Going west for New Year's Eve

After a session of satellite dish testing at Tarifa - the Kathrein picking up BBC & ITV - we set off towards Portugal. From Seville to Lagos, we made regular stops and found that the Kathrein continued to pick up all BBC channels, ITV 1 (but not 2, 3 or 4), Channel 4 & Five all through the Algarve. Reception was better on some BBC and ITV regions than others and the Kathrein receiver could sometimes pick up channels that the SKY box couldn't. I also noticed that the SKY receiver kept defaulting to the north beam transponder frequency. Signal strength did deteriorate during the evening and some channels, in some places, were just not viewable by 10.00 pm or so.

I'm still surprised by how many interesting programmes there are on channels that I've never heard of, Red, TrueMovies and Horse & Country for example. Most of these are transmitted on the Eurobird 1 satellite and many of them can be received with a small dish such as a Multimo or a Flat-Sat. I set up a Flat-Sat inside the motorhome (see photo) and - plastic windows having very little effect on signal strength - picked up a range of programmes.

We dropped in at a couple of camp sites and were again told that a dish of 1.2 - 1.5M was needed to pick up UK channels reliably. Interestingly, one of our original Kathrein CAP 900 purchasers had phoned me from Albufeira to tell me that he could pick up BBC & ITV there. I was surprised at the time and so was happy to be able to confirm that my system could do it too.

We decided to go to Cabo Sao Vincene near Sagres for New Year's Eve - it seemed like a good idea at the time as it's as far south-west as you can get in mainland Europe. I thought it would be a deserted rocky peninsula but I expect the hundreds of other people who were there did as well. The lighthouse started flashing, we watched the sun go down on 2007 for the last time and parked up for the night. New Year's Eve was celebrated with some wine out of a carton from Lidl, crisps, soup and an orange. Right on the edge of Europe, Astra 2D was breaking up badly in the evening so we watched the fireworks in London on BBC 1 using the Alden Netmaster and the Slingbox.