How to mount a satellite dish on top of a tree

Soon AFTER buying my first house I realized there was no cable TV available on our road. Since the house is like a cabin in the woods with lots of tall cedars around there was no clear line of sight to satellites located in the southern sky. As a last resort, I was able to hire some tree service guys to install a DirecTV satellite dish on a topped tree.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• DirectTV multi-satellite dish
• Satellite receiver
• 4 runs of 100' RG-6 coaxial cable
• 9" diameter round plywood
• Compass
• Some common tools like wrench, hammer and 1/2" nut driver and nails

1. Find a tree service company or someone you know that can climb a big cedar tree. You have to trust them since your ability to watch the SuperBowl, movies or sitcoms depends on it.
2. The dish hardware consists of oval dish reflector, mast, LNB receptors and an antenna back assembly. The plan is to get the mast secured on the tree, hoist the dish on to the mast and then point towards directed satellite.
3. In order to secure the mast to the tree it is best to attach to a cylindrical piece of plywood that can be nailed into the top of a the tree. Use supplied bolts to attach to plywood.
4. The key to this whole project is making sure you have a flat cut on the top of your tree. I already had a topped tree from the previous owner, but asked my tree guy to make a new cut focusing on making the top completely level.
5. Assemble dish reflector to LNB arm assembly. Attach all 4 coaxial cables to the LNB connector. According to satellite location settings for your zip code pre-set the elevation and tilt.
6. Hammer the plywood with mast attached to the top of the tree with standard wood nails.
7. Using rope (tree service always have plenty of rope) hoist the dish assembly onto the secured mast.
8. Using a compass swivel dish in the direction of specified azimuth.
9. Using cell phones or walkie talkies communicate with person at the top of the tree as the signal meter on the recievers gets close to it's peak. Tighten down the bolts to secure dish once a peak signal is obtained.

Tips & Warnings

• If precise in making level cut and dialing in pre-defined dish pointing settings, aligning the dish is very easy. It literally on took a minute or two for the tree guy to swivel the dish and find peak satellite signal.
• Try not to put extra tension on coaxial cable as gravity is already pulling on the LNB connections.