Installing a Sky dish - DIY or not ?

[Adrian]

I'm glad it's not just me that thinks that ! It's truly awful, isn't it ?

Shame - because the company's great, I tend to order by email and it's nearly always next-day delivery...

Anything special I need to look for - or is a 1m dish a 1m dish ?? Andy was mentioning minidishes - will the Zone 2 minidish be insufficiently gainy for the job. As I say - we have excellent 'visiblity' from west to east - though I do realise that we'e going to be getting the odd rainy / foggy day out there

Agreed

Might as well bring some with me - then all I need is a round tuit and we'll be done

Thanks for the advice

Adrian

[Vortex]

You don't even need a cheapy satfinder if you can position a TV so you can see it while tweaking the dish.

Go to "Signal Test" somewhere under the "Services" menu.

1. Adjust dish azimuth/elevation to maximise "Signal Strength"

1. Rotate LNB to maximise "Signal Quality" (clockwise about10 degrees in south UK).

Job done.

[Andy Hall]

It's not a visibility issue in the same sense as with terrestrial TV - i.e. with the latter there will be some signal if there is some obstruction. With satellite it generally works or doesn't in terms of obstructions. However, the angle made with the satellite is such that unless you live in a dip next to a vertical cliff, you should be OK.

I have an 80cm motorised dish because I like to look at news and documentary programs from other countries. I can move this to be able to receive from satellites up to about 40 degrees either way of south. With some at the extremities or having footprints that are not intended to cover where I am, the signal can be poor. It is certainly affected by heavy rain or mist and seemingly by air temperature as well. I'm not suggesting going for a motorised dish, but a good 80 or 90cm fixed one would make a lot of sense.

I think it is worth paying a bit more for a good quality dish and low noise LNB. I bought a Channel Master dish and am pretty pleased with it. Triax make good products as well.

is a good source and offer helpful advice.

I would also go for a good low noise LNB.

>

[AlanC]

Have you tried speaking to Sky about moving?

A friend of mine recently moved house (only a few miles down the road). She contacted Sky about moving and their preference was for her to leave the dish (and cable) behind as it envouraged the new owner to take up Sky (and saved them a bit of money). I beleive that there was mention of free installation at your new property if you did this, but I am not 100% sure as the house she purchased already had a dish that the previous owner left behind.

Alan

[Ian White]

Strongly agree about the paper catalogue being much better.

CPC seem to be moving away from being "trade only" and are in a phase of sending the catalogue free for the asking.

However, there have been cases when the "in stock" status on the website was not accurate, and the "Awaiting stock" message could mean anything between "tomorrow" and "never". The telephone order people do have up-to-date displays, and can also tell you when stock is expected, so I find it's always worth the cost of a phone call (SkypeOut).

BTW, we're also seeing a lot more commonality between the inventories of CPC and their sister company Farnell. I hope they do remain as separate catalogues (wouldn't want to see the Farnell component quality diluted by some of the consumer crap that CPC sell) but wouldn't be surprised if in future some items ordered from one company's catalogue might be drop-shipped from the other company's warehouse.

GL with the move to Ireland, Adrian... in spite of all the travel and trouble, it will be Worth It!

[Adrian]

Many thanks - I've dropped an email to the people @ satellitesuperstore.com (what a dreadful website ! - one of those where all the info you want is probably there, but it's a so-and-so to find it!) - and we'll see what they recommend.....

Thanks again Adrian

[Adrian]

And you can read it in bed / in the bath

Just hope they don't go the way of Maplin - serious amount of dumbing-down happened there over the last 10 - 15 years....

I do hope so. We've been working towards this for 18 months...... .... it's our turn now !

Will be looking to set up some ham radio when we get established out there - should be nice & quiet (electrically) - house built pretty much in the middle of a field !

Nice VHF takeoff from west through south to east, too !

Regards Adrian (G0THW)

[Andy Wade]

A Zone 2 minidish, properly installed, should be fine.

Yes, the LNB can be rotated in its housing to any of five pre-set positions. The default position is 3 and only needs to be changed for Eire and Devon/Cornwall (pos'n 2) or NE Scotland (pos'n 4).

There are loads of them - e.g.

[Adrian]

Trouble is - we prefer to appear to be in the UK, from Sky's point of view - otherwise (apparently) they try to get you to sign up as an Irish subscriber and Ch4 / Ch5 aren't part of that package.....

Good thought, though

Thanks Adrian

[Timothy Murphy]

As a matter of interest (if you live in Ireland) the Irish government recently set up a consortium led by RTE to introduce terrestrial digital TV. It's meant to start fairly soon, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Not sure if it will include Channel 4.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Adrian saying something like:

You'll be wanting this, then.

I'll keep an ear out for you.

[Adrian]

Thanks ! I'd already seen that site - but now I've bookmarked it ....

QTH ?

Adrian

[Broadback]

No time to read all the thread, but if no one has said get down to Lidle, they have a very cheap meter on offer, see offers on their web site.