weekend projects

[rainman]

anybody got any weekend projects planned? I am going to try and get my 24" acutator installed to see if i can get amazonas c band and start digging the hole to plant the pole for my 8.5' birdveiw dish.

[lumpkin666]

Hopefully plant a post for my BUD and do some tuning to get it ready for some DVB C-Band stuff.

[wejones]

Well, I picked up an old Primestar dish out of a local trash transfer station. I think that I might take down my 6' dish off the tree, and put this Primestar dish there instead. I'll probably just aim it fixed at AMC3. If I get lazy though, I might just stick it on a log, like I did with my Fortec dish before I dug the hole. Can't dig any holes up here yet. Ground still frozen, except on the roads which have a foot of mud on them.

[lumpkin666]

Originally Posted by wejones

...Can't dig any holes up here yet. Ground still frozen, except on the roads which have a foot of mud on them.

Do you have a wheelbarrow and some charcoal? If so, pile up a bunch of charcoal over the spot you want to dig, light it (and let it get "cooking"), and then cover it with an upsidedown wheelbarrow and let it sit for an hour. That's worked for me in the middle of the winter when needing to dig a hole (failed one time when I did this - it ended up that a huge rock was right beneath the surface)

[wejones]

Originally Posted by lumpkin666

Do you have a wheelbarrow and some charcoal? If so, pile up a bunch of charcoal over the spot you want to dig, light it (and let it get "cooking"), and then cover it with an upsidedown wheelbarrow and let it sit for an hour. That's worked for me in the middle of the winter when needing to dig a hole (failed one time when I did this - it ended up that a huge rock was right beneath the surface)

Whether this would work is real variable. It's interesting that depending on a lot of factors, sometimes the ground is frozen deep, and melted on the top, and other times it is frozen on the surface and not frozen deep. It depends a lot on what time of the year (mid winter, early spring, etc), and how cold it was in winter, and how much snow pack, etc. Ie some years here, when there wasn't much snow pack, the ground gets frozen VERY DEEP, then in spring, it melts from the top down, and I've seen cases when there is over a foot of MUD above frozen ground. This is the case every year on surfaces that are plowed, like my driveway. Places where there is a lot of snow pack, however often melt from bottom up in the spring. Ie the snow acts as an insulator, and the heat of the earth eventually warms up the ground, so that at one point only the top surface is frozen.

Anyway, the fire on the surface thing would only seem to work when only the surface of the ground is frozen. This year, we didn't get much snow until very late in the winter, so I think the ground is frozen very deep. My driveway is a soupy mess where the sun has melted the surface, but there is no-where for the water to go, because it is frozen down deep, and frozen off to the side of the driveway where it was protected by snow until recently. I have a tractor with a front end loader, and backhoe, and it won't touch the frozen part, which is hard as concrete, so I just have to wait until it melts basically.

Interesting topic. Has been the source of many arguments here, mainly because different people see different symptoms depending on the conditions over the winter, and come to different conclusions.

[elgemcdlf]

If time permits I have to go dig out the pole for my most recent aquisition. I was going to just cut it off at surface level but it is filled with concrete. Would be nice to get it planted so I can put the dish on top next weekend. Have to realign the 90cm. had some really tough storms come through and knocked it out of alignment. So far she has bit her tongue except for no Telemundo. She has Univision from G3 on C Band with one of the big dishes. Would be nice to give her back all her Ku channels.

[lumpkin666]

My plans changed already. I'm now going to be taking down a nice looking mesh dish (10 foot or bigger, I have no talent when it comes to guessing this sorta thing) and pulling the pole outta the ground. And if time permits, installing the pole at my place and remounting the dish.

[elgemcdlf]

Time does not permit. Concrete needs time to setup.

[Iceberg]

do inside things (suppose ot rain until Sunday night)
forecast is 2-4 INCHES of rain

[rainman]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

do inside things (suppose ot rain until Sunday night)
forecast is 2-4 INCHES of rain

same here Ice woke up to rain this morning so I guess it's off for outside activities.

[elgemcdlf]

I am moving the office here at the plant today but heard it was raining pretty hard last night at the house. Yard should be a soggy mess today

[lumpkin666]

Originally Posted by elgemcdlf

Time does not permit. Concrete needs time to setup.

Good point. And I need some rest after digging up a pole for a 10 foot dish with about a 3ft diameter block of concrete (too thick to break with my little hammer), followed by a primestar dish. It's pouring here now, so digging holes and pouring concrete is going to have to wait.

[Sadoun]

My weekend project consisted of a small design mod to the front page of the site:

Before:
Sadoun Satellite Sales ( 1-888-519-9595 )

After:
Sadoun Satellite Sales ( 1-888-519-9595 )

You notice any difference? What do you think? you like the before or the after? What browser are you using?

[lumpkin666]

I'm not sure I like the lines separating the sections so well. I tend to like the old colored boxes around the text for each section. I also sorta like the background image from the old format (it sorta made it look more "different" and not so "plain")

However, the sligh color changes and aligning of the "satellite system packages", "satellite receivers", and "bargin bin" sections seem to catch my eye more quickly.

[rainman]

I like it it just looks much cleaner.

[satnutwillb]

I repeatedly checked both and decided I like the second better.

[wejones]

Well I altered my weekend project. I was going to take down my 6' on a tree, and replace it with the newly rescued Primestar dish. Turns out the tree trunk was a bit too big for the Primestar mount. So I bolted a piece of PVC pipe on the side of a log, and mounted it temporarily on the log. Pulled out my Channel Master meter, which up until today, I really liked. Aimed the dish approximately where I thought AMC3 was raised the dish till I got a signal, adjusted azimuth a bit to maximize. Ran inside... nothing on the AMC3 transponders. After a bit of quessing where I might be, I found that I was on G28, 2 deg to the west, as I had a real strong signal on the ABC news one channel. Went back outside, slowly moved the dish east. Meter went down, then up to another strong peak. Ran inside. No AMC3 channels, but after a bit of investigation, I found that I was on AMC9, now 4 deg to far to the east. Went back outside, and moved the dish around, and there was no indication of any peak between AMC9 and G28. So I basically split the difference between the two. The meter was hardly indicating anything. Went inside, and there was AMC3?!?!? Wasn't very strong, and I had to do a lot of inside/outside/inside/outside to peak the thing, and the annoying thing is that virtually every improvement I made was showing a lesser signal on the meter. Really weird. Finally got it pretty good though. So now I have a dedicated PBS dish.

I did learn one thing about the meter though, and that is, that i