a friend of mine took it into her own hands tonight,and took hold of the hosepipe and gave the dish a quick blast!!! hey presto,she has sky again!!

We lost our electric for 15 mins this evenin in ponti due to the snow

Find that a little hard to believe,Pontefract having Electricity !!!

a well aimed jug of water does the trick every time =)

hose pipe the dish!

gently! There will be no signal full stop if this damages the dish or knocks it out of alignment

Depends how your dish is situated (Yes i know they all point to the same satellite) but if yours is particularly open it will be affected more. I tend to get the mop out and brush it off (Mop has telescopic handle brush doesn't) and it is fine again. However last night after clearing it, it lasted about 5 minutes before going off again. In the end i gave up.

HD subscription is an extra £10 per month.

and you have to take out a contract for 1 year.i got rid of it when the cotract expired,because my tele isn`t the 1,000pixel so the picture isn`t all that different,with the 700 odd pixel.

I am sure someone much more intelligent than me could explain the physics, but the basic issue is that the signal from the satellite is very weak once it has passed through the dense snow clouds etc. Also, cables used in the UK aren't really designed to operate in sub zero temperatures, so the more "external" cable between the dish and your sky box the worse it will be.

The signal from the satellite is microwave. Microwaves are absorbed very efficiently by water - it's why microwave ovens work. Any water (liquid or frozen) between the incoming signal and the receiver will absorb the signal.

We had the snow problem in February - not collecting on the dish or receiver but on the 'arm' between the two. Once it got to a certain thickness it blocked line of sight and absorbed the signal. I knocked the snow off and the signal came back. Because of the facing and angle of our dish we also get the same problem during downpours of rain.

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