How Big??!!

Last night we visited the well-known - and massive - campsite at La Manga near Murcia. I thought we would find out how people who are staying long-term in this part of Spain are getting on and I knew some people there who have Camos sat-domes fitted to their motorhomes. I'm glad to report that both Barry & Moira and Godfrey & Valerie are all happy with the performance of their sat-domes, especially now that they can get Channel 5 programmes and BBC radio all over Spain. In order to get BBC & ITV however, everyone agrees that you have to have a dish with a minimum diameter of 1.5M and preferably, for reliable reception in the evening and in bad weather, a 2M dish. A dish of less than 1M is going to give you just about exactly the same channels as one of 60cm or less such as a sat-dome, a Multimo or a Camos Flat-Sat. It was interesting to hear from one couple how they had been assured by a "reputable" satellite TV dealer at a motocaravan show that the automatic 85cm dish for which they paid around £2,000.00 would definitely pick up all the channels all over Spain. This really is a minefield for buyers. Even when dealers claim to "speak as they find", if they haven't actually looked, they won't have found very much. That, in a nutshell, is why we've now notched up 2,386 miles in pursuit of those elusive satellite signals. This morning we moved further south to visit Richard Hampson who's a noted photographer of motor sports and yachting. He's moored up for a couple of months at the Las Torres campsite near Cartagena and is using a Multimo to keep in touch with what's happening at home. It works well, receiving BBC radio, Channel 5, SKY News, CNN and many more but, for people who are staying on site for a prolonged period, there's an interesting option offered by a resident Dutchman. While you're on the site he can set you up with a receiver which will take a Dutch viewing card that enables reception of English language channels such as Discovery, National Geographic, Eurosport as well as channels showng films in English too. For more conventional TV viewing, again everyone agrees that even a 1.5M is too small for total reception reliability and that a 2M dish is what's required if you want to view BBC & ITV channels. However, using one of these dishes involves significant work as far as installation is concerned as you can see from these pictures taken today at Las Torres.