Sat v freeview
 

For many years I stuggled with first analogue reception and now digital reception at some of the isolated sites we visit. Around 6 years ago I splashed out on a suitcase sat reception kit, dish, receiver, coax and a combined calculator/compass/inclinometer to help align the dish on the sat. The later is just a cheap mostly plastic gadget which plug into the back of the dish, enabling you toroughly aim it. You just dial in your location, then set the compass to point to the sat you want to receive - quick and easy. I then just use the tone on the receiver to fine tune the dish alignment.

The kit came with various means of mounting the dish, but I devised a quicker more stable mounting for it - a bit of awning pole flattened at the end, which I then hammer into the ground, the top is then adapted to clamp the dish bracket. A couple of minutes and we usually have reception and no mater where we have stayed it has worked.

The trickiest part, was always making the fiddly F connections, but last week I found a fix for that. Rather than screwing the fidly nut down, you can now get a qick F-plug adaptor. The adaptor screws as normal onto the plug, but the other end just pushes into the F-socket. Much less fiddly - these Ebay Item number:221081562563