Thread: ok, ok... You guys talked me into it.

Dee Ann, if you want a weather channel, you can get "The Weather Channel" most of the time on AMC-6 72°W with a small Ku dish. A 30" should get it fairly easy I think for your area. I'm getting it in So Cal with an old Primestar dish with 90 something % quality. There are 4 NBC channels in this MUX.

Good news and bad news...

The bad news...

Dad went out to "the lot" today to pick up some stuff he stored there. Someone broke in and stole a lot of stuff. Tools and a trailer that belonged to the ex. He was going to sell the stuff and give me some of the money.
"The lot" is in a very, very bad part of a very, very bad town...

The stuff Dad had stored there was left alone thank goodness. The thieves tore the place up pretty good breaking in. THAT is one of the several reasons why I am afraid to go down there alone.


The good news now...

Dad is going to pick me up Monday and take a generator and a saw down there and help me cut down that dish and bring it back to my house. Actually, I'll mostly be watching as I don't think there is much I can do, I'm sure that stuff is much too heavy for me.



What sucks though is that the thieves stole a trailer we could have used to bring the dish back with. Now there is no choice, it will have to be taken apart and put in the van. Dad said he'll just saw through the bolts for speed sake and we'll just put new ones in later. In exchange for Dad helping me I get to stand around swatting mosquitoes and playing tool fetcher while he boards up the buildings that were broken into & vandalized. As much as I hate guns, I hope dad is going to bring one while we are there, that place is just flat out scary..

I wish ding-a-ling would just sell the darn lot and be done with it. I don't want it or anything on it. Well, other than maybe the satellite dishes he piled up there. Maybe I can take them apart and sell them. Sure would have been easier to move them with that now stolen trailer.

So anyway, I'm now getting closer to getting that big Cband dish put up.
Dad said he can cut the pipe it's on and I can use that here by planting it in the ground. I dunno. I'm not convinced it's long enough. I would think it would need to be like 20 feet in the ground with all the hurricanes we get here.

The hard part is going to be finding someone that can dig the hole, put the cement in and put the beastie up on the pole. I sure can't do all that. No way..
I guess I'll be bartering with a neighbor again, more beer for labor. You guys are sooooo easy... LOL!!!

I'm thinking that I may actually get the stupid thing up and working within a month.
I also need to figure out where to put it so the trees don't get in the way.
I still have a LOT to learn about Cband though, I know nothing about it other than "we used to have one".. That is the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

I'll sure be glad to get this TV back again! Being a night owl I find very little to watch after 3am. "this TV" will solve that problem. Their schedule starting at 3am just tickles me pink!

So I guess I'll have something to write about next week then when we go to get that dish..

OH YES!! And I'm going to take my fancy Canon and take some very high quality pics of all the dishes down there and let you guys figure out what they are and if any are worth salvage.



TTFN!!

Originally Posted by Dee_Ann

What sucks though is that the thieves stole a trailer we could have used to bring the dish back with. Now there is no choice, it will have to be taken apart and put in the van. ...

The hard part is going to be finding someone that can dig the hole...

How far does this BUD have to be hauled???
I usually leave the BUD together and carefully place it in the back of a pickup. The last 10' I hauled was on a "mooched" trailer for hauling lawn equipment and ATVs. The trailer was wider than the pickup which made it better plus I did not scratch the pickup! The longest I hauled so far was about 13 miles and that was in back of a pickup!

As for digging the hole...
My 10' BUD that I have up had the hole and concrete done in January! This was a few years ago and a couple of days after I did the concrete, winter returned with a vengence! The BUD did not get placed on the pole until June due to work so the concrete had plenty of time to set up. I dug the hole by hand with a spade to get out of the house. My daughter was having a slumber party for her birthday and I thought what a perfect time to get something done outside! She actually came out too and joined me and had lots of fun hiding in the hole from her freinds!

Originally Posted by Dishman Dan

How far does this BUD have to be hauled???
I usually leave the BUD together and carefully place it in the back of a pickup. The last 10' I hauled was on a "mooched" trailer for hauling lawn equipment and ATVs. The trailer was wider than the pickup which made it better plus I did not scratch the pickup! The longest I hauled so far was about 13 miles and that was in back of a pickup!

As for digging the hole...
My 10' BUD that I have up had the hole and concrete done in January! This was a few years ago and a couple of days after I did the concrete, winter returned with a vengence! The BUD did not get placed on the pole until June due to work so the concrete had plenty of time to set up. I dug the hole by hand with a spade to get out of the house. My daughter was having a slumber party for her birthday and I thought what a perfect time to get something done outside! She actually came out too and joined me and had lots of fun hiding in the hole from her freinds!

Distance to move it? Hmmm, maybe five miles, I'm guessing..
I don't have access to a pick up truck. I own a van (my dog hauler) and my dad has a similar van. That's the best I can come up with.

And of course there is the problem of having to take the thing out of the middle of a bunch of collapsed buildings, the debris is like 6 to 10 foot deep all around all sides. That is going to dictate that the thing be taken out in parts. Carrying it out in one piece is very much impossible. However the other dishes out there are not entrapped in debris like this one. But those dishes are much larger and are missing most of their parts.. So.............


OMG..... You had to dig a hole so big your daughter could HIDE in it??? OMG...
Nope. Can. Not. Do..
I planted three rose bushes a few weeks ago and that almost killed me.
I used that hole digger I bought last year and the yard is sticky. It's very difficult.
I planted a small satellite dish last year and that was pretty rough. I was on death's doorstep for a few weeks after that.



But a hole for this thing? Wow... I'm sure not going to be able to do that.
Dad can't do it either, he's like 73 now..

It sounds like getting to the BUD will be more work than I want to do!!!...

If you get to "a" BUD then hopefully mooch a trailer from a freind if possible and hauling would be safer too! If you are really desperate then buy one at Lowe's and try out their return policy when you are done!

The soil around here is a good sandy type mixed with gravel and is very stable. The hole I dug was large enough to place a used pole into with the old concrete still attached. I then poured in about 12 - 80 pound bags of concrete around the old cone shaped concrete and it is one big chunk now. The daughter playing in the hole must be a family tradition or something. I remember when I was 5 or 6 my brother dug a hole large enough for me to stand in and placed a cover over it with along with a large rock for a weight!!!...
I am not sure if I finally crawled out of my hole or if I just crawled out from under a rock!

It's not CBand but can you pick up KPLC on RF 7? They have ThisTV with a pretty strong signal. I know they cover part of Southeast TX.

Not sure what part of SETX you are in:

FM and TV Service Area Maps

Originally Posted by digiblur

It's not CBand but can you pick up KPLC on RF 7? They have ThisTV with a pretty strong signal. I know they cover part of Southeast TX.

Not sure what part of SETX you are in:

FM and TV Service Area Maps

No, I'm afraid not..

It takes a tall, large antenna which I do not own and to install one would be more difficult than it would be to install a "BUD" (I'm catching on...)...

It may even be more expensive too as I would have to buy a new antenna and a tower to put it on and I think it takes some sort of amplifier too. Not to mention, paying someone to put it up.

I already own the BUD so it's just a matter of moving it from where it is to here some cement and (ugh) shelling out for beer to bribe a neighbor into doing the labor.

I suspect that if I'm patient I can probably get a better quality picture than I would from KPLC with the added bonus of not having to suffer through their horrid commercials.


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SOYWENT YEWWO??? I tollu I wanna Soywent GWEEN DAMIT!!!!!!!!!!

Dad took me to the lot today. Very, very depressing...
A LOT of expensive things were stolen.

I took my canon and snapped a LOT of pics. I'm sorting through them now and will post relevant pics in a bit.

We took a tape measure and measured the dishes.

There are:

(3) ten foot diameter dishes of unknown make/model. They are missing ALL hardware. They are just big bowls.

(1) eight foot Unimesh dish. Complete. The motor thing is broken and missing parts. The pole it bent over at a 45 degree angle from a hurricane. There is no visible damage to the dish at all.

(1) twelve foot diameter "Dark Star" dish. It is damaged, many of the mesh panels are kicked out or missing. Some of the plastic ribs are broken. It's enormous. The pole mounting stuff is still attached to the back. The lnb is still intact. Moving it would be very, very difficult and repairing it would be difficult and expensive (I would think)..

(1) "HTS Tracker Premier System 50" tuner system. I even found the remote control for it. Inside of it there is a pink cartridge that says "General Instrument Cablehome model VCRS/MOM" and it dated Feb 27, 1995. It appears to have a slot for a smart card in it.

(numerous) as in I didn't bother to count them, lnb thingies. All different sizes, shapes, makes, models. All of them are large, as in the Cband type, not the little pizza sized kinds.


Ding-a-ling already informed me before I went out there that all the parts for the big 10' dishes was long missing. Considering the overgrowth out there, the chances of digging around for the stuff is just not happening. Too dangerous.

As to getting the 8 foot dish out, as I was sure of, I'm even more sure now that it *must* come out in pieces. Dad confirmed that's the only way. It's just nothing less than very, very dangerous out there.

Right now I'm going to clean up, fix something to eat and rest a bit. I need to gather myself a bit, I'm rather depressed from seeing all that mess out there.

I'm going to sort out the photos and resize them to be a bit more size friendly, I took them in hi-res and there's about 2gigabytes worth at 4-6 megabytes per image.

So I'll put some pics up in a few hours.

Oh, and that "Dark Star" dish, I can not find ANY reference to such a brand anywhere online. Google just brings up stuff about stealth airplanes and some stupid sci-fi movie. But this thing IS a "Dark Star", it says so on the lnb cover and I photographed it. Maybe it's a "one off" or custom made dish?

Later gators!!



I brought the tuner and remote home, I'm surprised no one stole it.
Inside of it is a pink box that


I attached a few quickie teasers for now..

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SOYWENT YEWWO??? I tollu I wanna Soywent GWEEN DAMIT!!!!!!!!!!

Your first picture is a top view of a nice C-band only LNB, feedhorn, and servo.
It's mounted on a button-hook which extends from the center of the dish.
Doesn't look like the dish will ever see the light of day again, but the bits under the cover seem to be well protected from the elements.
You may find use for some of them in the future.
Don't go crazy, but consider rescuing them.

Of the dishes you've described, the 8'er certainly sounds like the pick of the litter.
More pictures will tell the story.
Don't write off the 10'ers just yet.
If they're not in condition to be restored, at least pick their bones for parts.
In addition to the LNB/feed mentioned above, you may need to rescue a motor, or possibly a mount.
And any 8..10..12 foot long pole would be desirable, too.

I was under the impression this dish repository was in your back yard.
I see it's cross town, instead.
Let me strongly recommend removing your 8' dish from it's mount and taking it out whole.
You can probably rent a pick-up truck or a little stake-bed for an hour to drive it home.
Home Depot and equipment rental places are good choice.
(see links in my signature where I used a large stake-bed truck to move dishes)
The mount can be dropped into the bed of the pickup first if you like, then the dish placed, face up, atop the bed.
Or, make two trips, if that's easier.
Just lash it down and drive slowly.

edit:
just looked at your first picture again.
hard to tell, but it's quite possible that dish is just fine
take some more pix of it.
might just need a light mowing to get the growth out of it.
keep an open mind - it might be a gem among the rubble.