FREESAT - GOODMANS GFSAT 100SD. 17th January 2009.

FREESAT - GOODMANS GFSAT 100SD. 17th January 2009.

FREESAT - GOODMANS GFSAT 100SD was being fitted at a good friends house yesterday.

I had told them the freesat box was easy to fit and easy on the pocket. When I went there the dish was looking very bedraggled and weather beaten. Paint was peeling off in lumps - bad enough for me to see it from the ground.
I'll point out at this point my ladder climbing days are over so my thoughts must have been showing on my expression as my friend said " thought this was the bees knees". I asked when the ancient Sky dish had last been used and he told me about ten years ago with the previous owner.
I plugged in the freesat box using a simple coax length of about two metres with an f-connector on each end from the back of the Goodmans to the wall plate - silence and no signal returned a request from the Goodmans to attempt a search - after the search it requested the usual postal code.
I entered the postal code and found that it was getting a 56% signal.
I asked the box to do it's thing and it grabbed every channel - that is when I found out the signal level to the freesat box is not anywhere near the same. The BBC channels made no show including the CBB's channel I was after especially, nor the CITV channel I assured them they would get with a tin lid.
Channels that came through strong were a surprise; Simply Movies - clear as a bell, Channel 5 - clear as a bell, Russian News - clear as a bell, British Parliament - clear as a bell, all types of 4 - clear as a bell. All in all the signal strength for a new service was very disappointing - tweaked the signal strength to just under 65% and still not a complete service - the Goodmans box brand new and tested before taking it to my friends place.
My next step is to return and instruct my friend to remove and by-pass the wall plate to see if this will liven up the signal enough to pick up the BBC channels before I suggest a new dish and LNB.
This does not really auger well for those in fringe areas, and it answers a lot of questions we have been getting about lack of signals in far away places.
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