Hi,
Just an update to anybody that was interested in my freesat woes.

First off, a warning: avoid ArielForce at all costs. After losing the will to keep trying myself I rang up arielforce and asked them how much it would be to re-align my dish, I was told £39+vat - i thought this was reasonable so booked an "engineer" to come out. I was told they would come sometime next day between 8 and 12 and that they would ring half an hour before to confirm.

At 1.30 I got a call saying they'd been delayed and would get there between 2 and 4pm. The next call I got was at 4.45pm to say they would get to me by 5. At 5.40 the "engineer" turned up, by this time it was dark! He turns to me and asks me what I want doing, so I tell him. He then says yeah thats fine, £80 +vat. I politely told him that the person I booked with said it would be half that, he insisted it wasn't. I decided an ultimatum would be better; either do what was agreed earlier for the agreed price, or leave!

He decided to leave, but before he could do so I had to pay him the service charge of £39+vat, I disagreed. He then swore at me and told me I had wasted his time, then he drove off. Needless to say I wasn't a satisfied customer, I stayed in all day just to get sworn at because I refused to be fleeced!

Decided to have another crack at it myself so have been up the ladder in the wind and rain, not ideal but needs must. I've bought a £20 satelite finder from maplin but it seems to be a waste of money so I'm just eyeing up neighbours' satelites (freesat and sky both use the adastra and eurobird satelites at 28.2degrees) trying to get mine in the right area and then trial and error it a tweak at a time.

Myadvice to someone that wants to get freesat would be to get the £80 installation from maplin, its an all-in-one no hidden costs job and much less hassle!

I bought a diy kit from Focus last week with a freeview box and dish plus a meter for £49.99. I bolted the dish to the wall and used the meter and got nowhere so I looked on dishpointer and used a compass and it was running in no time, 600+ channels of crap to watch now My terrestrial is at the mercy of traffic as I live on a junction and every time a moped goes past it knocked it out but now it is rock steady. The elevation is marked on a scale on the back of the dish bracket and the LNB rotation really makes the signal come in steady. Move it 1/4" at a time and wait for it to settle while you watch the signal bars on the telly via the box menu. You can pick up on Eurobird 1 and Astra 2D on the same setting, there's only 0.3 degree difference, if your elevation is wrong you'll get foreign channels with people talking gibberish



[Edited on 21/11/09 by Peteff]

I've got my Freesat linked up to my Sky dish with no problems. Still have Sky downstairs but didn't want to pay £20 to keep watching it upstairs! Useless range of channels I had too. Gof Freesat and it's excellent. Loads more channels than I had on Sky. It's HD too and with no monthly costs - spot on.