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Sky Dish Alignment |
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#1 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 45
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Sky Dish Alignment
Hello forum,
I live in a basement flat. 4 LNB Sky dish shared between my flat and the flat above. It's mounted on a vertical wall about 4m above ground. Suspect alignment not quite right - in heavy rain channels often drop out, and now it's started happening even in clear weather. Quite abruptly lose every channel. I can get them all to come back by jiggling the dish about a bit with a long stick, but within 24 hours they'll have gone off again. Needs someone to come and check the dish over I suppose. Something is obviously not quite right. Sky reluctant to do it because it's a shared dish, and I don't have a subscription. Struggling to find a reliable local "man with a van" as well. How do I persuade Sky to send an an engineer round? Or does anyone know a good independent guy in the east London area? (E9 postcode) Thanks! Alan. |
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#2 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 263
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So you want Sky to come round and fix the dish when you don't have a subscription? Really? lol
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#3 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 45
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Quote:
So you want Sky to come round and fix the dish when you don't have a subscription? Really? lol
I don't really care who does it though. Just want to get it done. Would do it myself if I had long enough ladders. |
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#4 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 188
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#5 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: East London
Posts: 3,084
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Have you talked to your neighbour to see if he/she is having the same problem? If so, is he/she a Sky subscriber?
If you rent the flat, have you spoken to your landlord about it? |
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#6 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 45
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Neighbours not around at the moment but I'm going to ask them about it when I next see them.
I'm able to jiggle the dish around from a distance and can immediately then see what effect it has on the signal strength. A bit of experimentation this morning and it looks like the dish is pointing very very slightly too low. If I gently tilt the dish upwards, the signal strength/quality readings from the Sky box improve a lot (close to 100%). Hoping my neighbours will let me go round & lean out of their window and try to adjust the dish properly - nudging it up a little bit to get the strongest signal I can. Much easier to reach from upstairs. If I can do it myself, I'll be a happy chappie. |
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#7 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: New Milton, Hants
Posts: 125
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Quote:
I'm able to jiggle the dish around from a distance and can immediately then see what effect it has on the signal strength. .
"Signal Strength" is not so critical and will probably read somewhat lower than "quality" From your description, your dish needs only a nudge to increase the "quality" reading which should be above 60% to achieve a good signal. Vin Blanc |
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#8 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 45
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Quote:
If you are able to do this then remember that "Signal Quality" is the most important and you should adjust the dish until you get the highest reading possible.
"Signal Strength" is not so critical and will probably read somewhat lower than "quality" From your description, your dish needs only a nudge to increase the "quality" reading which should be above 60% to achieve a good signal. Vin Blanc |
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#9 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 24,092
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''60% quality'' is meaningless, and it's more likely the cable connection has deteriorated, than that the dish has moved, however slightly. If the waterproofing of the cable connection at dish has deteriorated (or was never there to start with), then ''electrolytic action'' due to volts on the cable causes a ''crud'' to slowly build up, where the connecting ''f plug'' screws onto the cable.
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#10 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 24,092
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But, it still means accessing the dish ! Of course, if you want to check the dish positioning is still optimal, that requires nut loosening up a ladder. Being that high up on a ladder wd certainly loosen MY nuts !
See various ''do your own dish'' websites, for advice about waterproofing the cable-dish connection, eg, ''satcure'' & similar ........... |
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#11 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 24,092
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"signal quality'' varies with bit error rate. Which is the important one, as said above. Look up ''digital cliff effect''.
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#12 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: New Milton, Hants
Posts: 125
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When you can get access to the dish, try to give the tilt a very very gentle nudge upwards then lock it off when your "quality" reading reaches its maximum.
Whatever you do, don't attempt to move the dish laterally until you are sure that your attempted "self fix" hasn't rectified the problem, in which case it's time to call in a professional to re-align the dish and/or find any cabling faults. Aligning a dish is a very delicate operation if you don't know much about the subject. Imagine your dish as a "Laser" gun aimed at the satellite. Within the UK, each degree of error at the dish would mean that you have missed the satellite by about 420 miles (which the set up can usually tolerate). But two degrees of error will always result in - no signal. Good luck! Vin Blanc |
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#13 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 24,092
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No reply ?
Dish alignment, of course, feels very strange if u haven't done it before. But in principle, straightforward. There's 3 ''big sat locations'', hotbird, astra1, astra2 for sky, all will give a big reading on a £10 sat meter (from wilkinsons hardware shops). |
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