Communal system being shut down due to poor infrastructure

[TimmyBGood]

@MarkRoscoe 

The key would be to ensure that there's line of sight from that location to the Astra satellite cluster: this may be harder to achieve from ground level.

[MarkRoscoe]

@TimmyBGood 

Fair point, how much would you think an indipendant engineer would charge to supply & install a dish, cable and time to test to ensure my current Sky+ was back functioning?

[Godfrey]

@MarkRoscoe   If you use the dishpointer website you would be able to establish exactly what azimuth and elevation would be required to achieve satellite transponder reception from Astra 28.2 degrees East from your proposed garden dish position.

DishPointer - Align your satellite dish

An independent specialist engineer would probably be likely to charge around £150 to £250 depending upon the length of the coaxial cable conduit and the type of wall mounting bracket. 

Godfrey.

[MarkRoscoe]

@Godfrey 

Great piece of software, how do I know if there is an obstacle in the way, does the green line change colour?

[Godfrey]

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@MarkRoscoe wrote:......Great piece of software, how do I know if there is an obstacle in the way, does the green line change colour?

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Ideally you would require a clinometer.

Godfrey.

[MarkRoscoe]

@Godfrey 

Got it....Its a mathmatical calculation, not a visual one.

Pick you location, pick the correct sat, position the marker on the image and then check for obstacles. ie if there is something 20M high 2M from your dish you will get a problem, is my thinking correct?

[Godfrey]

@MarkRoscoe  Once you know the direction you could place a chair or steps at that position and then cut a piece of A4 stiff paper / cardboard into a triangle that is half as high as it is long to provide you with a nominal 22.5 degree slope if you hold it on a horizontal surface and then look along the edge of the slope. This should provide a rough starting view of any obstructions within the required direction of the Astra 28.2E satellite cluster.

Godfrey.

[MarkRoscoe]

@Godfrey 

Yep, the old ways are always the best...and so simple, cheers

[MarkRoscoe]

@Godfrey 

Hi Godfrey

Just a little update regarding the communal system being shut down. I have had no info from the communal system management, (off the record it looks like they are dragging their feet until the PUKs become available). They can then say there is no requirement for a communal SKY system. I do see where they are coming from but it doesn't help me.

I have however had a chat with a SKY rep in my local shopping centre, he made a call and a SKY engineer is coming on Tuesday to "have a look at what they can do" be it in the communal sub box or in my garden.

So my question is how for should I expect this SKY engineer to go or how far can i push him to get the best for myself? I do have a very large supply of tea and biscuits.

All I want is my SKY+ 2TB box up and running with all the chanels on my single feed.

Do you think the SKY engineer would go as far as future proofing the system with the  traditional Quad Universal LNB feeding its four output signals to a Unitron dCSS-422 as mentioned in your earler post?

or should I just get the dish in the garden and call it quits?

Cheers

[SKY1992bf]

@MarkRoscoe  Just a note of caution sky can't touch the communal system without prior permission of the management company responsible for it

[MarkRoscoe]

Communal system update:_

Had both a SKY Engineer and the "Communal System Engineer" today to check if the SKY dish can be hidden on the garden wall....alas they both agree it's not going to work, only by a few feet, but I am back to square one. Ahhhh

[nigea99]

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@MarkRoscoe wrote:

Communal system update:_

Had both a SKY Engineer and the "Communal System Engineer" today to check if the SKY dish can be hidden on the garden wall....alas they both agree it's not going to work, only by a few feet, but I am back to square one. Ahhhh

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Sorry to read that it is not an option for you.

I hope that they can get the communal system working as it should for you

[MarkRoscoe]

@nigea99 

They tested my local communal box and found that numerous transponders had failed/were missing. Only option is to dig up the road in a conservation area (that's not going to happen) or try and drag some new wires through the underground ducting. Again they both said that's not going to happen with the current financial concerns.

We have another option but it depends on the size of the cabling from the dish to the SKY box. 

During their investigations they found a small gap in the stonework and suggested if some mortar was to fall out there may be a way of  creating a gap to feed the shotgun cable through the wall without "drilling the wall on a listed building".

So my question, whats the smallest cable I can get ?

[Godfrey]

@MarkRoscoe  Webro WF65 shotgun twin coaxial cable is 9.5 mm wide and can be carefully threaded through a 10 mm diameter hole.

Godfrey.

[MarkRoscoe]

Hi Folks

I and the Sky Engineer, along with the communal system management team tries various solutions during summer. This included hiding a sky dish in my garden, unfortunatley we did not get a clear line of sight and hence no signal.

We therefore hid the dish on a neighbours flat roof and ran the cable down the wall as a trial, this worked very well and we had a way forward......it was just a case of waiting until nobody was watching to rig everything up. I live in a conservation area and dishes are banned, so we had to be mindfull of being reported. We were aware of another neighbour who had done similar and had got away with the dish on the roof. Alas somebody spotted the cable running down the neighbours wall, put "two and two together" and reported the potential for a hidden SKY dish on the flat roof. That dish has now had to be removed as it is in breach of the conservation rules.

So to my question, could I get a SKY puck when they become available to allow me to watch the failing channels from the communal system and also use my existing sky box to watch and record the channels that are still working.

Many thanks