One municipality, two different worlds
Mont-roig del Camp has its village inland, beside the hills, with stone houses and steep streets, and a long coastal strip where Miami Platja spreads out with estates such as Pino Alto and El Casalot. Between the two lie kilometres of farmland, road and rising ground. For an aerial engineer, they are almost two separate places.
In the village we work on old houses and small residents’ associations: aerials on tiled roofs, cable spoiled by time, and refurbished homes that need new sockets.
In Miami Platja most of the work is flats, townhouses and villas kept as second homes, many of them on terraced plots among the pines, and a high proportion of owners from other countries.
The satellite dish takes centre stage in Miami Platja
Walk through any estate in Miami Platja and you will see a dish on nearly every house. It makes sense: many people spend long stretches here and want their usual channels. It is also the service that produces the most faults, because a satellite installation needs precision and the coast does not make that easy.
This is how we tackle a dish fault in the area:
- We check the bracket. A rusted foot or clamp lets the dish move in the wind. If it is not firm, realigning it achieves nothing.
- We measure the satellite signal with a field meter rather than the bar on the television, and adjust azimuth, elevation and the skew of the LNB.
- We inspect the LNB and connectors. Salt and sun degrade the electronics and let damp in.
- If there are several televisions, we leave the distribution set up with the right LNB or multiswitch.
We work with Astra 19.2° E, Hispasat 30° W and other satellites depending on the channels you want. All the detail is under TV aerials and satellite dishes.
Terrestrial television on terraced estates
On a hillside estate every house sees the horizon differently. One home can receive terrestrial television perfectly while the one two streets uphill sits in a signal shadow cast by the ground itself or by the pines. On top of that come the mobile phone interference that arrived when the 700 MHz band went over to 5G, and old amplifiers that do nothing to filter it.
The answer is not simply to turn the gain up. We look for the best spot on the roof, aim by measurement, filter out LTE and 5G and set the masthead amplifier to exactly the right level.
Houses shut up for much of the year
In winter many homes in Miami Platja stand empty. For those owners we fit CCTV with IP cameras, a recorder and access from a phone, taking care that the cameras look at the property rather than the street, and displaying the monitored-area notice.
For any of that to work you need a decent connection. If the router is by the front door and the cameras are in the back garden, we extend the network with wired access points or a mesh system. The same goes for working from the terrace: it is covered under wifi solutions.
One practical tip: before you shut the house up in autumn, check that the cameras still appear on your phone and that the router restarts by itself after a power cut. That is the commonest reason for losing the picture for months on end.
What you can expect from us
A diagnosis with a meter before we offer an opinion, a free quote explained clearly, materials meant for outdoor use, and a final signal check in front of you or, if you are away, a written summary of the work.
Coming out to Mont-roig and Miami Platja
From Salou we reach Miami Platja in about twenty-five minutes on the N-340 through Cambrils, and Mont-roig village in a similar time by the inland road. We cover the nucli antic, Miami Platja, Pino Alto, El Casalot and the rest of the estates. In the same area we work in Cambrils and L’Hospitalet de l’Infant.