The dish is probably too small as the satellite coverage footprint has been tightened up
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I guess your problem is more to do with dish size than solar flares. Firestick is great if you have a good wifi signal. You can watch live and catch up. With motor home you can take firestick with you to use wherever you have wifi. It is very portable.
Thanks to both of you for advice. I often thought the dish size might be too small and considered a 1.5m dish, but that would mean running cable over the veranda, which would be a trip hazard, so methinks Firestick is the way to. We are close to Amou 40330 if ever youâre down this way.
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If you go Firestick route, search SF for advice already given about it. It is not difficult but there are a couple of pitfalls for the unwary if watching UK stuff in France
Thanks Mike, will do. I plugged it in ages ago and set up as far as I could, but I balked at giving my bank details to Amazon, but naybe this is inevitable.
Close to the PyrĂ©nĂ©es, an 80cm dish will no longer be big enough. Freesat have shifted some channels onto Astra 2G which has a much smaller footprint than 2E and 2F which makes getting those channels challenging. For us with a 100cm dish things have also got worse, and in the summer months reception is even more challenging. Iâm about to invest in a good quality 1.2m dish here also in sight of the PyrĂ©nĂ©es.
Basically, here we have challenging reception conditions. With digital satellite reception you get a âcliff edgeâ effect where the difference between no channel and a good channel can be extremely small. Things like the quality or age of the LNB, the LNB skew being slightly off, the quality of cable that you use or the quality of connectors, and of course alignment accuracy can make that difference so just getting a bigger dish may not improve things hugely, you have to look at the setup as a whole.
I agree with Hairbear. I just went out and measured the dish we inherited, It is 1.2 metres. It must be on the minimum size limit because we lose HD under certain weather conditions. We are same distance north of A64 as you but nearer Toulouse.
Yes you must have an amazon account registered even if you spend no money. And you must use a VPN set to UK. As I understand it, it should be an Amazon account registered at Amazon.co.uk and you must select UK as the country where you buy digital media (I think its a tax thing).
Shockingly small isnât it, in comparison. Fortunately, itâs many of the crap channels that have moved along with some BBC channels. Strangely though we currently have good BBC News reception which is one of the channels on 2G now. Thatâs usually the first to go.
Here in leafy Surrey BBC News (channel 200 on Freesat) is the one that drops out from time to time, all the others are fine (as far as I can tell, I donât watch most of them!)
Unless your Scottish, Welsh or frequent BBC Parliament then you wonât be able to tell 
.
Edit : Or a brummie of course.
Yes, to everything this guy saysâŠ
More useful input, this time from the military.
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Sadly behind a paywall
Strange - The Guardian isnât normally behind a paywall. You are encouraged to subscribe, but I thought that was all. Is this something new?
No paywall I went straight to the article when I clicked the link. The Guardian makes a point of offering free access.
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ErrrâŠthatâs unlikely, becauseâŠ
IIRC you have to accept any and all cookies in return for access, which is still a paywall.
BTW I noticed an article on the register about old jet engines being repurposed to provide electricity for data centres.
Thatâs quite interesting. Nugee was the UK MODâs lead on climate change and environment when UK defence started to take it seriously.
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I didnât accept. I have had a popup sometimes asking to pay or accept cookies, but that can be dismissed without accepting either option. Also, I havenât seen that particular screen for a while.
Does anyone else see the âpay or accept cookiesâ popup anymore ?