We have recently moved into a chalet bungalow in Paignton, Devon. We have woods with high trees at the back of the property ( about 30-40ft from the house ) where the sky dish needs to point.
The previous owners had a standard Sky dish on a 1" pole about 6ft higher than the roof, the pole was guyed by wires at three points. The signal was fine when calm but broke up when windy. I have had a 2" pole put up with a 60cm dish at the top. The signal strength is about 70-75% constant but the quality still varies from 75-80% on a calm day to 40-70% in wind which leaves us with break up of the picture.
Would you have any suggestions what else I could do? My only thought would be a 3"pole but when the dish ( mesh type ) catches the wind would the pole not flex and bounce around? The only other possibility is that the dish is not high enough and as the trees blow around the branches are in the line of site to the Sat.
I would be grateful for any suggestions.

[Reaperman]

Just thinking "outside the box" here........can you not get satellite via Cable

Hi hmburg,

We have exactly the same situation in our garden. Our roof was directly facing a tall yew near the house so the Sky+ dish was put on a tall pole in the garden (not sure of the diameter of the pole), set into concrete. We have to keep chopping off bits of branches behind and to the side of the dish, particularly in the Spring. When it's windy we find some branches cast a shadow on the dish. My husband said that didn't make any difference to the signal but when we removed those we had a good signal. We had a tree removed on the opposite side of the garden to the dish as it was unwatchable hitherto as it blanked the Sky signal. Also branches of adjacent trees were removed. Very difficult for you with woods behind your garden. Our large garden is surrounded by very tall trees as the property is Victorian. I hate to cut a tree down but it wasn't very stable anyhow and used to sway into other trees with the wind.

A couple of weeks ago we had a CAI aerial installer to replace the LNB as my husband had "scalped" one of the cables with the lawnmower. We thought it was an old cable from a previous Sky installation. The installer said ideally the pole should be guyed with wires to make it more stable. I mentioned a larger dish. He said that provided the pole was stable it might help but the extra weight of the dish might make the pole move without guying. I don't know whether you still have yours fixed in this way. When we first had Sky ages ago we had an enormous solid dish in the garden, on the ground installed by Sky, but not really legal at the time, which gave an excellent signal, hardly ever any break up of picture. Probably the trees have grown in 15+ years though. This week with high winds and lashing train we have been having the break up of picture with the signals varing wildly. Normally they are quite stable comparable with your settings.

I would advise you to get a decent aerial installer in to give advice. The CAI aerial installers, and others, are guaranteed to know what they're doing! I was surprised how reasonable the bill was. There is so much entertainment on Sky it's hard to do without it.

Good luck.

Thanks for the help and advice. Telewest have not ( and probably never will! ) cabled our road so thats out I'm afraid. The woods are part of a conservation area so dont think I'd be very popular cutting branches off!
Who ( or what ) are CAI aerial installers. I just got a couple of quotes from companies in Yellow pages and as the quotes were almost the same took picked the first one!

[mhuk05]

An 8ft scaffold pole set in concrete?

A browse here may help: satellites.co.uk