Lawnmower alignment..

[Dee_Ann]

So, phone rings.

Dad made some adjustments to the dish pole with his lawnmower. Ooopsy!


Dad! Really???

So now they are getting nothing at all and I have been called to a rescue mission to restore digital goodness to their humble abode..

He must have rammed it pretty hard because I have hit several of my dishes with my riding mower over the past few years and have never knocked one out of alignment yet. I just can't imagine what he could have done there. And his riding mower is half the size, weight and power of mine, it's a dinky one.

I am going to recommend that they build a wall around the base, maybe out of landscape timbers or bricks and mom can plant some flowers in it so that Dad can't get close to it anymore..

Time to put my meter on charge and go make my first official service call..

 

[Bill_KY]

Generally I stay away about 2 feet from the dishes when using the riding mower. I will use the weed eater instead close to the dish.

 

[KE4EST]

I have went to service calls where the lawnmower ate the wires, but not where the lawnmower wrecked the dish.

 

[toucan-man]

...
I am going to recommend that they build a wall around the base, maybe out of landscape timbers or bricks and mom can plant some flowers in it so that Dad can't get close to it anymore..

The founder of KTI dishes, to this day, has a flower and rock garden around the base of one of his mesh dishes at his ritzy country estate. Looks great, your mom will love it.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Generally I stay away about 2 feet from the dishes when using the riding mower. I will use the weed eater instead close to the dish.

After ripping the seat on my JD tractor pretty badly by trying to play duck and weave under my 10' dish I had an instant policy change. I have a little weedeater on wheels so I just go push it around and under the dishes so that I don't have to play games getting near them with the JD. That thing weighs about 600lbs and will do about 12mph so a collision with something could be pretty bad.

Over the next month I am planning on a huge tear em out and redo em all project. I saw some of you guys have your dishes all in a nice straight line. I want to do that. I'm getting some new/more dishes tomorrow from a very kind SG member so I'm going to phase out the smaller dishes and replace them with larger ones. I want to plant them all in a nice straight line then put landscape timbers around them and plant roses and wild flowers around them.. The roses are probably a bad idea because they grow like weeds and they would be a real pain to deal with when I have to mess with the dishes. Oh well..

But yes, I'm betting that after losing PBS for a few days Mom is going to implement new lawn mowing procedures for Dad, effective immediately!

 

[turbosat]

Dee, when you move them, why line them up-I think you should make them in the shape of a big "D" lol
You could see 'em from the sky!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee, when you move them, why line them up-I think you should make them in the shape of a big "D" lol
You could see 'em from the sky!

Actually, I have pondered the idea of planting them in an arc, with the apex of the arc facing true south.
And with the trees like they are, dishes on the east side of the arc would face west and dishes on the west side would face east and the motorized dish at the apex so that no other dish would get in it's way.

I often wonder WT* my ex had in mind when he planted the poles he had out there, they were totally helter-skelter and I could see no logical reasoning behind how he placed them. I still think he used beer and lawn darts to figure out where to put them. I think originally he was trying to work around the tree problem but sheesh! Just random placement??

I guess after tomorrow when I get those additional dishes I can more or less get a better idea on how to do these things.
Maybe a Japanese rock garden around them for that Zen touch?? They really do need to be ripped all out and made right..

 

[stogie5150]

Dee, not many of us are anal enough to put our dishes in a straight line. yeah you saw mine, but that's just ME, that's how I do things, neat, orderly, and close to perfect as I am able.

BUT, I think you have the right idea. There is NO reason you can't put your dishes however you want to. You want them in the shape of an arc, do it. You want rock gardens? Do it.

Oh, and when ya get good enough on that JD, you can cut close to those dishes and never slow down. My Husqvarna doesn't even hardly slow down going around mine.

 

[toucan-man]

Oh, and when ya get good enough on that JD, you can cut close to those dishes and never slow down. My Husqvarna doesn't even hardly slow down going around mine.

Haha, and with a cigar in mouth, I suppose? I've seen two BUDs with the lower rims seriously dented by riding lawnmowers. These BUDs were mounted quite a bit off the ground, so I'm not sure what part of the rider hit the dish, but this bonehead comes to mind:

 

[stogie5150]

Haha, and with a cigar in mouth, I suppose?

You better know it.

I've seen two BUDs with the lower rims seriously dented by riding lawnmowers. These BUDs were mounted quite a bit off the ground, so I'm not sure what part of the rider hit the dish...

I thought about that when I put all my dishes in the ground, because when I was a teen, cutting grass at home, I hit our 10 footer a few times because my Dad didn't want to run the dishes to TS while I cut the grass....LOL...so all my dishes except for my 1m dish are mounted high enough, with the dish at TS, I can drive under it and barely have to duck.

 

[Dee_Ann]

LOL!!

I talked to Mom a few minutes ago and she said that last night they were LOST without their satellite. They kept pushing buttons trying to get it to work but finally gave up and had to find other things to do...
I told her she needs to build a lawnmower barricade around the dish pole with bricks and plant something in it and she said that's going to happen tomorrow!

Mom wants her PBS back, ASAP!

Dad is on the way over to pick me up to go fix things.

 

[sergei]

Generally I stay away about 2 feet from the dishes when using the riding mower. I will use the weed eater instead close to the dish.

All my dishes are high enough that I can ride under them without hitting them, my have to duck a little and that's on a garden tractor which is higher than a lawn tractor, a little planning goes a long way.

 

[sergei]

Dee, not many of us are anal enough to put our dishes in a straight line. yeah you saw mine, but that's just ME, that's how I do things, neat, orderly, and close to perfect as I am able.

The one thing about installing the dishes in a straight line has it sure makes the cable runs easier, but a lot depends on how much room one has to install them. Since I'm going to need to add more wire for addition dishes and rewire the whole system, I've now got all my cables suspended from the first dish as the original pipe now is to small. When to an auction last month and picked up two 1000 foot
boxes of RG6 for this job so now just waiting on the weather to cool down and the insurance adjuster to finish on last month storm damage.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well that didn't work out as I expected.

First thing I did was turn the tuner on and try to move the dish around to satellites at the extremes, 83 and 125.
Nothing. No signal.. Hrrrrrrmmmm....

So I ask Dad if he checked the level on the pole. He said he hadn't done anything at all. So I told him to get a level and let's go check. He did and we found the pole was very much dead on perfect. So it wasn't the pole.

The very next thing that came to mind was that the dish is wiggly. I had noticed that before when I put it up but at the time it was working great so we figured it could wait. So I reached out and grabbed the edge and sure enough, it moved a lot.
So I poked my head in the door and asked Mom if it was doing anything. She said PBS Create was back on but not looking too good. Bingo! That was the problem, Dad had just bumped the dish and it moved because the motor gears are loose.

A few weeks ago I saw a post on here where one of you guys had the same problem with a SG9120 and used a hidden adjustment to tighten the gears up. So I found the sticker on the motor, explained it to Dad and he got an L wrench and tried to tighten it up. He tightened it a LOT and it still wiggled waaaaaaaay too much. So I went inside and tried to move the dish and it was stuck fast. It was too tight. So Dad fiddled with the adjustment until it loosened up enough to let it move again but it was very, very wiggly.

So anyway, I plugged my little meter into the dish and wiggled it back and forth by hand until I got a good signal and called it good for now. We went back inside to check and everything was coming in pretty good but could be better. I need to go over sometime when it's a whole bunch cooler and spend more time on it.

My dad wants one of those meters like I have. He thinks that's neat stuff and he said it would make it easier so he wouldn't have to shuttle me back and forth everytime something goes kooky. Thing is, and I can't believe I'm saying this but, I don't think Dad understands that it's not like an idiot light on the dashboard of a car, that you actually have to know at least a little about the stuff to use it. If he really wants one I would have to teach him about this stuff and how to use it.

So now he wants photos of the inside of the motor and a copy of the file that explains the procedure to adjust the gears on the motor. I have those but they are on my main pc which is totally messed up right now.

I'm pretty shocked at how wiggly that motor gear is. That can't be right.
But mechanical things, my dad is good at. He just spent three weeks totally rebuilding the motor in his Buick, all by himself. And he has a little machine shop in his garage with all sorts of big oily machines for making metal things so I would bet money he could make a set of brand new gears for that motor.

Oh, and when I mentioned a barricade around the dish he was totally against that. Just more yard work he says. Whatever... Hard head..

Well, at least they have satellite back. Dad gets his jollies on Antiques Roadshow and American Pickers. Mom just likes everything on PBS in general.