Visibility of E* vs Voom

[RoswellGA]

I am a former Voom customer and went with cable when Voom went dark. My question is this:

If I had visibility to the Voom bird, will I have visibility to E*? I have woods all around my house and basically have a solid wall of very tall oaks to the south and west, but had visibility to Voom because of a small notch in the trees? Is that the location of E* 3? If so, can I get all E* channels with only visibility to that bird?

Thanks in advance.

 

[BFG]

No.

In my location the main satellite dish gets pointed about 90 degrees west of the voom (61.5) dish.

 

[RoswellGA]

Not good news. That bird is much closer to the horizon too, isn't it?

 

[Mr Tony]

not really.

The VOOM HD channels are at 61.5 (where Voom was originally) and 129, which is next to Dish's main satellites (110/119)

If your user name is any indication of your location, the satellite is pretty high in the sky (compared to where I am in MN where its at about 34 elevation)

How bad of trees are we talking here? How high and how far from the house are the trees?

 

[BFG]

My guess is he's from roswell, ga

(could be wrong though)

 

[Mr Tony]

I figured that

 

[RoswellGA]

If your user name is any indication of your location, the satellite is pretty high in the sky (compared to where I am in MN where its at about 34 elevation)

Yep, Roswell, GA.

How bad of trees are we talking here? How high and how far from the house are the trees?

A solid wall of 100 yr plus oaks with the closest being 20' from the house. I think though that there may be another fortunate notch just where the E* bird may be. It will taking moving the dish from the back roof to the front of the house and shoot back across the roof of the house to the SW.

Hopefully the installer will listen and be persistant. The first Voom installer took one look, said "No visibility" and left. I had to get a 2nd installer out and up on the roof and to his surprise I did have visibility.

I'm pretty highly motivated. What Charter pawns off as HD in my area is pretty sorry, imo.

 

[boba]

You will probably want to leave the VOOM dish where it is, 61.5 will be easier to see than 129 and you already know that works for HDTV. DISH may have to change the dish but the location is good.

 

[BFG]

Well I assume he's gonna want Atlanta locals which are on 129

So he really wont need the 61.5

He'll just have to hope they can point a dish 1000 through the trees to get all 3

 

[RoswellGA]

My look angles for 129 will be:

Elevation 28.5, Azimuth 240.5 and skew of 46.2.

The elevation is pretty low. I'm definitely worried about that one.

 

[RoswellGA]

Well I assume he's gonna want Atlanta locals which are on 129

So he really wont need the 61.5

He'll just have to hope they can point a dish 1000 through the trees to get all 3

I still have the old Voom dish pointing at 61.5. I do want the HD Locals, so is my best bet getting the non-local HD from 61.5 and the locals from the Dish 1000 at 129 if I have visibility?

I looked at my SW exposure and there are a few holes in the canopy as large as a garage door. Will that be enough to get a signal?

 

[Pepper]

A hole as big as the dish pan is big enough, if you can get the geometry precise enough.

 

[RoswellGA]

Well, long story short, the install was a no go. The Dish Network installer said that I needed visibility to 129, 110 and 119 in order to do the install. I know I have visibility to 61.5 because of my Voom dish. He said that Dish was phasing out 61.5 so it didn't do any good that I had that visibility. I did show him some spots where the cover was very thin with large holes in the canopy, but he wouldn't even consider it. I know I have one spot where I can see 129 through a gap between a couple of trees, but I wouldn't be able to see 110 or 119 from there.

I asked about the possibility of mounting on a mast from my chimney to gain some height, but he said that he couldn't do that kind of install. But he did give me the name and number of someone that might be able to, so I'm trying to schedule a meeting with this guy to see what he thinks.

I do have a couple of questions before he comes out.

1) Would a mount on the trunk of a 4 foot diameter oak tree be stable enough for reliable viewing, or would it sway too much?

2) Is my idea of trying to gain about 10' and hopefully clearing the trees to the south of my home feasible?

You can see some pictures of my view toward 129 and 110/119 here:

http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=4115124&a=32252911&f=

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[Pepper]

He said that Dish was phasing out 61.5

that ain't happening anytime soon. I hope.

 

[coolbreeze]

I'm in Savannah and have a heavily wooded lot. I had 61.5 installed 2 weeks ago with no mention of them phasing it out.

Is there something I need to be made aware of here? 129 is a total no go...

 

[coolbreeze]

In looking at your photos, I really think you could get away with a 61.5, 110, 119 setup. My tree cover looks thicker than that and I get over 80 sig strength on all 3 sats. I would demand an installer try. It took me two...the first guy gave up almost instantly. The second guy was confident from the get-go. Sure enough, it worked.

I realize you wouldn't get HD locals but you can use an antenna...

Just a suggestion. Look through my post history for photos of my trees.

 

[RoswellGA]

Wow, I thought I had a lot of trees. I think I could go with the same setup as you have and use my old Voom antenna to get the locals OTA.