motorised dish installer refused to install

tqd12

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Hi everyone,

I moved into a new property last month and have wanted to get a motorised dish up and running again. I looked up motorised dish installers in the area and found a guy who on his website lists himself as a certified motorised installer. So I thought great I will get in touch - he popped over yesterday to conduct a site survey (at a charge of £80) and after a less than 5 minute inspection, came to the conclusion that he would not be able to do the 90cm dish install on my property.

I had already told him that the Sky dish would need to be relocated if possible, with the 90cm dish taking its place (the motorised dish would feed into the bedroom directly next to where the sky dish is - see photos and sky dish would have to go to living room). He said there was not enough width for the dish and that with a sky dish too, it would be impossible to find space.

I'm a little bit surprised by this, I'm by no means a satellite engineer but I've even seen bungalows with two dishes on them. I knew the 90cm would probably need to be stuck on a pole to get a good arc but never thought it would be an impossible job. The garden is south facing and if you look at the photos I've attached, there's not exactly any really tall trees in the way either.

It was just a very strange encounter to me - or am I just not understanding things properly? I only wanted the motorised dish going to the bedroom and the sky dish relocated, feeding to the living room. Was this really a hard one?
 

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Charging for a site survey?

This in itself should have set alarm bells ringing.

There is one installer who will be recommended, but it looks like sadly he has something more pressing more to address.

Probably worth waiting for it to be properly and to a standard that is required.
 
The motorised dish could probably go just above that air vent. No need to move the sky dish.
 
Agreed about the search fee.
How much did he charge?
Also agree about the location.
Either there or even lower will be fine.
It would have been a long way for our colleague to come.
Sadly he probably can't now but others will.
 
From the photo, it looks to me that the dish is pointing only slightly off the line of the house (to the left in the photo). If that is the case then it seems possible that the installer was correct, as an installation in that location would severely limit the arc to the west and if mounted on the gable end, the other house would likely 'get in the way' unless it was pretty high up.
If the back of your house is truly facing south, then the Sky dish should be pointing to the left (east) of where you took the photo from.
@tqd12. Can you post a more closeup photo of the Sky dish.

As far as height is concerned, the bottom of my Sky Z1 dish with multiple LNBs for 28.2, 19.2 and 13E is about 2 foot off the ground behind and looking over a short box hedge (that I have to keep trimmed height wise).
 
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Before I had a ground mounted dish, I had a fixed sky dish and a 1.1m Triax motorised dish on T&K brackets next to it. Going off the position of your dish, it is virtually identical to my position. It was bread and butter for pedro. I have no idea what the fuss is about.

# my usable arc was approx 55e-45w
 
Ignore my post above. :blush:
I opened your pic in a new window then zoomed in. I can now see from the direction of your dish that your house is facing pretty much south, so there is no earthly reason why your installer couldn't do it. The only reason seems to be that he didn't want to but did want to get the £80 'survey fee' from you/.
As said above, name and shame him.
 
Before I had a ground mounted dish, I had a fixed sky dish and a 1.1m Triax motorised dish on T&K brackets next to it. Going off the position of your dish, it is virtually identical to my position. It was bread and butter for pedro. I have no idea what the fuss is about.

# my usable arc was approx 55e-45w

Should contact trading standards on this one as he's no idea & just scamming £80 fees.
.. it's a classic south facing rear property wall, exactly what you want (but rarely see) going off those photos. The motorised dish could be installed anywhere on that rear wall on standard strong stand off brackets so plenty of choice if it is a clear south view and an easy job to refit a sky dish if it has to be moved.
It can go long pole over gutter height.. that increases the arc and takes the profile of the dish face off the wall but adds wind exposure.

I've done hundreds of surveys remotely all over the UK.. they do take time but there's usually no need to visit. Only some very difficult surveys or bigger commercial jobs require on site surveys.
 
Unless you're surrounded by very tall trees or tower blocks I don't see any major issues. On my previous house I managed to install a heavy duty 1.8m x 50mm dia. J-pole (with out-rig arms) which enabled me to mount my old heavy motorised dish quite a bit higher than my gutter line. I reckon you could do much the same.

I still have the J-pole which I'd like to use with my new motorised system ;)
 
Perhaps we could all meet up, pop round to the house and conduct a proper survey... With beer :)
 
Thanks all :)

Finally got an installer over to put up the motorised dish. (right next to the air vent as recommended here). However, despite him setting it up at 1W and getting signal on his meter, for some reason when connected to the receiver, nothing is coming through. This is all using the correct longitude & latitude values. This is what happens on a channel at 1W

My latitude is meant to be 51 N but if I fudge the values to something really off scale like 18 N, I can pick up satellites like 13E, 19.2, 28E, 42E with 70-99% signal. These figures do not work as well for satellites closer to west though.

I've tried sending the motor to 0 or X position using the tuner config in my receiver but this doesn't actually drive the dish.

He is coming back in a few days to take another look. It's all very frustrating as I faced a similar situation at my previous property. My 80cm had to be put right by Purple Sat who did a cracking job, was able to pick up more than I could have dreamed including so many footy feeds. Was hoping to be able do to the same in the new house but sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen soon.

There goes our annual Friday night Eurovision party this year! :laugh: (courtesy of the rehearsal feed on 7/10E!)
 
Hope you haven't paid him?!
 
It sounds like either/all:

Pole/brackets not plumb
dish elevation angle incorrect
motor not 'true south'

Basics I would have thought for a sat installer.

As a temp measure until Del boy returns, manually store each sat using numbers instead of using USALS.
 
Thanks for the replies all.

Haven’t paid him yet, to be fair he acknowledged that something was wrong and said he’d come back this week to sort it out - as it was nearing dark when he left.

This morning I did a ‘Go to 0’ from the receiver and the motor actually drove to 0. When I selected 1W after this I heard the motor move for like a second and channels started being found, including all the Nordic ones - but like in the video, the signal was jumping from 80>0.
 
As a temp measure until Del boy returns, manually store each sat using numbers instead of using USALS.

Sorry this probably sounds like a silly question but how would I go about doing this? I'm using an Octagon SF8008 on OpenVix. It would be good to know just in case the installer is unable to sort the issue out.
 
Im not familiar with openvix. I use openblackhole, but I would imagine most are the same. In the tuner settings, each sat will have been set up with usals. Just scroll down in each sat and toggle the 'use USALS' option off. then bellow that you will see an entry to add a position number instead.
Easiest way is just look on Kingofsat for a FTA channel on each sat you want, then in positioner menu manually nudge the dish (Green and yellow key in Openblackhole) until you get a signal on the display. Start either furthest West or East you want to go and just work your way across the arc.
This would only be a quick fix if the motor is not too far out as it wont track the arc properly if its way off.
TBH altering the degrees under usals should have sorted it though. It does help if you can see the dishes position as you do it too, as it saves further confusion scanning the wrong sat.
 
You can bodge it using USALS by keeping to your correct latitude but modifying your local longitude .. try 4w or 1w and tweak by 0.1 increments for best signal.
That will shift all sats over in one go and it tells you how far out it is and which direction and is easily reset to your correct Longitude if it's fixed.

It can be that a del boy inataller damages the dish &/or motor while installing though which would create the same effect &/or the motor or brackets are loose / out of plumb etc.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, very informative as always. I’ll give the longitude tweaks a go tomorrow night. Got to be worth a shot.

This is how it’s looking at the moment if it’s possible to see any clues from a photo?
 

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Oh no! I hope it’s secure enough for the 90cm. Thankfully it’s not really high and exposed.
It will be strong enough. It's just that its physical size makes it much more difficult to plumb accurately.
 
Please don't show Pedro that L bracket wall mount :laugh:
It depends how it's made etc.. but I struggle to recall any L bracket that looked like that and was up to the job... without some assistance but then there's the tightening up of the motor without the thing crushing and losing plumb etc. (Still doable- sort off)

All fun but better to start off with more solid bracket/s, then you can focus on the actual installation.
 
Update: The installer came back and the dish is now tracking the satellites at least, it turns out the motor needed a reset. What I have discovered is that my correct longitude and latitude does not result in the best results - as an example, only about 45% signal on the TRT channels at 7E (they were around 60-65 on my 80cm). I managed to get this up to 67-68% by manually tweaking the longitude and latitude values - I know you arent really supposed to touch latitude but I really wanted to try and improve things. Instead of my actual latitude of 51 N, I am now using 70 N and 0.800W longitude instead of 0.300E. It's all a bit of a mess but its improved signal on the satellites closest to south with better signal readings from about 5W - 28.2E. The further east and west I go though, the more I lose - the best I can get on 42E for example is about 65% but at the expense of some of the weaker transponders which are now not locking.

I'm tuned to a Champions League feed on 7E right now with 8dB, I definietely saw higher readings on my 80cm which Pedro installed at my previous property.

Feel like throwing in the towel with it now as it's all become a bit of a headache :(
 
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