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rfpivoran

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May 9, 2011
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Stillwater Minnesota
I live in an appartment bldg, and we are not allowed to have a dish attached to the bldg, but the complex does provide us with DirecTV Basic service for free, my question is this signal good enought to attach to an FTA unit? or do i need a converter box? no sure what is needed, other then a lot of help. thanks
 
You need your own dish(es?) and equipment for FTA.

Do you have any non-common area like a balcony pointing to the arc of the satellites? If so, there's some creative ways to put in a dish without "attaching" as long as it can see the satellite arc.....and, I think most people here will agree, if it does not inhibit safety and is on your privately leased area, you should be able to do "something" within reason thanks to legislation of long ago. I'm a landlord, and none of my tenants even "asked" to have holes drilled to put in dish at my 3-unit place. (nor where to put 'em!) Now I just "own" a few satellite dishes on a building I don't use.

Forgot to say, "welcome" to the forum!
 
I don't live in an apartment, but I did build up a 5-gallon bucket of cement with a pole in it.
Used for dish-experiments. Not stable enough for a motor, but fine for a fixed dish.

Ya have to keep the pole reasonably short, but still the dish needs to see over the patio fence or balcony railings.
Usually, moving the dish closer to the house helps.

And no, you don't want to hook to the incoming DirecTV signal.
Won't do you a bit of good at all.
As Radio said, you need your own dish, pointed to whichever satellite you want to view.
 
Just to clarify, you'll need a FTA receiver, as a DirecTV receiver will not tune FTA. You'll also need at least a 30 inch dish with a Ku-Band LNBF.

I like Anole's suggestion of the 5-gallon bucket dish mounting pole. You can't go wrong with that!
 
I live in an appartment bldg, and we are not allowed to have a dish attached to the bldg, but the complex does provide us with DirecTV Basic service for free, my question is this signal good enought to attach to an FTA unit? or do i need a converter box? no sure what is needed, other then a lot of help. thanks

RF,

There are many possibilities for you to engage in without "attaching" anything to the building and without "tapping" into the DirecTV service line which would not serve your FTA adventure in the first place and may (or probably would) cause trouble for the other tenants reception.

Beyond the "bucket" trick, I am seeing many dishes (even for the subrcription services like DirecTV and DN) being set up at apartment complexes using NPRMs at ground level. Simply because the landlord or owner won't allow attaching a dish to the complex.

My brother has been (or was) using a 1.2 M dish on a tripod that he slid out of his garage for "play-time" and set up on his driveway. Of course, he owns his home and doesn't have any housing authority or landlard to deal with, he just has a "wife"! LOL

There are quite a few possibilities to what you can do, but I would not tap into the service that is there with your personal FTA equipment. That's not a good idea.

RADAR
 
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