TV and AV installation, Lower North Shore.

Ray has been on the tools for forty years, is fully licensed and insured, and does the job himself from quote to clean-up. Four decades means he has seen the local faults often enough to recognise them from the description before he arrives, which is why most jobs here finish on the first visit.

Catherine in East Lindfield had an antenna replaced and the faults around it repaired the same afternoon: “I would recommend him to anyone in need of such repairs.”

What makes the Lower North Shore different

Your problem is too much signal, not too little

Sydney's main transmitters are at Artarmon, which for Mosman, Cremorne, Crows Nest, Northbridge and Lane Cove means sitting almost underneath them. The instinct when a picture breaks up is to add a masthead amplifier, and down here that pushes the tuner into overload and makes it worse. It is why the second installer's amplifier does not fix what the first installer's amplifier caused. The correct fix is usually an attenuator and a smaller, less hungry antenna, and it costs less than what most people get quoted.

The canopy is why it only fails when it rains

Mosman, Northbridge, Castlecrag, Longueville and Lane Cove carry serious mature canopy. Dry leaves pass signal and wet leaves absorb it. If reception is perfect all summer and drops out every time there is weather, that is not a faulty antenna, it is a tree in the path. The answer is height, a different bearing, or moving the mount, rather than new hardware you did not need.

Three levels down a harbour block will beat any single router

Cremorne Point, Northwood, Greenwich, Waverton and much of Mosman are built down a slope: three levels, thick floors, and the modem sitting in whichever room the lead happened to come into. No router covers that, and a mesh node talking back through a concrete floor barely does. Cabled access points, one per level, is the only version of this that actually works, and it is a day's cabling rather than a shelf of gadgets.

The apartment blocks all share one antenna

Neutral Bay, Cremorne, Kirribilli and North Sydney are dense with 1960s and 70s walk-ups running a single master antenna into a splitter chain installed decades ago, and your outlet is at the end of it. We meter at your wall plate, and at the head-end where we are given access, so you know before you spend anything whether the fault is your flat or the building's.

Sandstone, and a lot of it

Northbridge, Castlecrag and the older Mosman houses are cut into rock, and Hunters Hill carries some of the strictest heritage controls in the country. Mounting a screen on sandstone is a different job from mounting on gyprock: different anchors, different drilling, and a very good reason to get the position right the first time, because a patched sheet of plasterboard disappears and a patched sandstone wall does not.

What we get called for here

• 02

  TV Antenna Repairs & Extra Points

  Overload and canopy faults, which between them account for most of what goes wrong down here.

• 03

  Digital TV Antenna Installations

  Sized for a transmitter that is close, not far. Bigger is actively worse this near to Artarmon.

• 09

  Wi-Fi Access Points & Whole-Home Mesh

  Cabled access points floor by floor, for the three-level homes built down a harbour slope.

• 01

  TV Installation & Wall Mounting

  Sandstone, rendered block and heritage walls, anchored properly and positioned once.

• 04

  Home Theatre Systems

  Dedicated cinema rooms and media rooms, calibrated for the room's acoustics rather than the box.

• 07

  Data Cabling & Network Cabling

  Cat6 backbones through split-level homes where wireless was never going to hold up.

Common questions

Would an amplifier fix my reception on the Lower North Shore?

Usually not, and it often makes things worse. The main Sydney transmitters are at Artarmon, so homes through Mosman, Cremorne, Crows Nest and Lane Cove receive a very strong signal already. Adding gain pushes the tuner into overload, which produces the same pixelation and dropouts that weak signal does. We meter the level at the outlet first. Where the reading is high, the fix is attenuation, not amplification.

Why does my TV only break up when it rains?

Almost always trees. Mosman, Northbridge, Castlecrag and Lane Cove have heavy mature canopy, and wet foliage absorbs signal in a way dry foliage does not. The antenna is generally fine. What changes the outcome is height, a different bearing to get a cleaner path, or relocating the mount, so it is worth having someone check the path before replacing hardware that is not broken.

I am in an apartment. Is the reception problem mine or the building's?

That is the first thing to establish, and it is a short job. Most blocks through Neutral Bay, Cremorne, Kirribilli and North Sydney run one master antenna feeding a splitter chain that may be fifty years old. We meter at your wall plate, and at the head-end if the building gives access, so you know whether to spend money inside your unit or take it to the strata committee.

Can you get Wi-Fi working across a three-level harbour house?

Yes, with cable. Homes on the harbour slopes at Cremorne Point, Greenwich, Northwood and Mosman have thick floors between levels, and every wireless-only solution ends up relaying through them, which is where the speed goes. We run Cat6 to an access point on each level so each floor has its own strong signal on one network name. It is typically a day's work.