Satellite Dish

[alex_]

Hi,
If I put a sattelite dish in my loft, will I be able to pick up freesat?

I know my parents wont let me put one on the outside of the building.

Thanks

[pioneer]

Proberbly not, the antenuation from the roof tiles/slates would be to high. unless you have Aracebo in your loft.



Mark

[crusty]

Connect your TV to your PC and watch it free online here: http://www.tvcatchup.com/

[Ashdown_Ratchet]

If I put a sattelite dish in my loft, will I be able to pick up freesat?

Nope, no-way, not ever. Satellite dishes need to be outside, or inside a material which is transparent to RF in the GHz range (most plastics and fibre-glass).

It's coming from a satellite thousands of miles away transmitting with a surprisingly small amount of power, granted it's down a very narrow beam...but still.

It's a miracle it works at all.

AR

[fez]

What about in the garden, Can work aslong as there's nothing in the way.

[alannah]

We've got our sky mini dish in the bedroom pointing through a south facing window and it works fine for freesat.

Did consider the loft but most opinion says that the attenuation from the roof tiles will be too high especially when wet.

Worth trying though, you could prove popular opinion to be incorrect.

[alex_]

So I assume the window has to be open to receive the signals?

[alannah]

No the window is always closed.

[alannah]

and the signal strength on the Sky Box is full scale, the quality bar is not as high as it was outside but still good enough to view without any problems.

Well saying that the kids keep moving the dish when using the telescope but its a simple task to point it back at the Astra bird.

Get yourself an installation signal meter, makes it very easy to align and are very cheap on e-bay.

[burt]

Hi
dont know where you live but south devon has got HD freeview through a normal tv aerial wwwwoooooooowwwwwww NO RUSTY DISH and the aerial is in the loft NO WIND BLOWN DOWN TV AERIAL

[Adriano9966]

hello Alex you have touched on a hobby of mine here

I remember buying an analogue satelite kit back in 1992 in order to receive BBC world from the hot bird satelite
I lived in Rome at the time and after some trial and error I invited an expat friend of mine over one day and he saw I had BBC world tv
word soon gets around and before long I found myself buying kits wholesale and installing them for expat brits in the city
anyway it is possible to install a satellite dish indoors so long as it is pointing from a south facing window if you use a larger diametre dish than required say 1 metre wide this can compensate for some of the signal attenuation as the minimum requirement to receive astra/eurobird 28 degrees south is about 50 cm
as other people have stated its already difficult to receive the signal because it travels around about 16000 miles before you receive it from the satellites geostationary orbit so inside a roof the attenuation of signal would be too much
I think placing your dish in the garden is an excellent idea by fez this would work quite well and you could even bury the cable inside conduit however keep in mind that the cable also carries current to control the low noise block(LNB) on the dish using a combination of 12volts and a 22khz tone so make sure the connections are protected from water ingress if you are just interested in free to air channels dont use a sky box there are far better kits on the market that enable you to receive free to air sat channels some of which also have digital switching Diseqc so by using the relevant switch you can change between two satelite dishes or control a motor or a motorised feedarm in order to receive channels from different satelites
at the moment if you go down to a certain diy chain where they have aprons there is even a complete kit including hd receiver and 1 metre dish for an unbelievable £50 hope that helps

[pioneer]

ive got two of those £50 systems, digital free to air, got one in the bedroom one down stairs and four dishes in the garden facing astra and the hotbirds.



Mark

[Adriano9966]

ive got two of those £50 systems, digital free to air, got one in the bedroom one down stairs and four dishes in the garden facing astra and the hotbirds.



Mark

something similar here Mark two dishes one 50 cm one 1 metre wide both have lnb twin out satelight receiver downstairs receives from both using a diseqc switch hot bird 13 degrees east and astra 28 degrees east the other two outputs work like this one goes to a hd satelite receiver in my bedroom to receive astra /eurobird
and the outher spare onto a sd digital satelite receiver in my sons bedroom so that he can receive italian tv on hotbird 13 degrees east the main satelite downstairs goes into a distribution amplifier so that it can be received anywhere in the house and channels are changed by a remote contol repeator

I have more than 160 free to air tv satelite channels including news sport films and music videos I quite like watching trt avraysia (turkish tv)which among other things features scantily clad women belly dancing
canale cinque in italy features a programme called ciao darwin in which mother nature is featured she might be mother nature but the way she dresses leaves nothing to the imagination great tv

[JamesA]

I set up a multi LNB system at the start of the year and its great, 80cm Triax dish with multi LNB adaptor.

Ive got a quad LNB on 28.2 east Astra2/Eurobird for Sky etc, 2 feeds run to the sky HD box and a 3rd feed to a 4 way diseqc switch.

Then ive got a 2nd LNB on 19.2 east for Astra1 fed into the diseqc switch & a 3rd LNB on 13 east for Hotbird again into the diseqc switch.

The diseqc switch feeds back to a SkyStar 2 card in my pc giving my access to all 3 sats and LOADS of free to air channels!

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