Pointing dish to another satellite

[devany]

I have a satellite dish pointing at Astra 28 (Sky), but we don't use it, so I thought, rather than shell out money to the dirty digger, I'd point it at Astra 1 19 E and so I can watch F1 on RTL.

When I got up there, I found this:

looks like the result of some prior bodging.

I couldn't get a 10mm (too large) or a 9mm (too small) to get any purchase on this - bearing in mind it's quite high up. So I guess this will need a 3/8" - which I don't have to hand. (I didn't want to use any adjustables because it looked like that may been the cause of the problem.)

Given the state of the nut, I'd like to make sure I've got the right size. Can anyone confirm the proper nut size or otherwise describe how to turn this thing.

I'm guessing that these dishes are pretty standard. Here's a photo from further back:

advice appreciated.

[Andy Burns]

I'd be surprised if it wasn't metric, got any ring spanners?

[H. Neary]

They are 10mm if I remember correctly.

Personally I'd get the mole grips out.

If you really want to feel good about the job, Wickes seem to do a range of zinc coated nuts & bolts, but there again if you have been filling the poor old dish with Murdochs rancid excrement it's probably only good for another couple of million insurance adverts anyway. So if you don't swing the dish by next week.....................................

HN

[devany]

Thanks for responding.

10mm & 9mm rings were what I tried.

[Mr Pounder]

Angle grinder.

Curses! Beaten to it.

[fred]

In article , devany writes

Don't post unnecessarily large images?

[Fredxx]

I'd use a hex socket rather than a ring spanner.

[Bill Wright]

M6 thread, 10mm spanner. I suggest you get those nuts (there's one underneath) off with a mole wrench then fit new M6 sets (bolts with thread all the way up) and nuts. Use M6 washers because it's square holes one side and slots the other. Use a ring spanner.

You might have the same problem with the elevation bolts.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

You do. Hence the marks on the wall bracket where the installer has adjusted the azimuth.

Bill

[Andy Dingley]

Angle grinder, if you can get power up there easily.

Multi-size socket wrench - the sort that's an over-sized housing filled with loose sliding pins. They're pretty good on mangled nuts.

Your favourite gorillating wrench (mine's a Blue Point that's somewhere between water pump pliers and a nutcracker)

[Brian Gaff]

May need to resort to replacing it I suppose but could try moles first as its probably already mangled. cannot see your picture but a friend eventually took it all apart and replaced the bolts etc due to crap installation and tin worm. Brian

[devany]

I know what you mean, but... that was taken on a phone, up a ladder, then shared via drop box. No desk-top or image processing was involved.

Time to upload the photo was not noticeable (maybe 1 to 3 sec).

This was the first time (for a long time) that I've tried to do any such thing, and I'm well impressed by how easy it was and the result.

[Harry Bloomfield]

devany laid this down on his screen :

That looks like a fairly recent install, but as if someone did not have the correct spanner and used pliers or similar on the nut, or used an old nut. I would not expect it to be tight, maybe hold the nut with Mole grips and use a proper spanner on the bolt head.

[H. Neary]

Fitted a Sky dish have we?

The bolt heads have a square base, so that cretins don't get too confused with which spanner goes to the top and which to the bottom.

Additionally they are usually domed, again to avoid confusion!

As I pointed out a few posts back Mole grips on the nut will be more than adequate. I wouldn't even bother to paint the bare metal as the dishes sold with sky packages do not last too long anyway.

Incidentally if the dish is anywhere near to where crows congregate, I found that stretching fishing line from the dish top to the LNB quite useful. It stops intermittent pixelation due to tweety bird attenuation effects. The LNB boom is an attractive perch, but it seems that a thin hardly visible line deters them.

HN

[devany]

Super! That was just the job.

Many thanks.

[Bill Wright]

They moan at me about this. It's just that it takes a long time to download on a slow connection. If the picture doesn't need fine detail it's best to reduce the resolution to something like 1,000 pixels horizontally. The vertical resolution can be whatever number it likes, because you lock the aspect ratio. For instance, my phone produces pics

3264 x 2448. If I go to 'Image, resize' (or whatever, it depends on the program) and set it for 1000 pixels (width) I get an image 1000 wide by 750 high. That's good enough for most things. But if you feel the pic needs good resolution send the original.

Bill

[Martin]

Isn't F1 on RTL encrypted?

[devany]

Apparently yes on HD, but not on SD.

[devany]

Thanks for all the replies. A 10mm hex socket did the job in the end.