Free Sat on a boat.

[Nostrodamus]

Winter is approaching so whilst we are wintering in France I am looking to get free sat tv. Next year we will be going through Spain and Portugal, probably into the Med.

Can anyone suggest a good set up, i.e a good free sat box, should it be HD or is it worth getting one that records as well. I don't want to spend a fortune.

Do you have a good way of setting up the dish so it is stable but can easily be removed.

Any other hints or tips would be welcome.

Thanks

 

[Seajet]

Try the caravan magazines; my Dad just sold a portable sat dish for his camper van, it came with a signal meter and a compass to get onto the right approximate heading to start with, was set up on a small tripod on the grass.

He sold it as it was too much faffing around, a bit vulnerable in gales and more importantly most camp sites now have a TV feed to simply plug into, but it sounds ideal in your case, wasn't very expensive either.

On the other hand, I was once 'bounced' by a gin palace doing a good 20 knots towards me while flying what seemed to be a black anchoring ball; it turned out to be a sat dish nailed onto the flying bridge !

 

[maby]

There's plenty of portable satellite kits - I have one that came from Maplins a couple of years ago for about sixty quid. It has the box, a small dish, a selection of temporary mounting brackets, cables and an alignment guage.

However, I think you'll be hard pressed to get a watchable picture out of it. The dish alignment is very sensitive and even a degree off will lose the signal. I don't think you have a hope in hell with the dish mounted anywhere on a boat smaller than the Ark Royal. There are gyro-stabilised mounts from companies such as Scanstrut, but they'll cost you a fortune...

 

[Barry Jones]

The Maplin unit works well in the UK, but I think the dish size will be too small as you get into the Med.

You can normally either mount them on a tripod on the pontoon (good until somebody walks along it) or you can clamp them to your boat.

Mag mounting them to the metal post that the pontoon slides up and down on, provides a firm base.

Google the caravan sites as already suggested - the suppliers sell sat gear for use on sites in France, Spain and Portugal.

 

[Signed Out]

I used to have one of the maplins units (bought about 6 years ago) and bolted to my then binnacle was great- picture not anything like HD, but even in poorish weather at a rickety pontoon the picture stayed stable (35' heavy tin bucket loaded for liveaboard). What I liked was that there were an insane number of channels, and but fiddling with the little aiming system you could get other sats, and thus foreign channels if desired.

I believe what is now referred to as "freesat" only has a limited number of channels, which appears far less than this system. I passed it on to the in-laws and they still use it on their caravan, but with a far larger dish.

My only screen was a monitor, so I had to use a PC card into my laptop, and out to an external VGA to make bigger, but at least that way it was possible to record. Not that I ever did.

Because I lived near a good music pub, I ended up rarely using it!

 

[bendyone]

Maplins kit works well in Calais but has a better set of channels using a cheap Freesat box.

 

[Nostrodamus]

I have now bought a 60cm dish as apparently they can work a lot further south as well. I got the plastic type one so hopefully it wont rot as much.
Just wondering about a good free sat box and mounting.

 

[Bobobolinsky]

Just bought a Tevion 12v kit from Aldi £39. Cart and horse as I didn't have a TV. Bought TV off Ebay this week for £25, so still setting up. The kit comes with a bolt on bracket, and a vacuum bracket, though in the marina most people extend the pole from the walkon and fit to that as even in a quiet marina, the boat movement destroys the picture.
The web site is philex.com

 

[DavidGrieves]

Hi

Have a look at Maplins website, they have 12 volt satellite recievers "B" grade for £29 They are not Freesat but will get the same programmes as a Freesat or Sky if it is pointed at the Astra satellite at 28.2 degrees east.

Try this website for aligning the dish www.satpointer.com Drag the cursor to your boat in google earth, select Astra A2 from the satellite list and it will draw a line as a guide to sat location.

As you go further south you will need a bigger dish as you are getting further away from the satellite footprint. A zone 2 Sky dish might do you in France but as you get further away you might need an 80cm dish which start to get a bit big and not easy to stow

You can buy little cheep sat meters for £10 to £20 but they are useless. They will beep when aligned to any satellite, and there are a lot out there. Most sat recievers have a signal strength screen in the menu somewhere. If you can place TV where you can see it this will help you line it up.

 

[maby]

There's noting special about Freesat - it's just a bunch of non-encrypted channels broadcast on one of the Astra birds. Any modern digital satellite receivers is capable of picking it up with an adequate dish.

I'm very surprised to hear that anyone has managed to get adequate reception with the dish bolted onto a boat - dish alignment is very sensitive. One of these days I'll take our Maplins kit down to the boat and try it out.

 

[Hoolie]

I think Freesat is from Astra 2D, but does anyone know which satellite beam it's on?
The SatPointer link above is very useful but you do need to know the satellite beam to size the dish.

 

[Signed Out]

Yeah Maby, I had no problem. Just clamp it on the binnacle, turn on the tuning thingy (page/mode? I forget), plonk the little plastic thing in the back of the dish and align to the sat with the compass and fine tune until the squeal gets manic.

Used to do it in the dark with a few pints down me, so maybe that helped! I had more trouble with the silly cabling I had- antenna to tuner (through companionway, plus power into tuner), output cable to stick stuck into laptop (quite loose) and VGA out to screen. Usually unplugged a cable by mistake rather than lost signal by moving about- typically to the coolbox for another and into my bunk.

 

[Seajet]

One minor point; beware magnetically fixed kit, or power leads for that matter, anywhere near the boat's steering compass !

 

[maby]

Yeah Maby, I had no problem. Just clamp it on the binnacle, turn on the tuning thingy (page/mode? I forget), plonk the little plastic thing in the back of the dish and align to the sat with the compass and fine tune until the squeal gets manic.

Used to do it in the dark with a few pints down me, so maybe that helped! I had more trouble with the silly cabling I had- antenna to tuner (through companionway, plus power into tuner), output cable to stick stuck into laptop (quite loose) and VGA out to screen. Usually unplugged a cable by mistake rather than lost signal by moving about- typically to the coolbox for another and into my bunk.

I'm impressed - our boat rocks everytime someone moves - let alone in the wind... Given how hard the dish is to align when bolted onto a nice solid house, I would not have given anything for your chances of getting a watchable picture on a floating boat!

 

[st599]

I'm impressed - our boat rocks everytime someone moves - let alone in the wind... Given how hard the dish is to align when bolted onto a nice solid house, I would not have given anything for your chances of getting a watchable picture on a floating boat!

Dishes on boats are smaller, therefore have a wider capture angle.

 

[st599]

There's noting special about Freesat - it's just a bunch of non-encrypted channels broadcast on one of the Astra birds. Any modern digital satellite receivers is capable of picking it up with an adequate dish.

I'm very surprised to hear that anyone has managed to get adequate reception with the dish bolted onto a boat - dish alignment is very sensitive. One of these days I'll take our Maplins kit down to the boat and try it out.

No. Freesat has a compressed EPG feed too. So you'll get the video but not the data.

 

[maby]

No. Freesat has a compressed EPG feed too. So you'll get the video but not the data.

I stand corrected...

 

[Nostrodamus]

Tesco seem to be one of the cheapest on free sat box's at the moment.

 

[Martin_J]

I quite happily receive sky (or channels from whichever satellite I point to e.g. Hotbird) from a tripod mounted satellite dish on the cockpit floor. It looks strange with the main dish pointing nearly horizontally at the seats but then others don't realise that with the angle of the LNB, it means it is really looking upwards. Takes a couple of minutes to set up each time although a bubble compass clipped to the dish is useful.

A useful calculator for working out angles (bearing in mind that 28.4 degrees east is all relative and is actually due south if you're at 28.4E) is here..
http://www.satsig.net/ssazelm.htm

There is another online web site that from your lat/long will calculate at what times of day the sun is at the required elevation and at what time it is at the required direction.. so even without a compass/protractor you can set your dish. Will find it later if needed.

 

[KINGFISHER 8]

I use a freesat set up in the S of F ... the finder is fixed to the dish - red and green lights - which makes it easy to find the satellite but there's a very fine line with the adjustment between a perfect (hd) picture and nothing! ... also, the dish is 85 cm so pretty big!