Satellite dishes and the chain of love

This afternoon I spent 2 hours installing a satellite dish. I bought the dish and the accompanying receiver at Lidl a few weeks ago, it was maybe even months ago.

Before I bought it I chatted with some people in work that I know already bought the same kit and they all seemed really chuffed with it. I also did some poking around in forums and it seemed relatively straightforward.

For €99 euro you really can't go wrong.

I bought this dish and receiver for my mother's house, up in the Dublin Mountains overlooking Dublin Bay. The house is so old and there is no cable television in the area. Everyone up there on the road where she lives has either an old UHF roof antenna or a satellite dish for television.

The roof antenna on the house is attached to the chimney and in my view it has seen better days. It just about withstood any storms in recent memory and looking up at it from down on the ground you can see that it's missing a few bits.

They must have been important because the picture is crap. I mean every channel is like watching TV through a blizzard. You can't see anything.

To start with there are just 6 channels. When we were kids growing up in that house there were 6 channels. Since then the rest of the world has moved on yet this house still gets 6 channels.

Lately the TV just about displays pictures on two of them, RTE1 and RTE2. The rest are terrible. No picture, no sound. Just snow and a lot of SHIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH coming out the loudspeakers.

So that's why I bought this satellite kit. To bring my mother's TV into the 90s. yes that's right the 90s. I mean it's not digital but it's a hell of a lot better than 6 channels of which only 2 are watchable. Barely.

So up I went a month or so ago and had a first stab at getting the thing going. Mistake number 1 was trying to get this working with all the kids there and my brothers in the garden shouting "advice" up to me. Needless to say it was not helpful and I couldn't get it going.

My mother knows me well. She knew immediately that it would annoy the heck out of me that I had to leave it without getting it going. She was so right.

So today I am on vacation from work, and I had it in mind that if the weather was good I'd give it another go.

I went up there today, sans enfants, and brought every possible tool I might need with me.

First step was to hook up all the kit to the back of the TV.

Second step was to cut and re-crimp the cables going into the actual dish. I had left the cable out in the rain for the last 2 months or so and it had already started to rust. Doh!

Anyway, once I was satisfied that all the connectors were OK I hooked up the dish and tried to get a picture. I selected the satellite (without really knowing which would be best) and ran a channel scan. It counted all the way up to 100% only to tell me that it had detected 0 channels.

Sh*t.

I went back out to the garden and this time I hooked up the cheap satellite finder that came with the dish. Went back inside, scanned again. 100% scan and no channels. Not looking good.

I went back out and this time I got rid of the cheapo sat-finder and hooked up the one I bought for €10 with the dish. It makes a squealing noise when you point it at a satellite.

It did nothing for the first little bit, then squealed a little and then just as I was beginning to think that I was wasting my time it started to give off an almighty howl.

I thought ey-up, what's this then.

Problem. I had nothing to sit the thing on while I dashed inside.

No problem. Grabbing a chair from the house and a clamp from the boot of the car I managed to keep the thing squealing. I disconnected the finder, hooked up the regular cable and went inside.

Sure enough I had found a satellite and the channels were coming in. I couldn't believe it.

After a full scan I hit exit on the remote and up came a picture. Crystal clear. What would be the inaugural broadcast? Yep, Scooby Doo. The same scooby doo I have on at home every day. Hilarious.

The big question now was could I leave the satellite sitting clamped to a chair in the front garden? If I moved it to the back of the house would it work again?

Coming in the next posting: What the heck is the "chain of love" and what has it got to do with Satellite dishes...