ok, confession time

[turbosat]

I was sitting here tonight, thinking about some of the dumb things I've done over the years with satellite tv, how much stuff I've had, how much I've broken, shorted out or gotten lightning struck lol. It would be interesting to fess up with the dumbest thing we've done, in our little hobby. I could do a dave top10 I think, lol, but I'll start off with what I guess was my greatest screwup of 20+yrs of sat dishin.
Late 80's I had saved for sev paydays to get my first 10' mesh, cband only dish.
Started out with that little 5' toy called the Little Wil, got lots of channels but it was like catching rain in a dixie cup, had to have a bigger reflector. Finally got the dish, installed on the pole, tracking hum-ho, never was happy with each tweak. On the 2nd or 3rd day of climbing the ladder and running inside to check the color bars>I forgot and left the ladder under the lip of the dish, and promptly drove it over to G1, way west for me, crunching up 2 sections of the dish in a big V. I almost cried, but I have never done that since! Valuable lesson, I think I paid around 600 for that dish. So, can anybody top that?

 

[goaliebob99]

I was sitting here tonight, thinking about some of the dumb things I've done over the years with satellite tv, how much stuff I've had, how much I've broken, shorted out or gotten lightning struck lol. It would be interesting to fess up with the dumbest thing we've done, in our little hobby. I could do a dave top10 I think, lol, but I'll start off with what I guess was my greatest screwup of 20+yrs of sat dishin.
Late 80's I had saved for sev paydays to get my first 10' mesh, cband only dish.
Started out with that little 5' toy called the Little Wil, got lots of channels but it was like catching rain in a dixie cup, had to have a bigger reflector. Finally got the dish, installed on the pole, tracking hum-ho, never was happy with each tweak. On the 2nd or 3rd day of climbing the ladder and running inside to check the color bars>I forgot and left the ladder under the lip of the dish, and promptly drove it over to G1, way west for me, crunching up 2 sections of the dish in a big V. I almost cried, but I have never done that since! Valuable lesson, I think I paid around 600 for that dish. So, can anybody top that?

You dont want me to begin to open up my bag of worms. The question is not who can top you, but who can even come close to me! I think The Staff members here will agree that Nobody can come remotely close to me. :rant:

 

[Blindowl1234]

Wow, I can't top that one...no way. Other than recently blowing a switch because I didn't turn the receiver off....that's it for me. Blind

 

[avg1joe]

My dish is on a pole in a patch of bamboo. This is where the landlord agreed to let me plant it. I have to periodically trim the bamboo down so that it is a little shorter than the dish. One of the first times I did this I was swinging away, vigorously chopping it down and there was a stalk of bamboo growing up right next to the pole. Just before swinging I noted that the cable ran up the side of the pole and there was a chance I'd cut it if I took a swipe at the bamboo. Instead I grabbed the piece of bamboo and held it away from the dish while I swung the blade to cut it. I missed the pole and cable but cut half way through my little finger.

The first thing I did when I got home from the emergency room was buy a $6 pair of squeeze style pruner shears.

I probably saw this on this forum but the stupidest thing I've heard about has to be this story: Man fatally shoots wife while installing satellite TV system

 

[Corrado]

Turbo, you're not alone wedging a ladder under a dish I did the same thing.

The second worse thing for me is leaving my dish all night without the actuator connected. The next morning I found the wind flipped it all the way over during the night. :rant:

 

[eurosport]

When I got my first DVB receiver, the Pansat 2500a, I hooked it up to my oldest 1.2m P* dish (which was my only one at the time) and I scanned & pointed & scanned & pointed....all I could get was DBS signals.
I was like WTF??? and then, after researching it here,
found out I needed a LINEAR LNB! It had a circular DBS LNB on it for rain-fade free DirecTV originally!

 

[LordKaT]

My biggest idiot moment came when I first started looking at free to air. I had a 30" dish and a receiver. I pointed the dish out of my windows "in the general direction" of the sat I wanted.

Then I was left wondering why I wasn't getting anything.

 

[Mr Tony]

lets see...dumbest things with a FTA setup

-had a receiver slide off the roof....it survived
-I slid off the roof....I survived (barely)
-had my C-Band dish fall off a table 3 times...needed some parts but it survived
-hooked up switches without powering off the receiver..,.blew switches
-put a wrench in my mouth to hold it while I repeaked a dish.....in -15 weather....wrench froze to lips

just a start

 

[primestar31]

I was installing an 11' fiberglass C-band dish already mounted on the polar mount, on top of a 10' pole. I had a gin-pole rigged, with a chain-drive come-along. I was alone (first mistake) standing on a ladder, cranking this like 400LB dish up HIGHER and HIGHER to get it to the top, so I could flip it on the pole.

Unfortunately, I hadn't calculated that I would run OUT of chain, before reaching the top of the pole! Not only that, but this type of come-along is ONE way! You can't release it to pull back out and rearrange it differently on the dish, until it's cranked up to a certain point, that allows you to release a dog, to bring the chain back out.

So, my dish with mount was about 10 inches SHORT of being able to heft it up, and onto the pole. I was home alone, and had taken a day off work to do this! So, there's NOBODY I can call to help me. My dish can't be left this way, or it's in big danger of the ole gravity problem... I was really sweating by that time!

I finally got it all finished, by getting a regular type cable come-along, mounting it in tandem with the chain drive one, and pulling it up the last 10".

 

[TNGTony]

ROFL!

 

[meinename]

Replaced the actuator of the 8.5 foot by myself.

Getting it off wasn't too tricky. Only tried to toss myself on to the fence on the right twice. Scratched some paint off the back of the dish.

Then I tried to do the same getting the actuator back on. Ahhahahaha!
It was getting obvious I was TRYING to kill myself. I lost count how many times the ladder tried to flip and the dish trying to plain shove me off. :
Decided to use a old weathered rope to tie the dish into place so it wouldn't squish me. The old rope breaks knocking the 8.5 footer into the 4 footer below aimed for RTN :rant:

At that point I rush to get the actuator up and get the big dish off of the Expensive smaller dish. My father would have been proud seeing me getting that actuator up so fast after all that. :up

Picture attached.
Top white dish is the 8.5 footer aimed at 121 at the time.
Dish below and hidden a bit is the 4 foot Geosatpro aimed at 83W
And of course the required 90cm Geosatpro at 123W

Anyone care to guess how high that top of the 4 footer is above ground?

 

[meinename]

You dont want me to begin to open up my bag of worms. The question is not who can top you, but who can even come close to me! I think The Staff members here will agree that Nobody can come remotely close to me. :rant:

Care to retell or link to the story?

 

[Mr Tony]

I think Bob is confused as to what is FTA satellite related and what is "other"

 

[tvropro]

Can't say I have any real horror stories with satellite. I have blown up some electronic equipment over the years though. My latest was when I fried my 32" Toshiba tv this past February while working on one of my inventions. Backfed 110 vac into the micro from a floating ground. Oh well gave me an excuse to by my LCD HDTV.

 

[kuntryw]

well since i have only setup the one i don't have as much experience in screw ups yet,but installing this one i did do one or two things wrong

hooked the actuator arm up wrong,first time i went to move the dish it crinkled the ring that the dish mounts to.got that straight again finally.

installed the declination mount backwards.

finally got everything installed right and went to check my signal. i had all of my measurements right and began to try to lock in on my true south bird.
moved the dish adjusted measurements nothing.
checked wiring and all was good.went inside and checked the receiver and wiring and all was good.for two hours i tried to find the problem. then as i was walking down the steps what did i see? the eye of the lnb staring at me. well i turned it around and boom signal in about a minute.

so with everything working i buried wires attached what needed attached and was happy.
first big rain and about 30 minutes later no more signal. i managed to hook the disecq switch to the back of the dish toward the bottom with the weather box facing to the sky,all the rain running off the dish and right into the weather box,my disecq submerged in rain water.

well everything is smooth now at least

 

[DishDigger]

What Have I Gotten In To???

DANG!! I think I got into the wrong hobby!?

Kuntry, I really believe you belong in the southern hemisphere (or need to look at the FRONT of the instruction sheets!?!).

I haven't really had any "crashes", I did, however, mount a 4' dish on the top of a 15' pole braced against the eve of my den @ 11' by myself (as well as mounting said 15' pole by myself). Although all went well, I'll admit it wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done . When you really think about it, we take some unnecessary chances. Some pay off, some make interesting tales for a great forum.

I hope ALL of you (myself included) give serious thought to some of the "dumb" things we do.:

The stories were great and I'm sure there are dozens that haven't yet, or may never, be told.

Bill

 

[Keith Brannen]

Well, let's see... several of my "fun times" I have already documented on this site, for example:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/74252-laughing-myself.html#post643893

I also have documented another one of my dish moves (I am better at them now, realising it is a prime time for a brain error) involved a minor cabling error which resulted in "hours of fun" to try and correct (until I realised what stupid thing I did)! A couple of years ago I went to move a three LNB dish, labelled and removed two of the cables, moved the dish, reattached the two cables (wrongly reading the labels it seems), and spent "hours of fun" trying to re-point the dish (got a lot of exercise going up and down the ladder). Could not figure out why when pointing and peaking any of the LNBs did not bring the others in. As well, on the centre LNB (really one of the outside LNBs) the signal was way down (so, naturally, I'm thinking that the move brought an obstruction in to play). It was only when I was just about to move the dish back, that I looked at the cable labels...

And, finally, we come to my "disaster" dish (I have other names for it, but they are very rude). It has been a real treat from the beginning. Bought it early on a Saturday, put it together, started doing hand held tests on the ground, wasn't getting levels I expected to get. Looked at the dish and realised there was something strange about the LNB arm. Since I have another dish of the same make, I take it over to it to compare, and realise the store gave me the wrong arm for dish (it's way too big). Back to the store, find out that they sold the larger dish (with my arm) not too long after I bought mine. They didn't have a spare arm, I had bought the last 80cm dish (they expected a new shipment on Monday). Figured that the person who bought the larger dish would realise the error and be back soon. Went home and waited for a call, it didn't come. The store isn't open on Sunday, so I stewed the rest of the weekend. On Monday, waitied for the call, it didn't come, so I called them with about a half an hour before they closed. My arm had not returned, but the new shipment had arrived, so I got a replacement. When I get home, I realise the arm was not for that make of dish, and was slightly different in hole placement and length, but I have a drill and hacksaw, and used the other dish as a template. I was not going back to the store the next day!

That was only the start of my troubles with that dish. Five days later, it decided that on a nearly windless day that it would sail off a low-slope roof within minutes of when it would be re-mounted on the pole (after I had added an extension). I grabbed the coax trying to stop it, it pulled the coax connector port out of the LNB, and bent the arm and slightly warped the dish when it hit the ground (at least it didn't pull me off the ladder, but it did try). As well, in the end, no matter where I tried to mount the dish, I never could get the satellite I was try for, and had to settle on some back-up satellites.

During the late winter/early spring this year, I noticed it was losing signal and had to keep lowering the elevation a touch. It was only when I kept comparing it to a dish pointed 2 degrees different that I realised something was really wrong. On examining the arm, I noticed a bulging just past the bend heading towards the LNB, and found no hole had been drilled to allow water to escape, which, naturally, had frozen and bulged and bent the arm! Took it down, lined the arm up against that other dish of the same brand and re-bent it, and everything is now fine (and I also drilled a hole in it).

As I said, it is my "disaster" dish... I wonder what it's thinking to do next to annoy me!

 

[Tron]

Thankfully, I've never really killed any expensive equipment... Just a DiSEqC switch, but we've probably all done that ... I have had some great "D'OH" moments, like the time I wasted 2 hours trying to hit G-18 before I remembered to re-skew the LNB