Photos and Information.

 On November 14, 2007 a "technician" hired by DirecTV arrived at 8 A.M. to upgrade my system from TIVO-DVR to HD-DVR with a new satellite dish and DVR receiver. My TIVO dual LNB setup had a 1 5/8" inch pipe embedded in concrete and anchored to the concrete blocks on the corner of the house. I was not aware the new HD dish/LNB required a 2" inch pipe support to mount properly. The Slim Line antenna is a much heavier unit.

 Before he started, the "installer" only asked if the existing pipe was embedded in concrete, which it is. I would have up-sized the pipe before his arrival if I had known what he was going to do! That's what I eventually did after the dish mount loosened up during high winds the day following his jury rig installation. His final words to me as he left were, "You might want to put a couple self tapping metal screws in the thing to keep it from moving." DUH! I thought that was his job!

Here's the so called "adapter" the installer made by cutting the end off the new EZAlign mast assembly. He drilled a hole through the existing pipe and his "adapter" and bolted them together. When he tightened the bolt and nut it squeezed the bottom of the outside pipe into an oval. It was too big for a snug fit. As a result, the entire dish mount was able to rock back and forth several degrees in elevation. This caused loss of picture on the receiver.

Here you can see the gap created when the installer tightened the bolt and nut assembly.  I drilled another hole in the front of the tube and put in a large metal screw to try to prevent his adapter from moving. When I did I lost signals to my receiver. I had no way of knowing where the installer had positioned everything when he ran through his final azimuth and elevation adjustments.

I tried to check the bubble level but found one side of it was broken off and couldn't trust the reading at all. I used my GI surplus compass/level instead to insure the mast is vertical.

This shows the bubble level insert after removing the adapter section.  So I ended up removing the entire dish/mast mount assembly and the hokey adapter to re-do the installation. That's when I discovered more problems below. The installer never put in the LNB mounting hardware so this is how it looked when I removed the dish assembly. More sloppy work by someone in hurry to get to the next job site. I pity that person!

After removing the dish assembly I put new stainless steel screws in the LNB mount, slid a new pipe over the old one and bolted them together, reinstalled the dish assembly, leveled the mount using a precision level and reset the elevation. I also added a third support higher up with a turnbuckle screw to help support and zero the mast vertically.

Everything is solid now. I'm borrowing a meter from a friend to re-align the dish properly in a few days.

Oh, I did get a follow up call from the company that hired this guy as an installer to see if I was satisfied with the job! I told them exactly what I thought and that I had to re-do the whole thing myself! I doubt if DirecTV will ever find out about it from them so I'm letting them know that the install was botched.

I just wonder how many jobs this guy has done and who else he may have left with crappy installations?

Just to clarify things a bit, I used to do this sort of thing in the US Air Force years ago. I was in electronics installations where we installed, microwave, Tropo-Scatter, radio and ground navigational systems. Much more complicated than a simple satellite dish!

Phase II

About a week later I replaced ALL the cables in my system including all indoor cables with Quad Shield RG-6 with sealed connectors. Here are two photos showing the new cables and also a better view of the anchoring system I used.

I made a new entry point for the four RG-6 cables that connect to the LNB feeds. There are no junctions between the LNB feed cables and the input to the receivers. All in all I pulled over 175 feet of new cable and threw out probably 200 feet of various junk such as RG-59 and other cable which had no labels or markings that was part of the original land line cable system.

The old cables used to run in conduit along the edge of the siding (pictures above) and entered the house through a hole in the window frame. The conduit and was a good hiding place for bugs.

I was recently contacted by DirecTV telling me they will discount my next six months bills by 10 % because of this problem. At least it's something!