My new satellite system was installed on Friday and it’s wonderful. I thought I might get half a dozen or so Spanish stations but I can actually get 14 and there may be more that I haven’t found yet.
The installation went smoothly, the guys from Challenge TV in Tenterden, Kent, did a great job – have a look at the photo sequence to see what was involved.
 Challenge TV, Tenterden, arrive to install a new satellite system to pick up Hispasat at 30 °W and Astra at 19.2°E with a motorised dish. |
 The old satellite Sky dish used to pick up Hotbird and Intelsat but since they went mainly digital it hasn’t been much use |
 They inspect the old satellite dish, it was about 15 years old and rusty and needed replacing |
 The old satellite dish comes down |
 The old satellite dish and the new dish – the old dish was 80cm the new one is 78cm |
 New satellite dish with its motorised unit |
 Fixing the mount for the new satellite dish. This was the skilful part – the mount had to be vertical so that the presets on the motor line up with the right parts of the sky |
 The new satellite dish installed and now ready to test. We all watched the satellite dish move when a different satellite was selected from the TV |
 The new satellite decoder (SatCatcher Voyager). This is the clever bit that converts the signal into TV language. It can cope with 3000 channels according to the box |
For those of you who are technical minded the satellites I can recieve are:
HOTBIRD
TURK1C
ASTRA 1
HISPASAT
INTELSAT 10
THOR 2,3
ASTRA 2A, 2B, 2D
EUROBIRD 1
There may be more to come but so far I have found these Spanish channels:
TVEi
Canarias
Galicia
Extremadura
Madrid
Andalucia
Telesur
Popular
CNC
Vit
TBN
RTPA int
Aragon
EHS
Overall I am delighted with the choice of stations, I feel like a kid in a toyshop, I don’t know what to play with first.