My involvement in Satellite Television reception started back in 1988 when I attended a TVRO training course for the installation and maintenance of business satellite installations using Scientific Atlanta BMAC receivers and 1,2m prime focus dishes for reception from the Intelsat bird at 27,5' W.

There were very few DTH satellites around back then.

SES had launched Astra 1A with it's 16 PAL channels and BSB were competing with a far superior D-MAC service from their two Marcopolo satellites at 31'W.

Sadly this service was soon closed down when Sky bought it and everything was destined to join the ranks of Betamax video recorders and On Digital receivers.

Fortunately, some D-MAC receivers for the BSB service were easily converted to D2MAC by changing just one EPROM.

Val and I were soon using such a system comprising of a Ferguson SRB1 receiver and a couple of Squarials, (one each for RHC and LHC polarisation) enabling us to receive top quality DTH services from the French TDF and German TV-SAT birds at 19'West. This became the first of many different installations.

This soon led to another upgrade:

A fully motorised system comprising of a H-H polar mount,motor and a Pace MSS 508ip which were remarkably easy to install. This gave us access to around 250 TV channels and feeds from most of the satellites between 23,5'E and 45'W.

With the millenium bug well and truely behind us, 2001 saw the reluctant change-over to Digital.

After much deliberation and a number of faulty Strong receivers, we now have an excellent Humax VACI-5300 receiver fed via an external DiSEqC switch and a number of new universal lnb's on dishes giving us access to FTA channels on Eurobird, Hotbird, Astra 1 and Telecom 2C. This again equates to around 250 TV channels.