I believe the best way to experience the real New Zealand is to give yourself at least one month time, drive a car, ride a motorbike, or bicycle, do a all country road trip!
Many regard New Zealand as a small country. Only those who completed a long road trip can tell you how wrong they are.
I personally traveled New Zealand for over 6,000km with a friend of mine in December 2011. This trip finally convinced me that I have to move “down under”. The around-islands anti-clockwise road trip was not fully prepared indeed but the experience is memorable. I even managed to get some sponsorship from GT Radial tire headquartered in Shanghai with a good distribution system in New Zealand.
As a professional dish installer, I had been unconsciously checking dish and TV aerial installation around the country. I was truly impressed by the low-profile housing facilities of NZ, as simple as the housing, the installations and dishes are the same made in the same fashion.
I do have some interesting finds:
1. Most of the dishes and TV aerials are not high quality branding products.
2. Most of the installations have room for improvements.
This is probably the dishes are most likely not NZ locally manufactured. Every thing imported are expensive considering the long distance shipments. Many dishes are Taiwan or China made probably.
This is common brand in the market. A 0.75m dish and a 0.45m dish. The 75cm dish is more often used.
I personally used this brand before. 45cm is not regular for most of the satellites considering rain fade. 60cm is more common actually. The problems I found about these type of dish antenna, not particularly this brand, are:
- fully metal, not easy to assemble
- heavy
- more likely to rust over years of exposure in nature, especially the screw parts.
- circle shape, not oval
I have been using other types like this:
The major differences I found are:
- lighter, the base part is industry plastic, less vibration in wind
- oval shape, better surface coating, better signal reflection and not likely to rust over years
- easy assembly
- stainless steel screws, not likely to rust over years of usage
The mounting and supporting parts are very much different. In New Zealand most of the installation are on wood roof and iron sheet where lag screws are commonly use. I usually install the base on concrete base or metal guard railing by special installation brackets and screws.
An installation on eaves, with a supporting lag to the roof.
Iron sheet roof installation
Roof installation in common in New Zealand. I have been thinking of the proper anti water leak practices but I found many of the installation are not fully prepared for such a object.