What dish to get and fixed or motorised?

[IAmATeaf]

Sorry if this has been raised before and I know the ultimate answer depends entirely on what I need and want but I'm looking for some general help.

I'm new to the sat scene so take it easy. I've gone and purchased a dm800hd clone which I've had now for some 2 months.

Currently as I don't really have the knowledge I'm going to say I'm looking at getting only FTA channels and am interested in Football, Films and Documentaries.

I also have a problem in that my wife has poo-pooed the idea of having a dish at the front of the house so it has to be mounted at the rear, not ideal as you'll see from the attached pics. My house is the 1 on the left and the first pic is of 0.8w, the second is of 28.2e. I'm in NW London by the way.

What I'm unsure about is how high would the dish need to be to stop the roof blocking the signal, also if I did go motorised what's the smallest dish I could get away with? I'm looking for advice on what dish and make I should buy.

 

[Mickha]

You are allowed up to a 1 Metre dish, without requiring planning permission, but given where you want to install it I would consider the Penta 85cm, with a motor.
Have a browse through the members pictures section, for a few ideas:
Picture of Members' Setups and general satellite installations

 

[Robbo]

A 60cm is probably the smallest you'd want to put on a motor.

Motorised is better than fixed as the dish can be smaller and get more satellites, but not so convenient if feeding to receivers in other rooms.


The dish needs to go high enough to see over any obstacles. I don't think that you will have much of a problem for eastern satellites (including 1W), but your western sats will start to get blocked by the roof.

The other problem can be, the dish or LNB arm hitting the roof tiles, so it has to be high enough and enough away to not do that. The larger the dish the more difficult it is to achieve that, because the LNB arm will be longer, and obviously the dish bigger.

A Hirschmann 85cm aluminmium wouldn't be a bad choice if you didn't go for the smallest.

 

[sonnetpete]

How far back does your garden go? If there was going to be a problem with clearing the roof line, you may want to consider mounting the dish/motor on a pole in the garden (assuming there would be no line of sight issues East and West. Don't forget the arc dips as you get nearer to the horizon).

 

[satelliteman]

Hard to say without a site survey, but the back corner on a TK looks like it'll be okay for most of the East and 1W. More pictures required at ground level would be an idea.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Hard to say without a site survey, but the back corner on a TK looks like it'll be okay for most of the East and 1W. More pictures required at ground level would be an idea.

Which corner do you mean?

I was thinking of simply hoisting the dish around 2 foot above the line of the gutter but some of the arc might be obstructed by the chimney? How high would the dish need to be to ensure that the ridge of the roof is cleared, on average?

 

[IAmATeaf]

Another question and again I've done lots of reading but what sats are the 1's that most people use, I know 28.2e, 19e, 13e and 1w but are there others that are worth a gander? What I'd like is a small list so that I can check them on the dishpointer util on this site so that I can determine the best location for the dish, realise that it may have to be a compromise but am hoping to make it the best compromise

 

[Lazarus]

5W for French.

 

[IAmATeaf]

So would an 80cm dish be able to pick up the sats I've mentioned above? Or would I need to go to 85cm?

 

[Lazarus]

Of those mentioned, the only one that is debatable is 1W.

There are some TPs on there that an 80/85cm dish will get fine, but for many others you'd need to go to 1.1m or so.

Have a look at the Footprints vs. TP/Channel listings on eg flysat and you'll see the problem.

But the other Satellites in your list are easy catches.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Looks like 85cm might be the smallest to go for, wife's not going to be happy. Also from the 1st pic 1w will be doable won't it?

I've found a german site that stocks the Gibertini 85cm for around 40 euros but that site doesn't have any motor names that I recognise. Reading here it seems that the Technomate 2600 motor is the 1 to go for?

 

[Lazarus]

Yep. TM2600 for sure.

Mind you, most will do the job well unless you are carrying over 1m in an exposed position.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Right I think I've got shopping list.

I'm going to get a Penta 85cm dish as I think, correct me if I'm wrong but for their size they don't look humongous?
18" T & K galvanised brackets
6ft of steel scaffold pole
TM 2600 motor

Questions I have are:

a) Would raising the pole say 2ft above the gutter be enough to make sure that the roof doesn't get in the way of dish as it moves?

b) This is probably a stupid question but when the pole is in the T&K bracket I can see how you'd plumb the pole in 1 plain by moving the pole towards or away from you but how would you plumb it in the left to right plain? Would that be by moving the entire bracket(s) which would mean that the vertical hole on K bracket would be drilled after the pole has been fully plumbed?

Also, the cost of this is quickly mounting up, I haven't even included in LNB in the above as I'm not too sure what to get but will want a quad so that I can run 2 cables to the lounge and the other 2 to the bedrooms. These bedrooms don't have a receiver at the mo but am thinking ahead for the future.

 

[sonnetpete]

b) This is probably a stupid question but when the pole is in the T&K bracket I can see how you'd plumb the pole in 1 plain by moving the pole towards or away from you but how would you plumb it in the left to right plain? Would that be by moving the entire bracket(s) which would mean that the vertical hole on K bracket would be drilled after the pole has been fully plumbed?

Also, the cost of this is quickly mounting up, I haven't even included in LNB in the above as I'm not too sure what to get but will want a quad so that I can run 2 cables to the lounge and the other 2 to the bedrooms. These bedrooms don't have a receiver at the mo but am thinking ahead for the future.

You'll find that the T&K's have slots rather than holes to allow for some movement to achieve 'plumbness'. I'd try and mount the brackets as close to true as possible, to save work (and swearing) trying the get this right afterwards. It's easy enough really. You can check this with a level, but I prefer a digital angle finder. Not sure if the Penta is 'humongus' as I've not seen one in the flesh. Don't forget to check the pole for level again after you've mounted the dish and motor. If the scaffold pole is thick enough you might be able to raise it up but obviously the farther up it goes the more the setup is exposed to the wind. I take it that putting the setup on a pole in the garden was a non starter??

 

[IAmATeaf]

Pole in garden was a non starter, my wife for some reason just thinks dishes are ugly, hence the reason for trying to hide the damn thing

 

[Lazarus]

In general, dishes are obedient and do exactly what they are told.

Wives, however ......................

 

[IAmATeaf]

In general, dishes are obedient and do exactly what they are told.

Wives, however ......................

Some people are gong to call me a wimp but I prefer the I want to make my life as easy as possible.

Right I'm going to have to forsake the motor for the time being as my car has come up with some unexpected work and I'm also going to have to compromise on the dish itself, now I'm thinking along the lines of a Triax TD78 or an outside chance of getting the TD88.

I know 28.2e is no problems for the TD78 but would it have problems pulling in 19e, 16e and 13e if I decided at a later date to either go mutiple LNB or even add a motor? Could the TD78, size wise even have 3 or 4 LNBs added or would the size of the dish limit what could be done?

Also I've seen a Technomate quad LNB which has a 0.1dB noise figure are these any good and are they really 0.1dB

Sorry about all the questions but I want to ensure that hopefully I only have to buy the kit the once, at least for the next few years

 

[sonnetpete]

Some people are gong to call me a wimp but I prefer the I want to make my life as easy as possible.

...................join the club!

Other more knowledgeable people here will comment about dish sizes and multi LNB set ups. A word of advice though, don't take too much notice of quoted noise figures for LNB's. I'd go for an Inverto Black Ultra, which has built up quite a following on this forum (myself included).

 

[IAmATeaf]

An update, went out and ended up getting a TD78, t&k galvanised bracket, 50m of triax tx100 cable and an inverto ultra black quad.

Getting the pole was a bit of a problem, some of friends are in the building trade an I thought they'd have scaffold poles laying around but alas there were none.

With it being Sunday I sort of gave up but then went to see my opposite neighbour who had a chrome finished 2" pole, it was only 4ft 10" long but beggars can't be choosers, so the install started at 3pm, pretty late in the day.

Got the dish installed and aligned, get 100% SNR (?) on the BBC channels, the lowest channel was around at around 65%.

Ran out of time so couldn't get the cables run from the dish to the rooms, will have to do this next weekend now.

One thing worth pointing out is that no matter what adjustments I made to the dish I couldn't get anything better than around 80% and I only managed to improve the signal when I started to skew the LNB, worth knowing as I couldn't figure out initially why I couldn't get anything better than 80%.

Made a sort of boo-boo when fitting it. I put the bracket up in the gap between my house and my neighbours house but with the dish installed on the pole the LNB projects onto the neighbours roof. Now you may say what does that matter but my neighbour can be an arse. Was going to go over and explain but my wife said not to and only explain if they say something.

What's the best image for the clone DM800HD, I want to also install a HD into it so that I can PVR so the image would need to have working PVR functions.

 

[Robbo]

...

I know 28.2e is no problems for the TD78 but would it have problems pulling in 19e, 16e and 13e if I decided at a later date to either go mutiple LNB or even add a motor? ..

The TD78 will very much struggle with 16e