Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels

And, quote "Purchase one of the recommended satellite packages below ...". You typically need a large expensive dish. Neighbors have those but they sure are not cheap. Also, you get a full day's worth of exercise digging a foundation, mixing concrete for that, and all this fun stuff.

If you drive out into the countryside a bit you can often find people who'll

Granted, you might need a new LNB...

---Joel

A full day? I've put up entire C-band systems in a couple hours. Most of that spent making sure the pipe is absolutely vertical, so the polar mount will track.

As far as the hardware, I see used systems on Craig's list from time to time.

Or walk out to my shop and dig out a spare. ;-)

I can see that happening, the hard part is getting the concrete right so that the whole shebang is ready to operate with only one hour for concrete strength. Or did you tell them it will be ready the next day.

I always did the concrete in the evening. I also used stakes & cables to hold the pipe in place while the concrete set.

The worst job was one where a hurricane had puled the old dish off a four inch steel pipe and bent it. It belonged to a know it all TV repairman who refused to beleive that the pipe mattered. So we put up the replacement dish. Just like I had told him, it wouldn't track on more than three birds. We ended up using a wide towing strap to bend it back into the proper postion. He still claimed that it didn;t matter, even though it tracked from one end, to the other.

Ok, come out here with your favorite shovel and try. Frustration is guaranteed to set in within 15 minutes. Oh, and bring a drill, some dynamite, a blasting permit (which you likely won't get), a frontloader, and preferably also someone who can use all that rock you are going to pull out :-)

I could have gotten one from a neighbor for free. They mounted a puny DirectTV dish to that massive pole. Looks like a lab puppy on really big paws. But I'd have to dig and pour a foundation, plus there's not WAF-compliant spot. Nah, TV ain't this important.

You can't afford me. If there is that much large rock, you clean it off and set a form to pour concrete on top. Weld crossbars on the bottom of the pipe that sit on the rock, and hold it in position while you fill the form. Set some anchors in the corners of the pad and use aircraft grade steel cable to keep the pipe in alignment.

I'm familiar with using explosives to set power poles. Almost every power or telephone pole around Cincinnati was set that way, and were tagged as R.I.P.

How would you like to put in a 130' tower that used six cement trucks to pour the footings, and a crane to put up on the side of a hill and no access road? To get permission from the FCC, FAA, and the EPA?

How do you know ? :-)

You must not be married then. That would have an extremely low WAF.

I'd develop a back pain just thinking about that ;-)

Because I'm in Florida, 100% disable and not interested. I wouldn't touch anything more than a Dish or Direct sat antenna these days.

That would depend on how much TV she watches. The woman I bought this house from refused to let her husband put in a C-band system. He died a couple years later. I think he was fed up with the nagging and just gave up on everything. :(

Not all women object to things like that, anyway.

I'd rather be married to one that does :-)

She is pretty much a country girl by now. But when I broached the idea of installing a swamp cooler she looked a bit shocked and said "But not like at so-and-so's house!". A bachelor, who just plopped the thing onto the patio, snaked a garden hose clear across the deck, cut a crude square out of the porch screen, and that was his "installation". The dump valve, well, that just let it all splatter 15ft down and kick up some soil.

That's not what I meant.

Crickets! Did you have to put Nav warning lights on it as well?

How were you expected to get the shack and equipment in there?

No. There were other hills in the flight path that were higher. This was near Cincinnati, Ohio which is quite hilly. That's one reason the Cincinnati airport is across the river, in Kentucky.

The tower was built behind a shopping center for a CATV headend. Several six inch PVC conduits ran from the tower, and two large sat dishes for all the coax & AC power lines for the LNAs.