Fun With Satilites

As Theresa said in an earlier post, we now have a limited satellite system, limited as all we can pick up is a few channels - mostly Sky news and the BBCi streams, but the idea was so that we could listen to Radio 2 which we can receive so it seems to be for filing its purpose...
Having never used a satellite before we first thought that the system was not working as we could not receive a thing.. it was only after many hours and getting a second LNB (as I thought that I have damaged the first one) that I found that the pointing of the dish is very sensitive.
The first night we have a simple system with the dish (a 1m thing that Theresa has christened Jodrel bank junior) siting on two breeze blocks. This worked OK except that the dish kept blowing over. Now it is mounted on the pole that holds the washing line up, better but as the pole is not fixed that well the dish can rotate a bit so it is OK for one Astra satellite but not that good for the other one... which is why we have limited stations.

But having access to Radio 2 has helped a lot to over come some of the feelings of isolation we were having.. Some would say why come to La Palma and then cry out for British Radio.. Well two reasons; firstly our Spanish is not that good so it is very difficult to listen to Spanish radio (and TV) and secondly, the Spanish Radio station we like is not available at our end of the island. The only radio that we can receive does not have a strong signal and keeps fading out or being swamped by Portuguese radio from Madeira.