Recent content by GrumpyGuy

Consider my day brightened, Ice! ... but note that the pubic servant's identity remains private, while private citizen's full name and age is made public - a sign of the times, I suppose. Here is another sign of the times:

...very carefully. Even if the main body of ice is 5 feet thick, there are going to be thin spots, most notably near shore, and it is all prone to being shoved around by shifting winds. The force generated by the wind blowing over vast expanses of ice is tremendous. Earth or ice, something...

I've never tried to track the arc from an ice shanty, but I can testify that lake ice moves. They probably need to tweak the azimuth every time the wind changes directions.

My preferred solution for roof mounting utilizes a vent sleeve. They are typically used to weatherproof roof penetrations for sewer vents. Here are two views of the same installation - one as seen from above the roof, and one from below:

It might be worth pointing out that concrete is actually a better conductor than most soils. The Ufer Ground - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Nuvola_apps_ksim.png" class="image"><img alt="Stub icon"...

I took the all the FTA gear. I left the second-story roof mounted Dish 500 and 1000 ft. of coax (in the walls.) The increase in basis should save me enough to buy a couple of nice dual LNBFs. Not a bad trade off IMHO. If I understand correctly, losses by calamity can be used to raise basis...

Today I discovered something in the tax code that may be of interest to other satellite hobbyist / homeowners. In certain situations, the Feds demand capital gains tax when you sell a home:rant: Some home-related expenditures can be used to reduce the taxable gains, but others are forbidden...

Quote from the BLSA readme.txt (Version 1.1) file: "3) If you have access to DC2 and/or DVB databases in CSV format, save them on top of the dc2.csv and mpg.csv placeholders. Otherwise visit SatcoDX.com and download *.BLSA for the satellites you're interested in..." I've poured over...

The mux transponder is very low for me today, hardly even there. Last night it was fine. Other known active transponders on AMC6 seem to be unaffected.

Anole brings up some good points. After sleeping on it I decided to strike some of my suggestions. I would stick to flat, solid, non-conductive, non-porous materials securely but temporarily fastened to the face of the LNB cover - e.g. plastic cut from discarded household items. Multiple...

Another option might be to artificially attenuate the signal from a strong beam with a physical obstruction of some sort - foliage, plastic, glass, a coarse metal lattice, etc. Not sure what you are up to, but there might some advantage in having the ability to vary the strength of the signal as...

Don't you know that's illegal? If you can't get all of my favorite channels, why bother? Ever heard of Dish Network? Are you trying to contact aliens? ...and that is how GrumpyGuy got his name.

I ordered a Gbox V3000 from Sadoun 3:30 PM yesterday. It arrived 19 hrs. later, at 10:30 AM today - 190 miles, via UPS Ground, to the back roads of Amish Country, two weeks before Christmas, in a snowstorm - I'm amazed. The box is darn cold. To avoid condensation I'm letting it warm up before...

Until someone can convince me I was born with a right to be entertained, let them lock-down their content in any way they see fit. If I don't like the terms, they keep their product, I keep my cash - no harm, no foul, liberty and justice for all.

The average winter here features about 130 inches of snowfall. Never have much trouble with accumulation on offset dishes, I just mount them high enough keep them from being buried. My 12 foot Orbitron deep dish is another matter, but I can often clear it without even going outside. While...