Gadget to help align a satellite dish. It was fairly cheap, and easy to use. The compass is used to roughly align the dish, and the meter is then used to fine tune the alignment, so as to pick up the best/biggest signal on the scale. After a long search, I found it in the loft, and was checking it over prior to posting it to my brother.

I bought it about a dozen years ago, to set up my former wife's satellite receiver, in our new home. It all seemed to be so easy. The most awkward part was running the cable through the loft, and down the inside of the wall to the receiver and television. Connected it all up, and it worked. Hooray!

Something wasn't quite right. Not all the channels were working, and some were mixed up. "Must be a problem with Sky." Later on we discovered that what should have been the Disney channel was transmitting some sort of Germanic soft porn! "Hmmm... think I've made a mistake somewhere." Back to the Internet, and check another source for the correct alignment.

I'd mistakenly thought there was a single "Astra" satellite to aim the dish at. No. It's one of the satellites in the Astra cluster. I'd tuned in to the wrong satellite. A bit more care with the initial alignment, using a far more accurate Silva compass, soon had the correct result. Hooray (again)!

All worked brilliantly, until Spring when the leaves came out on the trees... no signal until Autumn! There was no way of avoiding them, other than building a tower. Suspect the Council may have been upset had any felling taken place.

Other jobs today: cleaning out a secondhand Nikon D300 (may ramble about that on another day); and some much needed gardening... especially, chasing leaves from those trees.