I went to Japan by the end of November for two weeks, travelling to different places, most of which are small towns and rural area. I was there to find creative new ways and practices of dish and aerial installation.  I do find some unique methods. I will post some installations here to share the Japanese way of installation.

This kind of balcony enclosing wall mount is unique. It does not require any kind of drilling on concrete wall, some quick turns of screws will mount the bracket in the ideal position for the dish antenna. Many Japanese condo or apartment have open balcony, this invention is very helpful if there’s no metal guard railings.

I used one of these brackets once in Auckland and the customer was truly impressed by my care of his property. There was absolutely no damage to anything. I was easy for me to mount it there and the dish antenna was just in the arm distance for me to work on it. I put  protective rubbers on both side of the wall. Two years later when the dish needed to be removed, I spent less than 5 minutes to take it down, there was no trail of dish installation at all.

Some Japanese types of Ku band dishes, available on super market. I saw them in an electronic shopping mall. These antennas are much more expensive than other designs of Chinese manufactures. I checked the weight, the coating and LNB, I found no obvious superer quality than the New Zealand versions. The antennas are all branded, most likely from SUN or BS.

Constantly we need special clamping apparatus, fixtures, jigs to make the installation job more easily done. The results are most likely to be looking much better than the regular installation. I saw some different type of fixtures in Japan this time:

This is a installation base, the pole could be extended. The fixture can be easily install on any wood or concrete vertical surface, or to be mounted on guard railing with a a few screws. I saw a lot of this type fixture when I travel in Japan. Some accessories used to be paired up with the above fixture. And more different type of installation base brackets in the above photo gallery.

New Zealand needs more installation options beside the regular ways. The housing are for more complicated in terms of style and materials. We need to find more suitable installation brackets to make our Freeview HD aerial and satellite dishes working more stable, and our houses look more beautiful.

Let me give you an example of how these brackets can be used in New Zealand:

This is a standard 55cm ku band satellite tv dish, for SkyTV. The dish was installed here with standard mounting comes with the original dish package. From the house inside window, you will always see this dish hanging out there.  This might be a easy location for installation, but not a ideal position for a good out look.

From the other side: If I were the installer, I wound’t choose this position fro the dish installation. We manufacture different kind of balcony installation mounting systems which allow us to do other type of installations to achieve easy and secure work, while better general out look. The customer from inside the house wound see a dish antenna at all.

 

If we use the above style mount, the dish could be installed here as shown in the illustration. These are the methods we use for guard railing installations. There will be no penetration, no drilling, and no possible water leaking.

 

My more detailed design of the bracket, basically it is a hand made version of those Japan style dish mounts.

 

 

 

 

I saw many dish antennas are installed on balcony in Japan by some special type of bracket, without any damage to the property, on concrete condo balcony wall. These brackets are available in electronic malls, pricing from $100 to $500, it’s like around $100 a piece.

Some are simple design the others are different color and style to match the building appearance; My design idea is simple, using triangle iron or steel profile, with some welding, bolts and nuts, to achieve the same function. I add two wood blocker to make the general look better.

Here comes another bad installation choice and arrangements. I understand that the three different type of antennas were installed by different company. The worst location for the dish is hanging above the main entrance. The VHF Freeview aerial is out of use. The UHF digital aerial could use the original aerial position but I were installed on the roof.

We can actually integrate them together using one supporting mast. I would like to do it this way.

In terms of how to integrate a round dish antenna into a vertical mast, there are different ways.

 

 

 

If the satellite does not require a high elevation, it could be mounted directly on to the pole. Other wise some sticking out brackets have to be added so we have enough elevation for the satellite.

 

 

 

Flexible satellite dish installation stand.

 

In some cases we have to install a stronger ground based dish stand of different diameters. For a 75cm to 90cm Ku band dish, a stronger mount is must. For some type of C band dishes, they have to be mounted on solid ground.

I design this flexible mast stand to support many ground based dish installations. The feet could be mounted on concrete ground directly, or to be added on some solid heavy blockers.

I revised the regular chimney mount to make it possible for dish antenna installations too. The unique problem of a dish installation on mount without penetration is that dish needs a elevation, while the pole holder does not allow long enough distance between the dish plate and the chimney wall.

I made the mount separated as two brackets which allows the installer to adjust distance between pole and wall so dish elevation is no longer a concern.

In some cases we want to install both aerial and dish on one holding pole to reduce mounting holdings. This is also possible by this revised version of chimney mount. The distance between the pole and wall, or edge is adjustable, we have the flexibility to use one standard mount to install it on different styles of chimney, wooden or bricks.

I use double lashing to hold extra weights of dish antenna, or both dish and Freeview UHF aerial.

This is an example that we can actually using one mast to mount both UHF aerial and satellite dish. Originally it looks like this: satellite dish and VHF old type analog aerial on the other end of the house, both are on roof with triple stand to support the installations.

From the other side of photo taken from the yard, it looks like this:

My installation design idea is go use one mast mounted beside chimney to support both Freeview aerial and satellite dish. The mounting bracket which holds the mast is flexible in terms of how much the space we have to keep from mast to the chimney.

Mounting them together, we achieve a clean better look of the house, the idea is like what I make in the following illustrations. There will be no roof installation work required, so there’s no penetration on room, reducing the water leak and roof damage possibility.

The other similar sample of chimney installation is this house. There are rooms for improvement though: The dish could be mounted on the same mast as aerial, to save the trouble and damage to the brick chimney. The dish position could be as low as the roofer to reduce weight supported the the mast; no need to mount the mast on eave.

Eave or wall mounting installation uses clamps that are bolted directly to the wood of the house. Different length standoffs from 30cm to 180cm are available for wall mounting to ensure the antenna mast is mounted so it will clear the roof overhang.

 

Eave mounting could also use an adjustable strap to adjust to different roof angles.An example could be this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dish + Aerial on Guard Railing Mounted Mast

The huge VHF analog aerial is done for. The house is going to be rent out and the owner wants TV works for Freeview before it’s out on market. I took this chance to suggest a new way of organizing antennas. There’s a SkyTV dish hanging outside between two major living room windows which means you always spot a round dish plate when you look out, it’s disturbing.

We actually do not have to install dishes on wall, especial using the standard mount. Here comes my idea:

I use different methods to fasten and secure mast on balcony metal guard railing, there’s no drilling needed. If the dish and aerial are good quality ones which means they are light and strong, a short mast is fine. A U-shaped wall mast mount will carry the weight, attached to wall under eave. There’s an unique method to attach round satellite dish on vertical mast, see the idea below.

There’s an unique method to attach round satellite dish on vertical mast, see the idea below.