TV aerial repairs and installation in Kilburn

Kilburn High Road runs almost dead straight through the middle of the area, lined with parades of shops with mansion flats stacked two or three storeys above, while the side streets — Christchurch Avenue, Mapesbury Road, Cavendish Road — carry mainly bay-fronted Victorian terraces, many split into flats years ago. Aerials here point south-east towards Crystal Palace across a fairly open path for most of the borough, though the taller mansion blocks along the High Road and around Kilburn Park Road throw shadow onto the roofs immediately behind them, which is why two houses on the same street can need different aerial gain. Brick stock is mostly London stock brick with a fair number of rendered or part-tiled front elevations, and chimney stacks on the older terraces are generally still sound enough to carry a bracket, though some have been reduced or capped when gas heating replaced coal fires.

The stretch of mansion flats above the shops on Kilburn High Road almost always has a shared aerial system feeding the building, installed whenever the block was last refurbished, and by now a good number of those systems are getting on and starting to show it — one flat losing picture while the rest are fine, or the whole run degrading together as an ageing amplifier drifts out of spec. We test at the head end on the roof first, because chasing a fault flat by flat when the actual cause sits in a loft cupboard or on the parapet wastes everyone's time and money, and a written report to the managing agent showing where the readings fail gets the right repair authorised rather than a guess.

On the terraced side streets, chimney stacks are the default mounting point and most are structurally fine, though a fair few have been repointed only on the street-facing side, leaving the aerial side softer than it looks from the pavement — worth checking before adding a new bracket rather than assuming the existing lashing kit will hold. Where a house has been converted into two or three flats, which is common off Willesden Lane and Shoot Up Hill, the original single feed has often been split with passive splitters to serve every flat, which is the single most common cause of a poor picture in one flat while the others are fine. Replacing that with a small distribution amplifier at the point the cable enters the building, rather than another splitter, is usually the fix.

Satellite dishes for Sky and freesat need a clear line south-south-east towards 28.2 degrees east, and on the High Road that generally means a rear or side wall rather than the shopfront elevation, which is often obstructed by neighbouring buildings or simply not practical to drill into. For the area's Irish, Caribbean and Eastern European households wanting language channels from 13 degrees east or other satellites further round the arc, we check both sightlines before quoting, since a position that works for Sky doesn't always clear buildings further round to the east — a motorised dish or a second fixed dish is sometimes the only answer on a tightly built terrace.