sat newbie needs some advice on feasibility

C

cable_guy

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
Nothing but dodgy Freeview yet!
My Location
England
Hi all, I'm new to the forum today

I am looking into experimenting with a sat dish installation myself because sky told me they won't install one as I don't get line of sight.

I got an app for my phone which showed me that I can get line of site if I was to somehow install a dish near my fence, or ON my fence. I've attached the picture. (Btw I think I can just about cut the branch which hangs down from the top)

The fence is not 100% sturdy, but it takes a fair amount of force to ,makeit sway, although I'm not very handy so don't know how I could attach a dish onto a fence post of approx 4" x 4"....

Another option I have is to dig a hole and erect a pole......but i feel it sounds like its harder than it looks.

Any advice any of you guys can give me will be appreciated.
 
Welcome to the Forum.

Have another go at attaching the pic .................. !
 
Welcome,

I have all my dishes bolted to fence posts, you just have to accept that you may need to bang them back into the ground after any good gales to take out any movement!

Our Sky dish is bolted to one, and has been for the last 5 years. Never had any problems with it at all.
 
Thanks for the replies! Sounds good about your fence posts! I forgot to mention mine are wooden though....

Will try again with the picture in this post!
 

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Would be good to see a picture of the fence and fence post. I had a dish on a post until recently. It had been working quite well until the recent winds.
But that should not put you off. How far is the fence post from the receiver?
 
cable_guy said:
Thanks for the replies! Sounds good about your fence posts! I forgot to mention mine are wooden though....

Will try again with the picture in this post!
Click to expand...
All mine are wooden as well - nice and easy to drill through for the coach-bolts :-rofl2
 
fence.webp
Juan69 said:
Would be good to see a picture of the fence and fence post. I had a dish on a post until recently. It had been working quite well until the recent winds.
But that should not put you off. How far is the fence post from the receiver?
Click to expand...
the offending fence post is attached, it's the one closer to the camera than the criss cross fence thing. I can also get Line of sight on the criss cross fence post too though. As you can see the post closer to the camera is leaning a bit

The receiver would be less than 3 metres away, to the right of the criss cross fence thing is the side of my lounge where the receiver would go :)
 
As long as its not rotten give it a go. Or of you own the land to the left of the fence bang a 6 foot pole in just over the fence and drill through that

Or fill a bucket with concrete and sink a pole into that to stand on the decking, supporting the upper part with a bracket on the fence.

The possibilities are limitless.
 
Analoguesat said:
As long as its not rotten give it a go. Or of you own the land to the left of the fence bang a 6 foot pole in just over the fence and drill through that

Or fill a bucket with concrete and sink a pole into that to stand on the decking, supporting the upper part with a bracket on the fence.

The possibilities are limitless.
Click to expand...
that gives me quite some confidence analogue sat, thank you!

To be honest I got an independent sat fitter out to quote me mounting a dish on the fence and he quoted £100 which is why I wanted to do it myself!! Seen the dishes for £19 brand new delivered on eBay, so thought well even with cables and stuff as long as there is SOME KIND of bracket I can do to get it on that fence, I can give this a go for under £50.

My plan is to beg steal or borrow a freesat box or something cheap just so I can test that the signal is actually watchable, then look into receivers. I like the look of those Enigma ones so I can share the feed with my XBMC media centre :-)
 
My entire dish farm is cobbled together with zip ties wooden fence posts an old car tyre (!) garden wire and gawd only knows what. Its not pretty, but it works great maot of the time - occasionally the posts move but I'll live with that. - my 7E dish is currently out of commission as the post moved in the last gales, it'll get fixed at Eatser - or when it stops snowing!

As my dishes are all at the ground level to 6 foot height I just use aerial mounting clamps bolted to the fence posts.

2 similar to these:

tinyurl.com/ckr4z2k

with any old length of old steel pole from the scrap bins at work between them

Not subject to any great wind loadings, and I certainly wouldnt use them on the side of a house for a dish.

For a cheap receiver an old Sky box is better than nothing - you can pick them up for pennies from boot sales.


However you fix the dish remember - safety first. Imagine the worst that could happen if the post snaps and the dish comes adrift in a storm - you dont want it flying off down the garden and hitting someone in the face, or landing on a car, so Ive got what are effectively safety chains round the arms of my 1m dishes - if they come adrift all they will do is thrash wildly and destroy the other dishes nearby. (Seeing as most of my dishes were beg steal or borrow jobs thats no real loss to me!)
 
I'm sitting on the fence on this one.
 
Well, I thought I'd just add another post.....wooden I?.....(I know I Ieft that coat round here somewhere....)
 
I would buy a metal pole, sink it into the ground as far as it will go and attach it to the fence post with steel clamps. That will give more support and strength to the dish when fitted to the pole. Tuning is made a lot easier if the support for the dish is as vertical as possible. The closer to the ground the least effect wind will have upon it. Try and keep the cable length as short as possible to prevent leakage. Use good quality cable for the same reason.
 
thanks for the advice everyone. I think I've made my mind up that i will proceed with my "proof of concept" with a £20 new sat dish "kit" from auction, then a cheap sky box to firstly test the reception. If the reception is good, then I'll upgrade to a nice receiver - probably an Enigma 2 box.

What happens if I buy any old sky box and plug it in? Does it need a card or anything to just show me some channels? I'm not bothered what channels there are and will probably sell the box as soon as I find that the quality of the reception is acceptable, but I'm worried that if I buy one that it won't work at all.

I have a Sky card actually which they posted to me before they realised that they don't want to install a dish on my house, perhaps that'd work although I'm not a subscriber seeing as we tore up the contract when they refused to fit the dish? Advice appreciated.
 
As long as the dish is correctly aligned you will get the Sky box epg populate and you will get the free channels. :)

No card needed for the free stuff.
 
Thanks, hopefully I can find one sub £10 from eBay for my little experiment then :)

Unless I cunningly wait till the folks are on holiday and just borrow theirs hahaha!
 
hi all, do you reckon this old Grundig box will be enough to pick up the free channels to test my reception?

grundiggds200.jpg
[/img]
 
If it works then yes, although old Grundigs are notorious for faults in the capacitors in the power supply unit.
 
lady is selling it as working to me for £1, I'll try it and if it lasts just a few hours for me to test that my fence post is stable then it'd be good enough.

While I have you, do you think ebay dish kit would suit me for my little fence post? (Item number 121063687343) The only thing that is holding me back from buying it for my little proof of concept is that I don't know the measurements of the clamp, so I can't tell if my fence post is wide enough
 
hi all, sorry to be a pest. does anyone know the dimensions of this little fixing plate which appears to come as standard on the Mark 4 sky dishes please?
 
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