Advice Needed Where to put my new dish

[benwiddowson82]

Hi Guys, first time poster (under this username) so i'm wondering if one of you could offer me a bit of advice. I live in a house in Loughborough (east mids) and have a North facing garden with the house in front of most birds between 5w and 28.2e. At the bottom of the garden (probably about 10m back from the house) i use a small zone 1 dish to experiment with what i can find. With the dish on a small pole at the end of the garden i can easily get 19.2e/13e/28e/5w and the odd transponder on 1w. If i put the dish and pole in a flowerbed on top of a wall (about another 2 meters further back and about 4ft higher) i can get the same birds but not much else. I can also get a signal off KA-SAT as i have tooway broadband.

I've decided i want to invest some time in a motorised system so today got myself a new 80cm dish, i didn't really want anything bigger as the garden isn't massive. I'm going to install a new mount in the garden, i can't add it to the house. I sat my 80cm dish on my wall mount this afternoon as i bit of a test but couldn't pick anything up at all, granted i wasn't being massively accurate as it was hammering it down with rain.

Sorry for the long intro but my question is this: The pole will stand about 1-1.2m off the ground when installed, so should i install it at ground level or put it in the raised flower bed? Just after some advice before i get the cement mixer out.

Thanks
Ben

 

[Mickha]

You would be best using a site like dishpointer.com.
You enter your postcode, select a satellite, from the drop down box, then zoom in on the supplied map, to find your house, then move the green icon, to where you want your dish located. You now tick the obstacle checker option, and move the red icon to where an obstacle might block the satellite.
This should give you a height below which an obstacle can cause problems, also tak into account how high your pole might be, to calculate if you will have clearance.

 

[benwiddowson82]

Brill many thanks. I take it that the figure it produces assumes your dish is at ground level?

Ben

 

[archive10]

Well, then, most welcome in your current login then

But to the matter at hand:

The more you can see of the arc, the better the range of satellites you can receive.
So get the dish up higher, and you can see more over the roof of the house/neighbours house etc.
(As you probably know, there is no effect on signal strength just from pure height.)

[Aside]
Really instructional is to get the dispointer app for iPhone or similar (i use th iPhone one, never managed to get anything else working).
This will literally let you hold the phone towards the sky where your dish is, and you can see what sats you might receive.
Note that this is not entirely accurate, due to compass misalignment and the likes.
But it's a good indication.
Note: It costs money, but not a lot. I've enjoyed every $ of it's price.
[End of aside]

When you do get your cement-mixer out, also get your spirit-levels, and preferably some mechanical device that let's you adjust the "plumbness" of the pole in the first 30 minutes or so when the concrete sets. Some people use ground-spits and steel wires with adjusters on them, others (like me) use tool-mate style workbenches and similar stuff.
For motorised operations, it is essential to have a really, really vertical pole. So check, re-check, pour concrete, re-check, adjust, re-check, adjust, wait 10 minutes, re-check, adjust etc.

Also, follow @Mickha's excellent in-a-jiffy guide to setting up a motorised dish that he has posted on many other threads.
And do look at the "how-to" part of this forum.

Key advice is to persevere - adjust, check, adjust, re-check, re-adjust ad nauseam. It gives the best result in the end!
(And remember to skew the LNB to vertical on the south-direction sat. Most sats are NOT skewed as 28.2E is. If you also plan to watch 28.2E sats for normal everyday TV, get a separate dish for that).

 

[benwiddowson82]

Thanks for the detailed info. I'll be in the App Store on Sunday when the cement has hardened. I won't be getting my motor for a few weeks yet so no doubt I'll have twenty questions then. I won't be using it for 28.2 at all. Mainly be used for 19.2 and 5w. I have a technomate .1db lnb so are you saying I don't add any skew to it? 5w shows a 2.8deg skew to the right in my location.

 

[archive10]

Thanks for the detailed info. I'll be in the App Store on Sunday when the cement has hardened. I won't be getting my motor for a few weeks yet so no doubt I'll have twenty questions then.

Fire away. That's what we solemn souls enjoy spending our evenings doing... (not kidding!) ;)

I won't be using it for 28.2 at all. Mainly be used for 19.2 and 5w. I have a technomate .1db lnb so are you saying I don't add any skew to it? 5w shows a 2.8deg skew to the right in my location.

Then 5W isn't your due-south satellite.
For Loughborough, I think it's more like 0.8W Thor-5 or Thor-6... and skew should be around 0 for those.
5W does require skew from your location, but it get's it from the motor turning the dish westwards...

 

[benwiddowson82]

Thanks for the help so far. Thursday morning bright and early i set the pole in the raised flowerbed and let thing last night i put the dish in place (without the motor at present). I'm surprised how many extra satellites i can now see. I've got it locked on to 1w at present as a test, and my old receiver is suggesting signal strength of 85% and quality of 100%.

I'll get the motor ordered early next week. Can anyone suggest a receiver i could use? It needs to be HD but doesn't need to be recordable as i currently only have one coax running and for the foreseeable future can't run another. It doesn't need to do anything too fancy like streaming video over my network or anything. It it could be compatible with a cam for say Fransat or similar that would be great but not essential (not sure if fransat needs it own receiver or if it is cam compatible).
Thanks
Ben

 

[Captain Jack]

You won't go wrong with a TM5402HD. Cheap, sensitive and easy to use.

 

[benwiddowson82]

Thanks
i'll take a look.

 

[benwiddowson82]

Is the Technomate TM 5402 HD M3 CI Super+ the same or offer any advantages?

 

[Analoguesat]

Quite a few of us have the Technomate 5402M3 so if you get stuck there is plenty of help available.

They are decent enough receivers, there are a couple of minor issues with the software that can catch you out but nothing that makes us say "we find them troublesome - keep away from them"

 

[parkiepie420]

I have a technomate hd tm5402 m3 these have a sensitive tuner in these and the blind scan is very quick !!!
well recommended !!