Was on the verge of a total solution, but bam! Fix snatched away at the last second!
Just had a 'free' visit. The chap who came seemed to be very knowledgeable and was a breath of fresh air quite honestly. After connecting the cables to his black box and writing stuff down and walking around outside he used my PC to get a sat coverage map up and showed me where we were and the gradational coloured bands for satellite coverage. He said we needed a 60cm dish where we are for Eutelsat 28A to get the missing channels and then said that our neighbour also had a 60cm dish on the other side of their house as well, which I did not know...never ever noticed it. He also advised replacing the shotgun cable with twin WF100 cable. He said he was 100% confident that after he'd replaced the cable and dish the problem would be resolved completely, and no charge until sorted. I then asked him about cost and he said he had to get the 60cm dish from the depot as he didn't have one on the van and so needed to ring his boss first. Went out to the van and made the call, came back and said 'sorry, the boss said no. He doesn't want to know about zone 2 dishes'. WT*? I asked him why on earth not and he said he wasn't entirely sure and was very surprised. Said he thinks it's because his boss only wants to deal with Astra 28.2 zone 1 setups. He said he was really very sorry and was surprised that his boss had told him to 'get out of there'. He was really apologetic and asked me for some paper and said he'd write down all the information I needed to give to another company to get it sorted. He said his equipment had been calibrated less than two months ago so was very accurate. This is the info - don't know what the cln c is whether it's a 1 or an L or a |:
Eutelsat 28A
Super Beam 28.5 degrees E
SR 27500 FEC 2/3
Zone 2 Sky dish 60cm
WF100 cable 1mm
H Lo S 72db q 100% cln c 15.8db
V Lo S 72db q 100% cln c 15.3db
H Hi S 72db q 51% cln c 10.7db
V Hi S 74db q 79% cln c 12.5db
Does the above make sense?
So, still no fix. But no charge. I'm going to forget it now till after Xmas and then maybe approach it again. To late now to faff about and I'm too busy to give any more time to it.