Ever get funny questions about the dish farm?

[Corrado]

For the past 2 months I've had a excavating contractor filling in a ravine cut into a hillside of my property with loads of fill. A former owner had cut into the hillside for a driveway which I never used in the 21 years of my ownership.

Yesterday they where working on the project while I was there and the satellite dish farm comment finally came. During lunch one of the guys was walking around the hill and said "too bad you can't hook into one of these dishes they got up here". He was assuming they were connected to a big silver box on a utility pole directly north of them. Twenty years ago the local phone company installed some sort of test access point up on my hill and even built stairs up the hillside for the linemen.

He thought they were for the local cable company which is actually 3 miles down the road.

 

[Mr Tony]

all the time

the neighbors wondered but finally gave up. When other folks walk behind the house they just kinda wonder.

One time we were doing some work in the townhouse association and the one board member said to the one guy (my neighbor) "damn your neighbor has a lot of satellite dishes. What the heck does he need that many for?" (not knowing the neighbor was me)
I laughed and said "because I want that many. Lots of interesting channels up there"

 

[Cadsulfide]

I get the occasional question, but most of the locals know me as a bit of an eccentric....I tell them I'm saving $500/yr NOT paying for cable or a pizza dish...that gets attention....then I tell them about FTA.........several converts so far.

 

[toucan-man]

My elderly neighbor has asked me a number of times if I'm a dealer. I assume he means sat tv dealer and not some other kind of dealer. But he tells me this in a funny way, he says, "I've asked my son if he thinks you're a dealer". After assuring him I'm no dealer, I usually just redirect him to talking about his cat and that's that.

 

[rainmaker]

I always get the remark what are you tracking for N.A.S.A. LOL

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

I've gotten a few, but most have been kind after some explanation. My old neighbors wondering if I could get the local PAX channels better with them. A friend, jokingly, instantly asked if I was getting porn with it. The current landlord (who has been awesome at letting me keep my dish were it is with zero questions) initially wondered why I couldn't just go with DirectTV.

I get far more questions about how I can live without Cable TV and/or DSS. I think the $300-700/yr savings is a good enough answer. I also think that CNN/FOX/MSNBC has been interviewing random people on the street about Michael Jackson while Al-Jazeera and mHz have been covering Honduras and Iran should be another reason.

 

[meinename]

I get far more questions about how I can live without Cable TV and/or DSS. I think the $300-700/yr savings is a good enough answer. I also think that CNN/FOX/MSNBC has been interviewing random people on the street about Michael Jackson while Al-Jazeera and mHz have been covering Honduras and Iran should be another reason.

QFT
Highlight on the part that has kept my attention going in this hobby for so long.

Actual FREAKING NEWS.
:rant:
Not a bunch of feel-good crap or imagination-expansion-from-the-newswire with strung out commercial breaks for an Attention Grabbing half-a@# fluff or rehashed "Everybody already knows that" B-Roll.

 

[Blindowl1234]

I agree with all the comments too. I've heard some of the same stuff in the last year. Our house sits up on a hill about 200 feet from the road...you can see the dishes real good. Several nearby neighbors can't understand how they have only one dish and pay $75-100 a month and I have 4 dishes and pay nothing. I know the nosy neighbor across the road is still not sure of what's going on...since they are aimed more or less at his house lol. Blind

 

[Inno]

I get everything from polite silence to questions like "do all those things work?" and comments like "you must watch a lot of TV". I don't but I like looking for new signals that many other people don't have. My current favorite was when a neighbor from up the road needed some compression fittings for her RG6 she came to me and said " I figured a guy with that many dishes must have some cable ends ".
She was right!

 

[eurosport]

My brother lives next-door to me, and the dish farm is on his side of my house. One time he just asked about all the Primestars...
"Are all of those looking at something...?" I said yep, and then he asked me why 2 C-band dishes. I explained about feeds, and DVB vs DCII and he said "cool" and that was it.
My neighbor behind me has 2 kids that come over and play with my daughters, and one of them said "you guys have a lot of satellite dishes" to which my youngest daughter promptly replied..."Yup, and you better not hit ANY of 'em with that ball or my Daddy will be mad!"

 

[eurosport]

...she came to me and said " I figured a guy with that many dishes must have some cable ends ".
She was right!

LOL :up

 

[Tron]

My current favorite was when a neighbor from up the road needed some compression fittings for her RG6 she came to me and said " I figured a guy with that many dishes must have some cable ends ".
She was right!

I always bum them off of the cable guys... I guess when someone starts bumming them off of me, that will be quite an honor ...

 

[Mr Tony]

My neighbor guy has asked me a couple times about satellite questions.
One day he told me one of his connectors outside (that went to ground block) was bad and wondered if I had any connectors. Grabbed my tools and fixed that right away

Last nite he was mentioning that his Directv seems to go out a lot. The dish is right above us on his garage and I told him that I wondered if he had Directv because when the dish was put there 7 years ago, the installer obviously didnt take into consideration the huge tree nearby

well it grew and there is a branch that is probably screwing with his signal when the wind blows. Whats disturbing is he said "we just got it about a year ago and the installer said it was fine"...they moved in there about a year ago and the dish was already there....I laughed and said that branch probably caused issues last year too but then the leaves fell off the tree and that fixed it for the winter. Now that it leafed back out he's having issues.

I told him I'd look at it while he was gone this weekend. I'll just hook up the goodwill D* receiver I got to the LNB and check numbers. Thank goodness its a 101 only dish

 

[Corrado]

That's another aspect of this hobby, helping others in person. Being a SatelliteGuy extends beyond here.

In the past I've given others recycled dishes, switches, cable and LNBFs found in the junk to help them out. Even fixed lousy "professional" installs like dishes mounted to a loose fence that moved in the wind and cable routed above ground.

 

[jayelem]

Not too long ago one of my neighbors asked " What's with all the dishes ? " I replied how I could get all kinds of neat channels with my motorized setup and that the 2nd dish was my Mom's stationary setup , and that the 3rd dish was suppose to point at Telstar 12 but couldn't because of LOS issues with his tree ....LOL

 

[skynyrd]

I remember when I put up my C-Band dish.. My neighbor walked out 4 minutes later and started laughing... I've explained what its for a few times, and they don't say much after that.

My ex girlfriend, her friends, and some people at work always thought i was hacking something.. All of my friends came over new years eve, and when they saw KCWY, one said "Are you hacking Something?"

Most people seem like they don't really care about it once I explain that Its free channels, and you can't get HBO's/porn/ect.. most people kid me when I tell them you can get Al-Jazzerra up there...

But I gotta say that this system has served my needs for the past year though. I bought a HDTV 2 weeks ago, and decided to get Charter, as they were running a promotion for 6 months, and I thought I would see what they had to offer. The cable installer never mentioned anything about the dishes while he was here.

I'm planning on re-positioning all of my dishes soon, so I can get a good view of the western arc, and so all the wires are buried and the install looks clean... Just been a little lazy on doing that so far

 

[eurosport]

... most people kid me when I tell them you can get Al-Jazzerra up there...

This last school year, my son's class was studying current news events, and the teacher was showing a clip from CNN or Fox News that had stuff in it from Al-Jazeera, and my son told the teacher..."My Dad GETS Al-Jazeera" :up