if it once worked it is likely to do so again. Some slight adjustment might be all that is required but please please be careful as many people have lost their lives falling off a ladder including a friend of mine doing exactly the same thing during lockdown. A pro should sort it out for you cheaply.

[kiloran]

Please be careful.
I know three people who suffered life changing injuries as a result of "just popping up a ladder to fix the dish or fix the guttering".

The dish should point 28.2 degrees east of south so if it once worked it is likely to do so again. Some slight adjustment might be all that is required but please please be careful as many people have lost their lives falling off a ladder including a friend of mine doing exactly the same thing during lockdown. A pro should sort it out for you cheaply.

Thanks for the concern. I'll make sure my wife is holding the bottom of the ladder so I'll have a soft landing
More seriously, the new dish will probably be installed much lower down, probably 8-9 feet so the risk should be acceptable. I did some more serious measurements today and the tree is absolutely line of sight to the existing dish. We get a signal when it is calm and dry, but significant break-up with rain and/or wind. The tree will no doubt continue growing so a better-sited dish is necessary.

--kiloran

[mutantpoodle]

I am no expert, but...
if the confifers in question are 50-60 ft then it will be 2 years at mmost before they grow the next 6 ft you refer to as allowing

better advice might be to get trees lopped...unless revealing unpleasant views??

[DrFfybes]

We looked at getting a dish when we moved as there was no dish. At my time of life I try and leave things like this to the pro's as others have suggested (mum and dad had a roofer friend who ended up in a come for years after just popping back up for a hammer he'd left in the gutter).

When we approached the village installer to get the dish he told us to call Sky. As a returning customer we got a SkyQ box and new dish for £15/month for a 12 month contract with no upfront cost, which was only £20 more than the local chap quoted us to come and fit a dish. I think it is about to go up £3, but to be honest it is so slick and works so well (plus we get the bike racing on telly rather than via a faffy app) that we'll keep it going again.

Paul

[Mike88]

Please be careful.
I know three people who suffered life changing injuries as a result of "just popping up a ladder to fix the dish or fix the guttering".

The dish should point 28.2 degrees east of south so if it once worked it is likely to do so again. Some slight adjustment might be all that is required but please please be careful as many people have lost their lives falling off a ladder including a friend of mine doing exactly the same thing during lockdown. A pro should sort it out for you cheaply.

Thanks for the concern. I'll make sure my wife is holding the bottom of the ladder so I'll have a soft landing
More seriously, the new dish will probably be installed much lower down, probably 8-9 feet so the risk should be acceptable. I did some more serious measurements today and the tree is absolutely line of sight to the existing dish. We get a signal when it is calm and dry, but significant break-up with rain and/or wind. The tree will no doubt continue growing so a better-sited dish is necessary.

--kiloran

I've had a lot of experience with dishes during my motorhome life. It seems to me that lowering the dish will not work as the low pitch of the required elevation will be unable to receive a signal due to the trees. The dish should be higher, not lower. A local aerial fitter (most also install sky dishes) will do the job for less that £100. My local fitter will supply a dish and lnb for around the £100 mark so we are not talking about large sums here. Whatever you decide good luck.

[kiloran]

I've had a lot of experience with dishes during my motorhome life. It seems to me that lowering the dish will not work as the low pitch of the required elevation will be unable to receive a signal due to the trees. The dish should be higher, not lower. A local aerial fitter (most also install sky dishes) will do the job for less that £100. My local fitter will supply a dish and lnb for around the £100 mark so we are not talking about large sums here. Whatever you decide good luck.

The new dish will be on the other side of the house and the tree will not be in the way. I've made some detailed checks and there is a clear line-of-sight to Astra 2E

--kiloran

[kiloran]

A very late follow-up to this. For various reasons, I only got around to installing a new dish last month.

I installed the new dish on a very solid wooden fence, 6ft above ground level, with a clear line-of-sight to Astra 2E. It's got a sturdy bracket and being low down it's far more sheltered and should be fine in a strong wind. I aligned the new dish using a signal-strength meter supplied with the dish, and all seemed to be OK, with a strong, good-quality signal and good solid picture.
However I found that Sky Arts was a poor picture with a lot of break-up. I did more investigating and looking at the Humax diagnostics screen, all channels were 100% strength and 90-100% signal quality, except Sky Arts, Sky News and Pick TV, which are the only channels on the 12070MHz transponder. Signal quality was only 40-50%, and the signal strength bounced between 0 and 100%. I could not find any reports of problems with that transponder so I threw the problem at a satellite TV forum which suggested it was probably a dish alignment or LNB skew problem. This just didn't seem to make sense to me. Astra 2E has over 50 transponders, so why should a single one be affected by dish alignment?

Lacking any other option, I had a look at dish alignment. I set up a video link between my phone and tablet, set up the tablet to view the TV diagnostics screen showing signal strength and quality and used my phone to monitor this remotely. I tweaked the skew, with no effect at all. Then changed the dish azimuth by about half a gnat's dick and suddenly got 100% signal strength and quality! I checked the TV and all channels were perfect. Job done.
I really am astonished at how sensitive the dish alignment is. I guess the dish beamwidth is a few degrees, so a miniscule adjustment should not have a major impact. And why was the problem only with a single transponder? Weird.

But, problem solved, so I'm a happy chappy. And even happier because my wife is also happy!

--kiloran

[BullDog]

Then changed the dish azimuth by about half a gnat's dick and suddenly got 100% signal strength and quality!

--kiloran

Lovely to see traditional imperial measurement units instead of the modern namby pamby metric nonsense.

[Infrasonic]

Then changed the dish azimuth by about half a gnat's dick and suddenly got 100% signal strength and quality!

--kiloran

Lovely to see traditional imperial measurement units instead of the modern namby pamby metric nonsense.

As long as you don't get accused on 'gnat shaming'...

[Tedx]

Lovely to see traditional imperial measurement units instead of the modern namby pamby metric nonsense.

As long as you don't get accused on 'gnat shaming'...

We've just gone from dishes and antennae to getting our telly wholly through the internet. A whole load of dishes, cables and electronic boxes are sitting in the back of the car waiting for the next trip to the recycling centre. This year, the home phone was also retired from active service. How times change.

We have a Sky Stream box in the living room attached to the main tv and we used to have coax running through the wall to the kitchen diner where the only other tv in the house is. Sky were desperate to sell us multi room...but I declined. Theres an Amazon Firestick there now and that does the job perfectly.

[DrFfybes]

We've just gone from dishes and antennae to getting our telly wholly through the internet.

After moving in Covid and unable to get a Dish installed, we went down that route. Our internet is a little 'rural'.

Oh the joy when Sky finally came around and put the dish up, no more reliant on the weather affecting the 1/2 mile of copperthrough the trees back to the cabinet, or the whim of whichever contractor was messing about in there at the time.

Menus that worked, recordings that series linkes, I was so glad to see the back of the BT box I cancelled mid contract, but as they'd been out 3 times and couldn't sort it they didn't even charge me the cancellation fee.

The roof is coming off after Xmas - need to work out how to cable the dish into the temporary lounge

Paul

[Tedx]

Well when Plusnet emailed me saying I could get full fibre for less than my fibre to the cabinet + line rental I jumped at it.

I'd always thought about Sky Glass but didnt want their telly that your compelled to buy. Sky Stream seemed the solution. And so far so good. Beautiful 4k UHD and Netflix and Paramount + included as Standard and no dishes and cables.

Downsides are no recording (but they do have the playlist feature) and channel hopping is a bit slower. But that's a good thing.

Sorry about your thread K.....

[monabri]

Well when Plusnet emailed me saying I could get full fibre for less than my fibre to the cabinet + line rental I jumped at it.

I'd always thought about Sky Glass but didnt want their telly that your compelled to buy. Sky Stream seemed the solution. And so far so good. Beautiful 4k UHD and Netflix and Paramount + included as Standard and no dishes and cables.

Downsides are no recording (but they do have the playlist feature) and channel hopping is a bit slower. But that's a good thing.

Sorry about your thread K.....

How are you getting on with "full fibre" from Plusnet? We migrated from Plusnet's fibre to cabinet to full fibre (losing the telephone line**). We were expecting "instant downloads" but the reality has proved not to be the case. Frankly, I was a little disappointed (we chose the "Full Fibre 74Mb"package but the actual speed over wi-fi is much lower - sometimes 1/10th of that speed).



** a blessing as it was a PITA getting calls from scammers.

[Tedx]

Well when Plusnet emailed me saying I could get full fibre for less than my fibre to the cabinet + line rental I jumped at it.

I'd always thought about Sky Glass but didnt want their telly that your compelled to buy. Sky Stream seemed the solution. And so far so good. Beautiful 4k UHD and Netflix and Paramount + included as Standard and no dishes and cables.

Downsides are no recording (but they do have the playlist feature) and channel hopping is a bit slower. But that's a good thing.

Sorry about your thread K.....

How are you getting on with "full fibre" from Plusnet? We migrated from Plusnet's fibre to cabinet to full fibre (losing the telephone line**). We were expecting "instant downloads" but the reality has proved not to be the case. Frankly, I was a little disappointed (we chose the "Full Fibre 74Mb"package but the actual speed over wi-fi is much lower - sometimes 1/10th of that speed).



** a blessing as it was a PITA getting calls from scammers.

Pretty good really - no issues that I can think of. We went for 150mb and still saved a fiver a month. It streams UHD live sport with no issues whatsoever. Same with UHD movies etc. I can be watching the football and the missus can be through the house watching iplayer and we can both be on our phones at the same time and it's fine.

I could have gone faster (I think they do up to 1GB) but neither of us do gaming or anything and as Plusnet said, it's easy to crank it up a bit if needed.

Currently the 150mb means a guaranteed 80mb. I check it now and again and I've seen 140mb a few times, but normally I see 90+ which is 3-4 times what I was getting with my previous cabinet fibre.

Agree re: spam calls.

[DrFfybes]

How are you getting on with "full fibre" from Plusnet? We migrated from Plusnet's fibre to cabinet to full fibre (losing the telephone line**). We were expecting "instant downloads" but the reality has proved not to be the case. Frankly, I was a little disappointed (we chose the "Full Fibre 74Mb"package but the actual speed over wi-fi is much lower - sometimes 1/10th of that speed).

ITYF that the speed guaranteed is by FTTP is TTP

Wifi speed depends on loads of things, number of users, router, recieving equipment, onstacles between the router and device, etc. Using fast.com I read 40+ Mbps on this laptop stood next to the router (which is as good as we expect), 35+ in the lounge and day room, but lucky to see 10 in the sun lounge with 2 chimneys in between. In the bedrrom I used a signal strength app and got a stronger signal from the farmyard about 200m over the field, and we have no signal in the bath (plastic, not enamel)

Paul

[didds]

We've just gone from dishes and antennae to getting our telly wholly through the internet.

We've effectively been a internet TV only house for a few years - but because we moved rooms to use as our main relaxing/TV room and the existing aerial coax hasnt enough oomph (more technical terms) to deliver a signal form the chimney on the other side of the house (ie where the "old" TV room was) and so we use firestick.

It does however mean we dont get FV, which means we dont get the free Sky Arts channel that allegedly exists on FV.

I have finally got around to trying to arrange a TV aerial on the other side of the house for the "new" TV room though me and the aerial guy are currently just swapping VMs!

[quote]
This year, the home phone was also retired from active service.
{/quote]
We had issues with our phone recently which all got sorted in the end but during which I learned that landline phones via digital/router are now just a freeby add on to a b/band provision... their is no line charge (or whatever it used to be called). So we could drop the landline so to speak without feeling that we are paying for it ... but at the end of the day its also there if we ned it and more importantly other people can call it. Which tends to be my mum-in-law only (94).

as a complete aside its just occurred to me that in a power cut/loss of b/band service (POTS here) we couldn't call 999 (other than mobiles etc which could be out of charge). But I then though thats no difference to a house with no landline at all.