Idle Thoughts

One thing about astronomy, the best time to do it is when the moon is new. The reason is that when the moon is in its brighter phases, the amount of light it casts into the night sky is enough to wash-out the detail from a lot of dim astronomical objects. It’s a sort of naturally occuring light pollution. Since it takes 4 weeks for the moon to go from full through new, back to full again it means that about 2 weeks in every 4 are the best times to get your telescope out.

The desire to get the best out of the house in Spain means that when I plan trips out there, I tend to do so with one eye on the phase of the moon. My aim is to coincide with a new moon, or at least the week before or after it. That, and the availability of cheap flights tends to determine the specific dates I arrive and leave. This time round there was another consideration, one of the online forums (fora?) I visit had arranged a curry night.

More on satellite dishes
After my failure to get the big satellite dish working properly on my last trip, I did some research on the internet. Apart from finding out that my dish was almost universally slated as being cheap, but poor quality, I also got some solid tips and learned some new things about the whole setting up thing.
There are two types of satellite dish, known as offset and prime-focus dishes. The offset types are the most popular in the UK for Sky TV, where the LNB is at the end of an arm and is sited towards the bottom of the dish. Prime-focus dishes tend to be the larger ones and are more like radio-telescopes, with the LNB supported by three or more struts that point it at the centre of the dish. The type of LNB you use must match the type of dish you have. While I had the right type of LNB (it had come in the pack, with the dish) mine was strictly a low-budget version, to match the quality of the dish hardware. While I was back in the UK, I ordered the LNB that people who know reckon to be the best for my type of dish. I also found out that the digibox I had taken over in the van in November was not particularly sensitive. A little more work revealed another model that was supposed to be much better - but was not made any more. Fortunately eBay came to my rescue.

With all this new, and highly recommended, kit I had high hopes of pulling in british TV.

I installed it all on the day after I arrived. Since I had to move the dish to get the new LNB installed, there was another episode of realigning everything. The new LNB also introduced another variable: it had an adjustable collar on the front to control how wide an angle to receive signals from. This should be set to match the distance from the dish and its diameter. I was also told that once the receiver was connected to the dish, it could take up to a day for it to sync-up and be able to pick up all the channels it was receiving. Therefore I was quite happy to leave it on overnight - hopefully in the morning it would all be working.

In the meantime, there was some astronomy to be done.

Come the next morning (well, late morning - yawn!) I tried the TV and was amazed to find BBC1 coming in. BBC2 was there as well, although my local ITV channel wasn’t working. Since I haven’t watched ITV in years I didn’t regard that as much of a loss.

Patio
Another thing I had been thinking about over christmas was what to do with the outside space at the house. The long term plan is to turn the corral into some sort of walled garden. However, that will be a big piece of work and take a fair bit of money. In the meantime I wanted somewhere to sit outside with a table and a few chairs. Not being a lover of barbeques I wasn’t interested in anything for outside cooking.
My first plan was for a walled area close to the house, with a pergola style roof and creepers to provide some shade. This mutated and got simplified into a walled patio adjacent to the house and the extension, the green section in the plan on the left.

Size-wise the extension (edification on the plans) sticks out about 6m from the house, with the first 1m being the path to the stairs up to the first floor door. This gave the patio its logical boundaries and defined its size to be about 5m on each side. I also decided to build a gap into the far wall, to provide a second exit from the walled area. With all this sorted out, I had enough information for a license to do the building work. All I had to do was find out how to apply for one.

There are a couple of estate agents in Benamaurel. Although I hadn’t contacted either of them when I was looking (as I wasn’t specifically looking in this area), I had heard good things about Tierra de Andalucia and just as importantly, I knew where their office was.
Next time I was in the area, I dropped in to ask Yolande and Lynne, the two women who run the office, for some advice on how to approach the town hall, what I should expect and how the system worked. When I explained to Yolande what I was trying to do, she volunteered to sort it out for me. After a bit of a chat, I gave her a copy of the plan (just a rough drawing on a sheet of A4) I had drawn, put some measurements on it and my address. She also took a note of my NIE number and a copy of my passport (recall the comment about office workers: their main function is to request documents you haven’t brought) just for good measure. Now this was much more than I was expecting, or hoping for. As she wouldn’t take any payment for her time, the least I could do was to pop across the road to the floristeria and buy the office some flowers. I was planning a long visit for March/April time and hopefully I the building license would come through in time for that.