I placed a small add on CraigsList looking for satellite dishes 30” to 36” or larger, and within a couple of days received an email from “Chris” in a town about twenty miles away telling me he had a “6’ to 8’ “ dish on his roof, and if I would like to take it down I was welcome to it.
When we got there, it turned out to be the 10’ dish pictured in the three pictures of the dish on the back of my truck. It took about an hour and a half to get it down, I didn’t want to split the dish, so Chris and I took the dish off the mount (very easy) and struggled to get the mount off the pole, using a LOT of WD40 (only thing we had at the time). A couple of his very helpful neighbors came over to see what we were doing and we enlisted their help to get the dish from the roof to the ground. Again, very easy.
We put the dish on the bed of my pick up truck, drove three blocks to the local hardware store and bought some rope and CAREFULLY tied the dish in the bed of the truck. (pic 1, 2 and 3)
There is only one road we could take to get it home, major US highway with a very steep uphill climb, so I drove on the extreme right side of the road at 25-30 MPH, four ways flashing the whole time and it took us a little over an hour to make it all the way home.
I was too tired to take the dish off the truck that night and it was just getting dark, so I waited till the next morning Friday, Sept 4, to unload, and knowing the type of winds that can come up here (North West Arizona, Mohave County), I tied the dish down, using several cement blocks until I could “get back to it.”
Wouldn’t you know it, that night we were hit with extreme winds, really a storm that did so much damage that we were lucky to escape with as little damage as we had. Wind, hale, rain, more wind, you know how it goes.
When I got up the next morning (Saturday, Sept 5) I went out to survey the overnight damage, and look what I found. The new dish was moved nearly 50 feet, and was wedged under the back of the car. (pic 4 and 5) Pic 5 was taken from where it HAD been to were I found it.
But wait …. There’s MORE …..
As you can see from the photos I took, every one of my dishes BUT ONE had moved during this storm.
The mini-C band LNB had twisted on the arm and was full of water, the motor driven KU dish was off by about ½ inch, the 10’ dish was off by several inches (at the pole), the ChannelMaster was the only dish that hadn’t moved, but the LNB cover was gone (pic 6). One of the two C Band dishes that I was going to install this week had fallen on top of the four arms and bent an arm (pic 7), and one other dish that was laying flat on the ground was no where to be seen. I had taken that dish apart because when taking it off the roof, the donor had dropped it about five feet and it had hit a corner and tweaked, but I wanted to save that one. Now it was “gone.” (Later found it and the cover to the ChannelMaster in the extreme NE corner of the yard, up against the fence – pic 9)
Just to give you an idea how hard the wind DID blow, the next three pictures are of my flagpole, and a couple of pictures of the neighbor’s car port … in MY yard (pic10, 11 and 12). Oh, btw, the car port was spread all my yard and out in the street. It took me a while to figure out what all the aluminum sheets were from, till I look south and saw the damage to his house.
Well, now back to work.
Oh, as if all THAT wasn’t enough, this all took place on Friday night and Saturday morning, it also took out several telephone poles in our area, including the one our Cable DSL is on, so we are without internet until possibly Tuesday morning. Listening to the scanner, the fire department was called out to down telephone poles with cars between live wires, and one call said a propane tank had been punctured, gas was leeking and the kids calling were home alone.
I’ll post this when we get our internet back, just so you all know what’s happening.
And giving up? Me? HELL no, there’s work to be done, but we WILL get through it. Others out here suffered a LOT worse than we did. Saturday was spent (for the most part) just going around and checking on neighbors to insure they were OK. They were, with little damage other than broken windows and one errant car port.
Photto
(All pictures were taken with a Centro Cell Phone)
(We got our internet cable back on Sunday, but I was too tired from work all day to get on line to post this. It is now Monday AM and I am off to work. No time to “play” this week, work today and tomorrow, them set up for the County Fair Wednesday, then the Fair Thursday through Sunday and then back to work Monday and Tuesday. My next “day off” wont be till Wednesday next week.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day, stay safe and God Bless Everyone)
When we got there, it turned out to be the 10’ dish pictured in the three pictures of the dish on the back of my truck. It took about an hour and a half to get it down, I didn’t want to split the dish, so Chris and I took the dish off the mount (very easy) and struggled to get the mount off the pole, using a LOT of WD40 (only thing we had at the time). A couple of his very helpful neighbors came over to see what we were doing and we enlisted their help to get the dish from the roof to the ground. Again, very easy.
We put the dish on the bed of my pick up truck, drove three blocks to the local hardware store and bought some rope and CAREFULLY tied the dish in the bed of the truck. (pic 1, 2 and 3)
There is only one road we could take to get it home, major US highway with a very steep uphill climb, so I drove on the extreme right side of the road at 25-30 MPH, four ways flashing the whole time and it took us a little over an hour to make it all the way home.
I was too tired to take the dish off the truck that night and it was just getting dark, so I waited till the next morning Friday, Sept 4, to unload, and knowing the type of winds that can come up here (North West Arizona, Mohave County), I tied the dish down, using several cement blocks until I could “get back to it.”
Wouldn’t you know it, that night we were hit with extreme winds, really a storm that did so much damage that we were lucky to escape with as little damage as we had. Wind, hale, rain, more wind, you know how it goes.
When I got up the next morning (Saturday, Sept 5) I went out to survey the overnight damage, and look what I found. The new dish was moved nearly 50 feet, and was wedged under the back of the car. (pic 4 and 5) Pic 5 was taken from where it HAD been to were I found it.
But wait …. There’s MORE …..
As you can see from the photos I took, every one of my dishes BUT ONE had moved during this storm.
The mini-C band LNB had twisted on the arm and was full of water, the motor driven KU dish was off by about ½ inch, the 10’ dish was off by several inches (at the pole), the ChannelMaster was the only dish that hadn’t moved, but the LNB cover was gone (pic 6). One of the two C Band dishes that I was going to install this week had fallen on top of the four arms and bent an arm (pic 7), and one other dish that was laying flat on the ground was no where to be seen. I had taken that dish apart because when taking it off the roof, the donor had dropped it about five feet and it had hit a corner and tweaked, but I wanted to save that one. Now it was “gone.” (Later found it and the cover to the ChannelMaster in the extreme NE corner of the yard, up against the fence – pic 9)
Just to give you an idea how hard the wind DID blow, the next three pictures are of my flagpole, and a couple of pictures of the neighbor’s car port … in MY yard (pic10, 11 and 12). Oh, btw, the car port was spread all my yard and out in the street. It took me a while to figure out what all the aluminum sheets were from, till I look south and saw the damage to his house.
Well, now back to work.
Oh, as if all THAT wasn’t enough, this all took place on Friday night and Saturday morning, it also took out several telephone poles in our area, including the one our Cable DSL is on, so we are without internet until possibly Tuesday morning. Listening to the scanner, the fire department was called out to down telephone poles with cars between live wires, and one call said a propane tank had been punctured, gas was leeking and the kids calling were home alone.
I’ll post this when we get our internet back, just so you all know what’s happening.
And giving up? Me? HELL no, there’s work to be done, but we WILL get through it. Others out here suffered a LOT worse than we did. Saturday was spent (for the most part) just going around and checking on neighbors to insure they were OK. They were, with little damage other than broken windows and one errant car port.
Photto
(All pictures were taken with a Centro Cell Phone)
(We got our internet cable back on Sunday, but I was too tired from work all day to get on line to post this. It is now Monday AM and I am off to work. No time to “play” this week, work today and tomorrow, them set up for the County Fair Wednesday, then the Fair Thursday through Sunday and then back to work Monday and Tuesday. My next “day off” wont be till Wednesday next week.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day, stay safe and God Bless Everyone)
