Fitting freesat dishes, etc

Install it where it is easy to get to; doesnt have to be high up, just have a view of the satellite. Get a Quad LNB, never know when you will want the extra outputs !

By checked ? it can go there? do you mean it is easily fixed there or that plus it has an unobstructed view of the satellite as well ?

If you have other properties nearby they may have dishes that can give an initial indication of the direction.

GH

I fitted a dish but couldn't for the life of me line it up. Ended up paying a guy £30.

You'll need some sort of signal meter. It's very difficult without. I should check local installer prices for supply and install/align before you buy anything.

Bill

R D S laid this down on his screen :

It is very easy - I use a dish when we go off in the caravan. Every trip, I have to set it up and align it - it takes me just a couple of minutes. If the dish will be near the TV, you can get the signal strength on the TV.

Just be sure that where ever you intend installing it, has a clear view of the satellite, unlike the Sky installer who first installed ours. He fitted in looking up through the house eaves :o)

I fitted my own dish with the help of a cheap satellite meter to get a fine alignment Example

It needs a power source, either your receiver/TV or a battery. I used an old 12V battery previously removed from my alarm panel.

There are various Youtube videos showing how to use it and align a dish.

Probably buy a quad LNB even if your TV only has 1 input.

Same dish as sky, same cluster of satellites. I fitted a slightly bigger zone 2 dish in a zone 1 area.

The dish doesn't need to be mounted high on a wall as long as it can see the satellite. However, if on a street side probably fit it high enough so vandals cannot jump up and swing on it.

Go to

Use webro WF100 cable, or equivalent.

Basic instructions on fitting an F plug.

It's easier with a "satellite finder" - just an in-line signal strength meter with an inbuilt, variable, attenuator - as there is not the lag of updates to the on-screen signal strength delay.

SteveW

Yes but it's a nuisance there being umpteen satellites along the arc all very close to 28E.

Bill

It is fairly trivial if you can use a compass and/or you can buy a satellite beacon device that sits inline with the power feed from the TV and gives you audio beeps and signal strength when you get near. If you are close enough that someone can shout the signal reading from the TV then you could probably dispense with the signal meter. I wasn't.

If you have a compass and know where it is in azimuth and knw your longitude then it is a lot easier to search along a single axis first and then optimise after you have got some sort of signal. The main beam isn't always quite where the nominal calibration says it will be.

Hard bit is mounting the thing rigidly onto the wall at a height. (although it will work fine mounted on the wall at any height provided that it has a clear line of sight to the geostationary satellite)

Martin Brown formulated on Wednesday :

True - some of the early dish installers assumed a dish had to be as high as possible. That is absolutely not the case at all. My dish I installed at the back, just 6 feet off the ground, after Sky installed it at the front, hidden from the sat by the house eaves. My first big steerable dish I installed on the ground.

My 'sat finder', is a rather clever gadget which 'plugs' into the back / top edge of the dish. Its plastic, you dial in the sat you want to find, then a combined compass/ level indicator is just aligned with the bearing and azimuth marks, by adjusting the dish. The gadget gets me within a few degrees, just a matter then of fine tweaking to find the sat.

Beware of trying to use a compass if the dish is a steel one :D

Yes and make sure any trees nearby cannot grow up and obscure the sat view. this is harder the lower you mount it of cores as shrubs soon end up as trees! Brian

You can get little gizmos to help you get the aim correct and the polarisation correct quite cheaply. Brian

Also... Be careful what Freesat box you get. There tends to be loads of channels picked up and a lot of them need various cards. Seeing the wood from the trees can be very difficult so the user interface is key to making it usable

Good plan. TBH when I inherited a dish I thought it must be all very complex, but provided its pointing in the right direction and you have decent LNBs, its actually a piece of piss, as may be seen by the calibre of people who install them.

I am sure there are gadgets out there the enable you to set the direction and azimuth rather better than trial and error.

looks one way to go.

many smart phones have magnetic compass chips

Do bear in mind there are more than one satellite up there, and the one you want is astra on 28.2E

tells you (given where you are) where to start pointing it

The Natural Philosopher brought next idea :

Using an inline signal strength meter is the final step, the first step is to get it pointing roughly at the sat, which is where so many struggle.

I am surprised no company seems to have made a simple universal gadget, which combines a compass, dial in heading calculator and azimuth indicator, apart from the gadget which is only designed to fit and work with my own portable dish.

It is not that complicated. You dial in your longitude, latitude and the sat you want to align to, stick it in the socket on the back of the dish and align it. Gets you within a few degrees, which is all that is needed, to use a signal meter (like the above) for the final alignment.

This he said that he was buying a TV with a built in receiver?

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

Many years ago, in the days of analogue (?) satellites, I travelled a moderate distance to purchase an advertised low cost steerable dish system. I always wondered if I was sold a collection of incompatible junk, as a colleague who went to the same supplier a week or so later was quoted a much higher price for a system.

I had to bodge the LNB mount to get it anywhere near the correct point relative to the dish, and never did manage to get the thing to steer an arc to get more than 2 satellites. Bringing in a professional firm, sign-written van and all, just made it worse before they gave up.

When it worked it was good and I watched a lot of excellent concerts broadcast by our continental neighbours, as well as getting the specific satellites for Portuguese and other channels that the family wanted at the time.

I decided that the steering mechanism wasn't ever going to be satisfactory, so devised a plan to build something computer-controlled to scan the sky and memorise satellite positions. Unfortunately, I only got as far as acquiring two large old industrial printers as a source of stepper motors before exhaustion overcame me.

The receiver died, the cables fell victim to an over-enthusiastic strimmer, the large dish is still mounted on the garage and the two printers are part of the junk collection in the shed that must be got to the tip asap.

I've not bothered with satellites since.