doesitmatter
Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2022
- Messages
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- Age
- 41
- My Satellite Setup
- I am sorting that out, my gran is coming to live with parents (Midlands), so a Polish TV and for me (South coast)....I may be brave and go motorised.
- My Location
- B & H
Thank you so much for all your help in the previous months and before it goes up tomorrow, I thought I'd post my setup, in part in case people want to pile in with criticism (advice) but also so that anyone reading might get to the final stage more easily and understand a newbies process/confusion.
My home is a bungalow and there is a bungalow next to me, giving me some decent clearance of satellite arcs. I live on the South Coast. Quite literally, there is a dock at the end of my road.
I used the excellent Satellite Finder Pro to work out what sort of satellites I might miss if I mounted at just above gutter level, which I calculate a slightly higher mast would allow me to access (I recently learnt about C-Band, so this may be a consideration). I believe I could see all these if I mounted around 50cm above gutter level.
This image is of my 12" T & K brackets (bought from TLC Direct), chemically held into brick using Fischer Fis VL and some easyfit M10 studs (recommended on here, though I think only 3 brick courses down.....which may be a mistake).
In terms of location, it's just off the corner of the house and next door takes a lot of wind away, which I know is the case as there are two small fruit trees in my garden so I can see which ones gets blown the most and it's not the apple, which is a metre away from the dish. Maybe I am wrong but it seemed that nature was a good indicator of potential issues!
Then we have the 100cm dish. I had very rusty, snapped clamps that connected the Gibertini dish holder to the pole (in my case it will be a motor) so they needed to be replaced. This was done with 95mm car exhaust clamps (£4 from ebay), which are round u-bolts, not rectangular like the originals. 95mm fits perfectly though, which is good info for anyone who has a Gibertini.
I've managed to save the motors clamps (TM2600)....well, we'll see tomorrow, as one thread is being a pain.....so hopefully the motor does still work. I painted the jaws in metal paint (after wire brushing, sitting in vinegar, the wire brushing) as they were a little rusty.
Tomorrow, I will buy a scaffold pole (I think steel due to price & I saw someone say aluminium is less forgiving?) which will be 2m and that will let me rise 50cm about the gutter if I choose. The T & K's are 45cm apart.
One thing I made a mistake on were the T & K brackets. You can see an extra hole below the T, which despite some guestimates I first drilled into mortar. Also, I was too bloody accurate on the K bracket, so had to file the edge of one of the K bracket mounting points to make it fit well.
If you're new to chemical fixing (as I am), I used a magnetic spirit level to ensure the fixings were level and with chemical fixing you get 15minutes to adjust the mounting points and make sure you get it level.
Tomorrow, when it's up, I will update on how it looks/works (unless I have to make changes on peoples recommendations) and how I aligned it all. Plus some extra details about the purchase etc.
I hope this post helps someone else more than I because this forum has been a great help to make me understand what I need to consider (including that I missed the best Free to Air satellite days ), so I felt I had to give something back, if I could.
Any questions, feel free to ask. If it's some very technical, expect someone else to answer; ha!
My home is a bungalow and there is a bungalow next to me, giving me some decent clearance of satellite arcs. I live on the South Coast. Quite literally, there is a dock at the end of my road.
I used the excellent Satellite Finder Pro to work out what sort of satellites I might miss if I mounted at just above gutter level, which I calculate a slightly higher mast would allow me to access (I recently learnt about C-Band, so this may be a consideration). I believe I could see all these if I mounted around 50cm above gutter level.
This image is of my 12" T & K brackets (bought from TLC Direct), chemically held into brick using Fischer Fis VL and some easyfit M10 studs (recommended on here, though I think only 3 brick courses down.....which may be a mistake).
In terms of location, it's just off the corner of the house and next door takes a lot of wind away, which I know is the case as there are two small fruit trees in my garden so I can see which ones gets blown the most and it's not the apple, which is a metre away from the dish. Maybe I am wrong but it seemed that nature was a good indicator of potential issues!
Then we have the 100cm dish. I had very rusty, snapped clamps that connected the Gibertini dish holder to the pole (in my case it will be a motor) so they needed to be replaced. This was done with 95mm car exhaust clamps (£4 from ebay), which are round u-bolts, not rectangular like the originals. 95mm fits perfectly though, which is good info for anyone who has a Gibertini.
I've managed to save the motors clamps (TM2600)....well, we'll see tomorrow, as one thread is being a pain.....so hopefully the motor does still work. I painted the jaws in metal paint (after wire brushing, sitting in vinegar, the wire brushing) as they were a little rusty.
Tomorrow, I will buy a scaffold pole (I think steel due to price & I saw someone say aluminium is less forgiving?) which will be 2m and that will let me rise 50cm about the gutter if I choose. The T & K's are 45cm apart.
One thing I made a mistake on were the T & K brackets. You can see an extra hole below the T, which despite some guestimates I first drilled into mortar. Also, I was too bloody accurate on the K bracket, so had to file the edge of one of the K bracket mounting points to make it fit well.
If you're new to chemical fixing (as I am), I used a magnetic spirit level to ensure the fixings were level and with chemical fixing you get 15minutes to adjust the mounting points and make sure you get it level.
Tomorrow, when it's up, I will update on how it looks/works (unless I have to make changes on peoples recommendations) and how I aligned it all. Plus some extra details about the purchase etc.
I hope this post helps someone else more than I because this forum has been a great help to make me understand what I need to consider (including that I missed the best Free to Air satellite days ), so I felt I had to give something back, if I could.
Any questions, feel free to ask. If it's some very technical, expect someone else to answer; ha!