The Pinnacle is up!

[linuxman]

I officially unhooked and turned off the two D* receivers we have on Saturday.

I went through the list of all the channels and created a favorite list for each member of my family to try and make things easier for the transition.

By Sunday evening, my 16 yr old daughter and 13 yr old son had practically worn out the motor surfing from one favorite channel to another. They have both used D* so long that surfing between channels is the way they discover what they want to watch.

I went back through the channel list, removed all the foreign language channels except for a couple that have English part of the time, removed the favorites lists, and printed out the channel list. I then took them to titantv.com and showed them how to create a list of favorites and parked my laptop in the living room for the forseeable future.

I told them to access each satellite one at a time, but don't click on the channel until they know that is what they want to watch. The sats are all in order from 148W to 30W. That way if they move the dish it won't be from one end of the arc to the other every time they click.

It is not easy being a Father of two teen-agers.

 

[voomvoom]

Well Fred, all anybody can say at his point is, Good Luck!

Al

 

[linuxman]

Thanks Al,

Well at this point, if they burn up the motor, they can do without TV while I send the motor in to be rebuilt.

There will be no turning back. The first thing Cortez did after arriving in the New World was to burn his ships to prevent any thought of his men wanting to go back to Spain.

That'll break them from sucking eggs.

Fred

 

[Anole]

cash flow

...and how much per month are you saving, now that you've killed off your subscription?
$60 to 90 per month is a common price.
That savings can go to their college fund, buying them cars/gas, getting you more dishes, or bigger TVs, and still you'll break even!
Besides, less time in front of the TV and more time in front of a book or outdoors playing sports is good, too.

Heck, maybe they'll even get to know you!

 

[swampman]

That way if they move the dish it won't be from one end of the arc to the other every time they click.

BUT DAD! It's so much fun to make the dish move!

 

[linuxman]

...and how much per month are you saving, now that you've killed off your subscription?
$60 to 90 per month is a common price.
That savings can go to their college fund, buying them cars/gas, getting you more dishes, or bigger TVs, and still you'll break even!
Besides, less time in front of the TV and more time in front of a book or outdoors playing sports is good, too.

Heck, maybe they'll even get to know you!

You are absolutely correct Anole on all the above.

Besides that, they can begin to stretch their minds by watching something different than what they are used to.

And Swampman,

If they want to move the dish, they can get on the roof with me and help me "move" another dish into place.

I plan to have 3, perhaps 4 stationary Ku dishes in place by this weekend on the most watched Ku satellites anyway. That will help some. Can't do much about C-Band. Don't have enough mounts to put up 3 or 4 stationary C-Band dishes.

It's going to be fun for a while.

Fred

 

[linuxman]

Got on the roof this morning and had my son help me "move" the motorized Primestar 84e from where I had left it when it had to be moved to put the Pinnacle in place.

I moved it just East of the Pinnacle with a setup in mind for Hispasat. I figured what better way to have the skew set properly than using a motorized dish. I am not going to use the motor anytime soon, so what the heck.

I couldn't believe it. We just took the blocks off, picked it up, moved it over to where I wanted it. I stood back, looked at it, and made a couple of adjustments to where it was pointed where I thought it needed to be. Grabbed the Coolsat, and hooked it up to the mini-dvd screen, and BAM, was right on the money on G11. Had the National Labs test card with full power.

I thought, this is too good to be true. I clicked on IS-3R at 41.3W and she motored over there, and BAM had picture and good quality.

Went into the setup and put in Hispasat with diseqc 1.2 and selected 12052 V and started moving to the East. BAM!!! Had Hispasat! Supershow is a lower power TP and got that at 70% SQ on the Coolsat.

I just unplugged everything and left it set. I may have to fine tune it a bit with the Pansat before final hookup, but I was well satisfied with my unbelievable luck.

Here are some pics.



First dish out of 3 or 4 setup and ready for hookup to the special 22Khz switch when it arrives.

Fred

 

[linuxman]

I got my Ecoda 22Khz switch in the mail, and finished setting up my 3 stationary Primestars today. I have an 84e on Hispasat, an 84e with the dove shaped LNB on G10, and a 75e on G27 for White Springs.

I have good quality on all three. I could probably do a little better on White Springs with the bigger dish. I am going out and pick up another 2 - 84e's tomorrow. Already know where they are.

The Ecoda switch allows the Pansat to control 8 LNBs on two different diseqc switches. See here!.

It works like a champ, and when switching to those three satellites it is almost instantaneous.

I'll probably put up a 4th dish in a few days on AMC3 for PBS.

This should slow down the kids a little bit from sat surfing.

Next week, I am going to set up some stationary dishes on the Birdview end for me.

Got to save those motors.

Fred

 

[Likvid]

I loved that Winegard dish, it was the Rolls-Royce of mesh dishes way back 20 years ago.

Mine was the early one with the buttonhook and it was a pain as i needed to string it to hold it in the center of the focus not sagging down.

It was more like a solid dish in petals actually as the segments fitted perfectly and everything was very solid.

 

[linuxman]

This one is very solid too!

The AJAK mount makes it especially nice. When I started scanning the satellites, after the first bird or two, I could just watch the counter on the VBox II. I didn't even need a strong TP, although I would pick one in the setup screen. All I had to do was add 21 counts to the existing satellite, and the next satellite would be there. Then just fine tune, scan, and off to the next one.

It is a fine dish.

Fred