Installing a satellite dish on a Garden Shed roof

SamSYork

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Hi,

I'm new to satellite & I'd like some advice please.

Basically I want to be able to receive UK channels (BBC, ITV etc), BBC World News (Not sure whether you can actually get this in the UK) & RTL (Germany) for F1 (Someone on Money Saving Expert said that this is FTA), HD would be preferred but not really necessary.

I was wondering what kind of setup I need to receive these channels?

I've been looking into it and wasn't sure whether to get a motorised setup (Looked at eBay item: 330688775428) or whether to get the B&Q HD Kit (_http://ow.ly/a5wCc) recently posted on here for £50, if I did, how hard would it be to motorise that system if needed?

Also, is it possible to install a dish in a garden/on a very large shed?
I ask as my mum won't allow a dish on the house as "It looks common" (Don't ask!), we have a large garden (around 100 foot long) with a clear view in all directions.

I'm on the outskirts of the west side of York if it makes any difference.

Thanks
Sam
 

Mickha

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First check where you need to site any dish, motorized, or fixed, try our dishpointer application:
http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/dishpointer.php

If you can get away with a ground mounted system you will find installation, and maintenance, a lot easier.
 

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Hello welcome to the forum SamSYork

In addition to the above what you appear to desire to watch is not all available from one satellite direction therefore you will need either a multi lnb setup, a multidish setup or lastly a motorised system.

for the first have a look at this thread that our admin Rolf has been playing with for a customer, you should get away with that in York for what you want
http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/...s/197841-had-little-play-zone-2-minidish.html
 

SamSYork

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Thanks for the help & links.

The Dish Finder says the following:
Dish
Elevation:25.6°
Azimuth: 155.4°
LNB skew: -6.6°






With it saying my dish will have to be pointing to the South East (same direction as the neighbors dish) to pickup Astra 1N which is good, as the side of or house faces south - although as mentioned I'll have to mount it on my shed.

Although my mum doesn't see the need for satellite, she says "What's wrong with freeview?" so not sure if I'll be able to get a dish yet.

The mini dish idea looks like it could be a little complicated, and I wondered what a motor would be like in comparison & would it be easier to setup?
Finally, am I likely to get more channels with a motorised dish than I would with a normal one?

Sorry for all the questions!
Sam
 

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SamSYork said:
With it saying my dish will have to be pointing to the South East (same direction as the neighbors dish) to pickup Astra 1N which is good, as the side of or house faces south - although as mentioned I'll have to mount it on my shed.
As long as the shed is firmly bolted to the floor and made of sturdy material that should not be a problem

SamSYork said:
Although my mum doesn't see the need for satellite, she says "What's wrong with freeview?" so not sure if I'll be able to get a dish yet.

You need to talk her round saying that it is a great hobby and very educational as you learn all about geometry, geostationary satellites and other cool stuff

SamSYork said:
The mini dish idea looks like it could be a little complicated, and I wondered what a motor would be like in comparison & would it be easier to setup?

It would not be simple, however there are tutorials available on this site that have helped many thousands of members
SamSYork said:
Finally, am I likely to get more channels with a motorised dish than I would with a normal one?

A dish with multiple lnb's is obviously limited in the number of satellites that can be received because populating such a small area with multiple lnb's is limiting whereas a motorises system can receive all satellites on the Clarke curve when set up properly, the downside is the noise of turning the dish and the delay moving from one sat to another, it is horses for courses

SamSYork said:
Sorry for all the questions!
Sam


That is why we are here Sam
 

SamSYork

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Just another quick question, would it be worth me running two wires when I set it up?
Just wondered as it's going to run from the shed through conduit to our kitchen that's currently being rebuilt, obviously at the moment I can plan to still hide wires (should be finished end of May).

Also, what size dish do you think I'd need? The screwfix one/B&Q one has a 60 cm dish, I just wondered if this would be enough?

Topper said:
As long as the shed is firmly bolted to the floor and made of sturdy material that should not be a problem
The shed is 16 x 8 foot so isn't likely to go anywhere soon, it's supposed to be my home office but it's a work in progress at present.
The height of the shed is probably about 8 foot as well so it'd be a reasonable height.
You need to talk her round saying that it is a great hobby and very educational as you learn all about geometry, geostationary satellites and other cool stuff
I'm trying to, never thought of those things!
She jokingly said if she could watch Barefoot Contessa on it I could have it, but I've only been able to find that on Fatafeat which is on Nilesat and I found this needs a 2.5m dish, so she'll never agree to that.
It would not be simple, however there are tutorials available on this site that have helped many thousands of members
A dish with multiple lnb's is obviously limited in the number of satellites that can be received because populating such a small area with multiple lnb's is limiting whereas a motorises system can receive all satellites on the Clarke curve when set up properly, the downside is the noise of turning the dish and the delay moving from one sat to another, it is horses for courses
I can't see the noise being too much of a problem as it'll be halfway down the garden, and the delay shouldn't be too bad either as I think it'd mainly be used for UK channels, but occassionally for RTL for F1 and maybe BBC World news once a day (Quite like their coverage).
That is why we are here Sam
Thanks :).
 

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Well which ever you decide to go for multi lnb or motorised I would not go smaller than 80cm as you are much further up the country.

It sounds like you should be able to hide the dish from view from the house which will be a bonus

I would recommend a minimum of four feeds as you will probably use a quad lnb in any case, so two feeds to two locations, i.e. main living room and bedroom one each for viewing and one each for recording one channel whilst viewing the other, so four independent feeds in effect
 

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BBC World News is easily available - its on both 13E Hotbird & 19E Astra 1 :)
 

SamSYork

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I just wanted to come back and thank you all for the help you've given me.

So far I've bought 100m of coax, a MEDION® LIFE® P24003 HDTV reciever and 10 F Plug Connectors.

I'll be buying an 80cm motorised dish shortly.

Do you think I'll need a sat-finder or with it being motoried will the reciever sort it out? (Sorry if it sounds a stupid question!)
 

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SamSYork said:
Do you think I'll need a sat-finder or with it being motoried will the reciever sort it out? (Sorry if it sounds a stupid question!)

Not a stupid question at all, I would recommend a sat-finder if you have never set one up before, you will require a reasonable amount of patience and it will be beneficial if you have already read the appropriate setup guides before starting to align your dish and motor. The sticky threads (the first six) on the link below will be your guide
Dish Setup Guides, Information threads and FAQs | The Satellite TV & Digital TV Support forum

People will be around if you cannot answer a question from those guides
 

N1501

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Hi SamSYork,

FWIW, I was new to the Satellite Scene in February and after reading this forum, went for a motorised 85 cm
dish as our Freeview was a bit limited. See here:

http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/.../197871-my-first-ever-satellite-pictures.html


I found I can find the satellites quite easily using a £ 6 Sat Finder and Dishpointer on the computer.

I initially did some tests myself in the back garden which were fine but got someone else to install the system on the front of the house as I didn't fancy going up high ladders with all that weight.
 

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I have a Technomate TM-2300 super motor new in box if you are intrested, went monoblock so no need for it £20+post if you want to save a few ££,
 

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Thanks again for the advice that you've all given me, I've now ordered a sat finder and got the coax running behind the walls in the new extension.

Now, this may sound like another silly question but the electrician said it was better the run the coax into an outlet before connecting it to the receiver, I just wondered if this is true or not?
The actual receiver is going in a kitchen cupboard so putting an outlet in the back of the cupboard seems like a waste of time.

scooterbuk said:
I have a Technomate TM-2300 super motor new in box if you are intrested, went monoblock so no need for it £20+post if you want to save a few ££,
Thanks, I'm interested but can't seem to send a PM on here could you email me Removed (an alias which I can delete so not bothered about it being online) with details.
 

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No advantage whatsoever to putting a join in the cable, in fact it's better without.
 

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Notwithstanding the disposable EMail address, we apply our rules consistently, so I have removed it.

PMs are not normally activated until Members have a track record of Posts, but exceptions are made for valid sales/purchases and Installation requests.

Hopefully Admin will activate that facility for you so you can correspond privately with scooterbuk


Edit: PM's Activated
:-righton
 

SamSYork

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rolfw said:
No advantage whatsoever to putting a join in the cable, in fact it's better without.
Thanks, I won't bother putting an outlet in for it.
Tivù said:
Notwithstanding the disposable EMail address, we apply our rules consistently, so I have removed it.

PMs are not normally activated until Members have a track record of Posts, but exceptions are made for valid sales/purchases and Installation requests.

Hopefully Admin will activate that facility for you so you can correspond privately with scooterbuk


Edit: PM's Activated
:-righton
MY apologies, I wasn't sure, thanks for enabling my PMs I've now PM'd scooterbuk.
 

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As a start to others you wouldn't go far wrong with a £30 setup from Aldi includes dish receiver and cable.
 

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SamSYork said:
Although my mum doesn't see the need for satellite, she says "What's wrong with freeview?" so not sure if I'll be able to get a dish yet.
The BBC is going to put on 24 channels of Olympics which will be too many to squeeze into terrestrial. As far as I am aware they will be on satellite and possibly the www.

I also know little of satellite, so I've just bought and installed a Labgear HDSR300 kit (dish, cable, mounting hardware, receiver). At the moment it is on offer at £42 from Screwfix (Hope mentioning this is not against the rules here) so I bought it as a learning exercise. Not worried if it all goes titsup for the money. Chuffed to bits to get it going in time to have HD for Euro football! The thing actually works! Not superbly mind you. You get what you pay for. The EPG is too basic to be of much help and if you scan through the program display the reciever immediately tunes to the channel as soon as you move you cursor onto it. Irritating.

Also the video and sound are not syncronised on the HD channels. I'm presently in the process of trying to find out how to update the software, if this is where the problem may be, but the reciever user manual is a little bit too basic to tell me exactly how to do this. But as I say, it is a learning exercise.

I had some help from my son and I don't think I could have done it all by myself. Biggest problem was that we initially aligned to the wrong satellite. The fact that all the stations were in German should have been the give away, but it took me some time to figure out what was going on. My son googled the station frequencies and came up with the fact that the sat we needed, Astra 28.2E, was 10 deg to the East of the one we had. Sure enough there it was and the thing has been working brilliantly.

The reciever will take a portable hard drive through usb port to record programs, but that is extra. I have yet to try that out. Again there is very little in the user manual on how to do this.

The hardware of the dish and mountings look a bit light weight, but it is up on the side of my house and working. Time will tell how durable it is, but as I have said already, you usually get what you pay for.

I didn't use a sat finder, but used the TV display to give signal strength and signal quality after initially simply pointing the dish in the rough direction with a map compass. Elevation was a bit of a problem because the LNB is at an angle to the dish with the result that although the dish installation leaflet tells you to aim the dish at an elevation of about 24 deg, where we live, it was about 10 deg. less than this in actual fact. I felt this was a bit remiss of the instructions, not to mention this. In the end I moved the dish a few deg at a time in the general direction of the sat with my son shouting up the signal quality reading from the sitting room. Patience was needed as initially I was moving the dish too far in each step and shot over Astra. Got it right in the end though with smaller movements.

Cheers
 
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