Well, you have to love travelling the country. I know its hard to believe but it does rain every now and again and TV is always nice to view on cold nights. When traveling all over the place, which system is best to use. I'm only going to cover satellite systems, as you can pick up the signal 90% in the UK and most of the places I visit in europe.
I will cover three systems, which I have personal experience of, these are:
Offset camping dishes
Large tripod dishes with easyfind LMB (offset dish)
Multimo dish
I know there are many more systems including complete automatic but these are £1,600 plus which is just mad!
Camping Dish
Camping dishes are great! Most of them can be taken apart and packed up into very small place and are easy to build.
This dish was mounted to the bike rack using the G-clamp. One small problem, the back of the van had to be pointed to the east direction, as the dish was not above the roof height.
This dish peforms really well in England and Wales but not in Scotland due to it only being 40cm in size.
Summary
It will pack down into a small bag easy to setup it also will attach to the back of the van so it will not be an issue with other vans parking next to you and blocking your signal.
Bad points - in heavy winds the signal can be weak and it will not work in Scotland.
Large tripod dishes with easyfind LMB
The next dish is the large unit, which allows for a quicker lock on the Astra 2D satellite. This dish also has the easyfind LMB. When activated the easyfind decoder on setup should show you one of three colours Red= no satellite, Amber = close to satellite and Green= a lock on the satellite, sound good but I found it crap! Yes crap, a manual satellight meter worked better but this dish will work in France
Summary
Because of its size it will work in France, Scotland etc... easy to setup due to its size..
Bad points - due to its size it takes up a lot of space and when your travelling abroad this could be a problem. The easyfind LMB was a waste of time and due to the dish being ground mounted this was an issue when I was at a site with lots of other campervans blocking the signal.
Multimo dish
This dish was the latest dish to my van and I would say the best due to its size and coverage. This dish was my first Cassegraine type, this has one major difference as it does not have a 20 degree offset allowing the user to point the dish directly to the satellite, which makes it better to use on the van see the picture below:
And a side view:
Summary
It's nice and small, it mounts to the back of the dub and will work 360 degree's. It looks great and works in England, Wales and Scotland (I haven't tested in in France yet!)
Bad points - the only bad thing is the price £150 plus brackets.
Sat finders
So you have a dish how about syncing it to the satellite well you have two options:
Manual
The cheapest option at about £10, will allow you to find the satellite BUT! it will find all satellights not just the astra 2D which most people use. So you could think you have tuned into the satellite but you might have the wrong one and there's nothing worst than other people on the site watching you setup your dish and getting the wrong satellite and then trying it again (this could take 45mins!). Trust me - I have been there!.
Manual (but with a lock on only one satellite.)
The next option is the best but costs £120 but its worth it! it's the Manhattan DSM-4S
Why is it so good?... it will allow you to pick a number of satellights to lock on too.
The Picture above shows a lock on to the astra 2D and I can setup a dish in 30secs its very good but it has a heavy cost with it.