3. How to do the business.

The elevation is the trickiest to get right but after you've done it once, the elevation won't change significantly as you move from one place to another and subsequent attempts will be much more straightforward. (My dish simply unclamps from the tripod for travelling, without affecting the elevation setting, but if you have to fold yours down whilst on the move it might be possible to mark the elevation scale in some way first - I leave that to your own ingenuity!) The other bit of good news is that with small dishes at least, there is a little leeway in pointing the dish - you have to get it reasonably spot-on but a slight error doesn't matter too much. And finally, it's a definite boost to the old ego when it works and the dish locks on to a signal!

So, follow these steps to tune in the system. I make the assumption, incidentally, that your television is already tuned to the digibox output. If it isn't, refer to your instruction manual - there's only so much I'm prepared to do!

There's one other thing I should point out. This website is aimed primarily at caravanners and motorhomers. I am well aware that people use it as a guide to installing a dish at home as well, but it needs a word of warning. Working up a ladder is a hazardous business so unless you know exactly what you're doing, get a professional instead. Whatever his fee is, your life is worth more! OK, now to the business.

First, make sure there are no trees or other obstacles in the way of the dish and then connect the dish to the digibox, via a meter if required, and switch on the power. (Warning: The dish cable carries a small electric current, and a voltage of up to 18v, so never connect or disconnect it while the digibox is live; otherwise some of the electronic components could be damaged by arcing - always switch off at the wall socket first.) Don't worry if the remote control doesn't react immediately - after switching on the power the digibox can take several seconds before it will respond. On the remote control, press Services, then press 4, then 6. This will display a Signal Test screen. Ignore the Signal Strength and Signal Quality bars for now - they're not needed for this tuning process (except that if there's no bar at all, you've probably forgotten to connect the dish! - no fool would do that, you say? - I have, more than once!). Against Network ID and Transport Stream will be 0000 (zeros).Some digiboxes display an immediate Signal Quality reading, others don't. You should however have something in the Signal Strength bar. (If you don't, click here; you might have a problem.)

(Apart from the obvious one of not connecting the dish, a zero strength can also be caused by a faulty connector, and I've had any number of queries about that so if you get no reading on either the strength or quality bars and the dish is definitely connected to the digibox, see this separate page for how to correct it.)

If you're using an offset dish, set the dish so that the rim is roughly vertical. The exact angle will vary depending on where you are in Europe but vertical is a good starting point. This is important - one of the most frequent mistakes made by newcomers to satellite dish aligning is to aim the dish too high. The signal has to strike the dish at an angle so that it is reflected downwards to the LNB. [What's an LNB?] Direct focus dishes such as a Multimo, on the other hand, do have to be aimed directly at the satellite and you should refer to the elevation scale marked on the dish. Place the television where it can be seen while manipulating the dish, (or if this isn't possible, get someone else to watch the TV while you do the business with the dish), then point the dish to the South using a compass or even the position of the sun and time of day if you prefer, and a bit at a time turn it eastwards until the zeros change to 0002 (Network ID) and 07d4 (Transport Stream). The change will be quite sudden so go carefully to avoid swinging the dish too far. The Lock Indicator will also change from 'Not locked' to 'OK'. The value of 07d4 is the correct one in the UK but you might encounter others, particularly if you're trying to get a signal in southern Europe (of which more later). However the Network ID must be 0002, otherwise you're pointing at the wrong satellite system (see later). If you don't get 07d4 in the UK or or indeed anywhere in France or neighbouring areas, see the next section because you almost certainly have out-of-date software in your digibox.

Some Panasonic digiboxes are prone to a fault whereby the Lock Indicator shows OK as soon as the box is connected to a dish even if the dish is pointing nowhere near the satellite. My own experience is that even if you get an OK all the time, the digibox will still look for the digital readouts and acquire a signal when it finds them. So just ignore the OK and concentrate on getting the 0002 and 07d4.

[The satellite is actually situated at 28.2ºE of S, but that figure refers to the value of Longitude at which the satellite system is parked over the equator so the actual compass bearing does depend on whereabouts you are at the time (for example, if you travel to Constanta on Romania's Black Sea coast, which just happens to be on Longitude 28ºE, your dish will need to point directly south.) The further west you travel, the more easterly the satellite system will appear to be, and at its most extreme around Lisbon it will be fully 50ºE of S. The LNB manufacturer SMW has downloadable software on its website, www.smw.se, that will allow you to enter your current latitude and longitude and obtain an accurate compass bearing for Astra 2. Alternatively, look at this page for settings for major towns and cities in various European countries.]

Some people prefer to start to the east and work southwards, on the basis that the Astra 2 system is the most easterly of all and therefore the first to be reached as you swing the dish round.

As soon as the Network ID and Transport Stream values change from zero a digital signal is being received. Clamp the dish, then press the Backup button on the remote control 3 times to return to the normal screen (on some digiboxes, pressing the Sky button once will also work, thus saving you 2 presses!). Finally sit back with a cool glass of beer and enjoy the unfailing gratitude of your family and the envy of the people in the next caravan.

If after aligning the dish, you get a signal but there is interference on sound or vision, it is almost certainly caused by the dish elevation or direction being slightly out of alignment. Move the dish very slightly and carefully up/down/left/right and watch the Signal Quality bar on the Signal Test screen for the greatest value. Anything over about 50% should give good reception and allow some leeway for signal degradation in bad weather.

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4. It hasn't worked! What now?
OK I admit it, sometimes it isn't absolutely straightforward! There are one or two things that can go wrong. For example, it is possible to get a different set of values that will not produce a picture. Because there are several different satellite systems between south and south east, it is possible for the digibox to pick up a signal from one of them instead of Astra 2. However, your box isn't programmed to decode those signals and therefore no picture will appear. A common error is to assume that Astra 2 is actually at 28.2º E (equivalent to a compass bearing of 152º) from wherever you happen to be. In fact as explained above, it will generally be further to the east than that. In Britain for example, the compass bearing will be roughly 145º, fully 7 degrees further to the east than you would expect. If you swing the dish from the east and thus approach the satellite from the other direction, Astra 2 is the first system you will reach, thus reducing the possibility of catching another system by mistake. Remember to switch the power off to the digibox for 30 seconds first in order to reset the readings back to zero.

If the zeros remain unchanged, and assuming there is no obstacle in the way, there are a few possibilities. First, make sure you're not simply swinging the dish too quickly - if you do you could swing it right through the beam and out the other side before the digibox has a chance to react. Otherwise, the most likely is that the dish elevation is wrong. All dishes have an elevation scale marked on the mast clamp which is hinged vertically and secured by nuts. On a slightly diagonal line from North Wales through to about Hull, the elevation should be 22-23º. The further south and east you travel, the higher you will need to point the dish (the amount is slight - roughly a degree for every 100 miles, 25º in London, 35º in Barcelona for example). Alter the elevation slightly by loosening the nuts that secure the hinge and try again. (My dish is a spare domestic one with nuts that required a spanner to loosen them. I therefore replaced them with wing nuts from my local B&Q to make the job a bit easier.)

A correspondent, Paul Weeks, has had the idea of glueing a small spirit level on the LNB arm set to level once you've aligned your dish for the first time. He says it makes things really quick on subsequent occasions in the same area and gives a point to work from elsewhere.

[If you're using a domestic minidish, the scale marked on the dish can be very misleading. I've had reports from people who reckoned the scale was indicating an elevation of 15 to 20 degrees higher than the above diagram suggests. (Of course the manufacturers assume that such dishes will always be installed professionally, but that surely begs the question why bother putting a scale on them in the first place?) Anyway as a general guide, in northern England for most offset dishes the dish face should be roughly vertical. Remembering that the elevation rises by about a degree for every 100 miles you travel southwards, you should be able to estimate how much higher to tilt the dish - not much is the answer; even in southern England the dish face will be barely above vertical. It only really starts to point significantly upwards as you travel down through France.]

The other possibility, especially if this is your first attempt, is that the cable connections have been assembled wrongly. I have had any number of queries from people who found that to be the problem and everything was OK once they'd rewired the connectors. In 2 instances, without mentioning names, both units were manufactured by supposedly reputable companies, well known to any caravanner! You need to make sure that at each end of the cable, the copper-mylar foil and braided copper shield are properly folded back from the central core and that there is no possibility of them touching. (See this separate page for more information if required.)

It's worth making another point at this stage. I get a great number of emails from people saying that although they get the 0002, they don't get 07d4 - usually it's 07ef instead. They also report that they can only get a few channels. The problem is almost always caused by the digibox having out-of-date software (generally as a result of leaving it without power for some time). The solution is to do a manual software download and you'll find the instructions on this page (second topic).

There's no getting away from the fact that one's first attempt can be a slog, for the reason already mentioned about getting the dish elevation right. Theoretically, the technique is infallible - given patience and a clear line of sight to the satellite, you WILL get a signal. The problem is that, especially if you have a large dish, your accuracy in aiming it might have to be pretty high, and it could be all too easy to swing the dish right through the signal beam and out the other side without realising it. You simply have to be patient and move the dish very gradually, both horizontally and vertically. Whatever you do, don't just wave the dish around, even slowly. The trick is to be methodical - set the dish elevation roughly using the scale marked on the back of the dish, and then scan the sky slowly and in discrete steps across an arc from SE to SSE before altering the elevation slightly and scanning again. I usually swing my dish about 1 degree at a time and at roughly 1-second intervals. (However some makes of digibox react faster than others, so depending on which make/model you have, you might need to increase the pause between each movement of the dish.)

Note that once a signal has been detected the digibox will retain its settings, so if you've picked up a wrong signal or the dish is subsequently moved for any reason, causing a loss of picture, it will be necessary to unplug the power for about 30 seconds in order to reset the Network and Transport Stream values before attempting to align the dish again.

Improved reception, especially in marginal reception areas or in bad weather conditions, can also be obtained by skewing the LNB (the box at the end of the antenna arm). Loosen the locking screw if there is one and the LNB will then rotate within its housing. There is usually a scale marked under the housing. Turn the LNB one position either way while you watch the Signal Quality bar on the Signal Test screen. If the quality improves, continue rotating the LNB until the quality is at its highest.

Just to clear up a query raised by several readers, the elevation referred to in this section is that of the satellite above the horizon. Most dishes are of the offset focus type - i.e. the signal is reflected downwards to the antenna - and therefore the dish itself will appear to point some way below that angle. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, in the UK the dish face might well be almost vertical and in the far north of Scotland it could even appear to point down into the ground!

A correspondent, Howard Page, discovered another slight problem which though probably rare might affect some people. He found he could only get a Transport Stream value of 07d3 and no matter how much he adjusted the dish alignment, he could never get 07d4. He later realised that his LNB was skewed 45 degrees the wrong way, so that it was effectively 90º out. Once he corrected it, the 07d4 came in immediately. What had happened was that 07d3 equates to transponder 3 which is horizontally polarised (07d4 is tr4, vertically polarised) and because the LNB was 90º out, it picked up the wrong transponder. Howard's experience might go some way to explaining other queries I've received in the past.

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5. Getting a signal in the southernmost parts of Europe.
The Astra 2 system transmits a north beam and a south beam, (and also, from the Astra 2D satellite, a spot beam that carries ITV and the BBC). When Sky digiboxes are first switched on, they're programmed to look for the north beam first and if they don't find it they'll just give up. The north beam is receivable throughout northern Europe and even as far south as northeast Spain and northern Italy, (see the satellite footprint maps at the end of Section 2). For other parts of Italy and the Iberian peninsular however, the north beam might be out of reach unless you have a very large dish and you will need to change the digibox's default transponder setting to one of the south beam frequencies in order for it to work. The process is straightforward and your viewing card will continue to work.

Incidentally, you know how they keep saying on TV, "Don't try this at home"? Well, this is a case in point. There's no point in practising the following routine before you actually leave for southern Europe because your digibox will simply ignore you. As long as it can receive the north beam, it will say "Up yours matey, I know best". So wait until you can no longer receive a conventional signal and then proceed as follows.

Using the remote control, press Services and then 4. Now in succession, press 01 (without pausing between the 0 and the 1) and then press Select. This is an undocumented sequence which gives access to the Installer Setup screen. Press 2 to get the Default Transponder screen. (Incidentally, don't be tempted to experiment with other features in the installer setup facility - you could seriously mess up the box which is why the routine is undocumented. Keep to the instructions!)

Once the dish has acquired a signal, you might still have a problem. The normal sequence when a Sky box starts up after a power-off is that it does a listings search and then displays the Sky welcome screen (EPG 998). The problem is that the welcome screen is on the north beam which obviously isn't available to you (otherwise you wouldn't have had to change the default transponder). So having failed to find the welcome screen, the box returns a 'no signal found' error message. All you need to do is key in the 3-digit code for say Sky News (501) or any other channel on the south beam and you'll then get a picture.

(On the extremities of the north beam footprint, you might suffer difficulties with the digibox. This is because the digibox will switch to the north beam default transponder if it can, but if the signal drifts in and out during a 24-hour cycle, you might find you have to keep changing the default transponder back to the south beam in order to get any reception at all.)

On the south beam you'll get all the BBC national radio stations, except for Radio Five Live, but not BBC Television (except for Parliament). Also not available are ITV, Channel 4 and Five, together with some of Sky's premium channels such as Sky Movies. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of choice including Sky One, Sky News and Turner Classic Movies. The Sky Sports channels are also on the south beam (but not Sports Extra). Although Channel 4 is not available, S4C, the Welsh Channel 4, is. Five is now (as of October 2007) transmitting on the recently deployed Astra 2C satellite. This has a relatively wide beam and might well be receivable in southern Europe. Whether this is a long term move I have no idea but for now if you need to program it in manually using Add Channel, the frequency details are 10.964, H, 22, 5/6.

It is also possible to get the BBCi interactive pages using BBC Parliament. The full details are in my Other Info page.

Channels are moved around from time to time so the above information might not always be accurate, but you can usually get up-to-date information on the Lyngsat website and also on Digitalspy. Frequency information about the BBC transmissions is also available from www.bbc.co.uk:80/reception/info/sat_frequencies.shtml.

Unfortunately for people travelling to the eastern Mediterranean (Greece for example), all the Astra 2 beams are marginal at best, at least with the size of dish that a caravanner could carry. With luck you might get a signal on either the north or the south beam, but be prepared for nothing at all. See www.astra2d.com for more details of signal reception around Europe.

Now that the UK terrestrial channels are difficult to receive in southern Europe you might wish to consider tuning instead into the Astra 1 system, which covers that area well. Paul Wharton wrote to say he'd managed to get excellent reception from Astra 1 with a small minidish and could get a number of English-language channels including Sky News and BBC World (both subscription-free). I've no personal experience of accessing Astra 1 but I suggest you try changing your default transponder to 11.597, V, 22.0, 5/6. Then bring the dish round to 19ºE and see what happens. You should get Network ID 0001 and Transport Stream 0421. If you get a signal, you'll then have to put Sky News and BBC World into Other Channels. The details are:

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6. Getting BBC/ITV in marginal areas.

As described elsewhere in this article, the BBC and ITV both transmit their satellite signals via the newer Astra 2D satellite. This has a much narrower beam than the 2A, B and C satellites and therefore the signal becomes rapidly weaker and more difficult to receive as you travel away from the British Isles. There are several things you can do to lessen that problem, though the likelihood is that at some stage you will travel too far for the signal to reach and you'll eventually lose the BBC and ITV channels. The single most important thing you can do is to use a bigger dish. See here for that information. However there is a limit to how large a dish you can use, because of (a) the impracticality of carrying it, and (b) the effect it will have on the remaining strong signals on the north and south beams in overloading the digibox.

Some digiboxes are better than others at dealing with wide disparities of signal strength, and even individual models vary from others by the same manufacturer; but that isn't something I can advise on, I'm not privy to the information.

You might also find that some regional variations of ITV1 and BBC1 are stronger than others. I've found for example that BBC1 NorthWest might begin to break up (and ITV1 Granada disappear altogether) but I can still get perfect reception on BBC1 London and ITV1 Tyne Tees. So experiment with the different regions - in most cases all you'll lose will be the local news.

The other thing you can do is to check that your existing equipment is performing to its maximum efficiency, and this means ensuring that your dish is accurately aligned and that the LNB is properly skewed. Checking the signal quality bar on the Signal Test screen won't do this adequately - it will only display the quality of the signal transmitted on the default transponder. To check the 2D signal, do the following:-

[Note that this might not work with a Sky Plus box because you have no control over which tuner is displayed.] Go to the installer's menu by pressing Services, 4, 0, 1, Select, then choose 5 to select Manual Tuning. (Note that as described in the previous section, nothing will happen when you press 0. It's the combination of 0 and 1 that does the trick.) Now enter the frequency for say BBC2, which is 10.773, H, 22, 5/6, or ITV2 which is 10.758, V, 22, 5/6, and select Find Channels. This should give you a screen similar to the normal Signal Test screen, but for the 2D beam. Now tweak the dish, paying particular attention to the LNB skew, to get the signal quality bar as high as it will go. This will maximise the dish alignment for the 2D beam.