Caravanners - 8th April - Devon & Cornwall going digital---

[Laney760]

which means if you are caravanning down there after this date and don't have digital receiving equipment you won't get tv reception. Maplin currently have a sale of necessary equipment

[Tibbsey23]

On this note, just FYI, as at the moment I am working away I am spending most nights of the week in my caravan away from the joys of t'internet and such, I have spent some time getting the TV issue sorted!

I opted to go for a boosted house aerial from B&Q as it was suitable for all signal strengths... perhaps a mistake, when considering the hassle up to an omni directional one?! Each to their own I suppose!

I spent a week with little or no TV as i got fed up with walking in and out of the van, moving the aerial, rechecking and repeat... so this is what I do

• First off, know where you are going to camp
• find it on maps.google.co.uk,
• right click on the pitch (dont worry about being 100%, so long as you are clicking near the right field!), select get directions from/to, so long as you didn't click on a road it should put the address of the camp as something along the lines of 50.912155,0.957723. Make a note of this.
• Go to www.digitaluk.co.uk/postcodechecker/ and enter the postcode of the site (dont worry about house name or number), this will tell you the nearest transmitter
• Go to en.wikipedia.org and search for that transmitter, it will usually be under X transmitting station, for example "Dover transmitting station"
• Find the coordinates on that page, in this example 51° 6′ 42″ N, 1° 14′ 51″ E, click on these and this will take you to a geohack page, this will give you the coordinates in the same format as google, in this case 51.111667, 1.2475
• Now open up www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html and scroll down to "Rhumb lines". Paste the coordinates of the camp in the top 2 boxes, and those of the transmitter in the bottom and click calculate bearing, in this example the result is 042°25′17″
• Rock up to your camp site, put up your aerial, whip out your compass and turn the aerial to 42 degrees. Job done

I've done this now on 3 sites and have had perfect digital signal every time, its a bit long winded and there must be somewhere that will do it all for you, but its fairly straight forwards and works well!!

[Mike B]

[QUOTE=Tibbsey23;487441]On this note, just FYI, as at the moment I am working away I am spending most nights of the week in my caravan away from the joys of t'internet and such, I have spent some time getting the TV issue sorted!

I opted to go for a boosted house aerial from B&Q as it was suitable for all signal strengths... perhaps a mistake, when considering the hassle up to an omni directional one?! Each to their own I suppose!

I spent a week with little or no TV as i got fed up with walking in and out of the van, moving the aerial, rechecking and repeat... so this is what I do

Hi they best way to be sure of getting reception is via free to air . the equipment is cheap from maplins and easy to set up the set up in a case is brilliant [ I use one at home] you get many more stations all the beeb itv all the plus etc with the advertising ones I get in excess of 250 channels about 20/20 dedicated film alone + about 6 news chans.
a 60cm dish would be best for north scotland north Wales and down in the south of Cornwall .
Your old Sky reciever wiull be fine.
Only prob is getting used to the different chan no`s but that`

[Mike B]

[QUOTE=Tibbsey23;487441]

Hi they best way to be sure of getting reception is via free to air . the equipment is cheap from maplins and easy to set up the set up in a case is brilliant [ I use one at home] you get many more stations all the beeb itv all the plus etc with the advertising ones I get in excess of 250 channels about 20/25 dedicated film alone + about 6 news chans.
a 60cm dish would be best for north scotland north Wales and down in the south of Cornwall .
Your old Sky reciever will be fine.
Only prob is getting used to the different chan no`s but that` not difficult
I have used this method for over 20 years , with no problems. Iv`e installed my own equipment since the early 16chanel days.including BSB.
Still use the dish. ie squarial LOL.
If you need any help mail me .
Regards
Mike B

[dazphil]

I purchased a camping freeview satelite system from Lidl it includes a small reciever, dish (small but I live in devon and travel to cornwall a lot and it worked fine). it comes with a clamp for mounting on a pole (I put a pole in the clamp for the jockey wheel) and it comes with a stand with a flet base and 3 large suckers so you can mount it on the caravan roof. Its easy to set up as it comes with a special compass with all the satelites marked on it and the reciever shows a signal strength meter on TV screen and emits a loud tone that goes up and down in pitch as you move the dish around. When it hits its highest pitch or around 70 on the meter you get a perfect picture. Personally I prefer to take my home sky box as well as I then get all the channels i subscribe to but the freesat is very good too. This costs aroung £60 when they have them in.


1984 240 2.0 GLE (long gone)
1988 740 2.0 GLE (sold)
1993 940 2.0 S (died)
940 2.3 Classic LPT (current)
2005 21' Sprite Alpine 4 (fixed bed) (5th caravan)