TV Fun

One of the few things we have to keep up moral is satellite television in our rooms. We have seven Armed Forces Network channels (news, sports, movies etc.) and several Arabic channels with English programming, and a smattering of Arabic channels.

There was an advertisement on Armed Forces Network (AFN) that they were switching to satellite and viewers had to move their satellite dishes to align with the new satellite. They provided instructions on their web site complete with a video. I printed out the instructions and watched the video. They really made it look easy. I knew otherwise.

We had about a month to realign the dish, of course we waited for the day before to tackle it. The dishes were on one trailer but to align them you had to climb on the roof of another trailer about two feet away. This really made for awkward work, that and it was very hot on top of the roof.

Unfortunately as soon as we loosened the bold to adjust the dish we realized tiny adjustments was going to be impossible in fact not only were we dealing with left + right adjustment, but also up and down. The channels were separated between two dishes and now all of the channels were out as we had lost the signal. Much grumbling from everyone followed.

It was decided to adjust the dished at night, mainly because of the heat. Two guys on the roof, one guy watching the satellite signal and calling it out on the radio, as soon as the signal locked in, they would tighten the bolt holding the dish in place, done. At least that's the way it was supposed to be.

As soon as the signal was locked in, and the guys on the roof tightened the bolt, we lost the signal.
This went on over and over again for an hour. Finally over the course of two nights we locked in the signal on both dishes, everyone was happy.

I had a bad feeling that something was bound to happen. Sure enough the signal on one of the dishes kept slipping Now the signal is gone on four channels, one of them being the sports channel and we are hearing it left and right from the football crowd.

Nobody is motivated enough to go through this again.