Kim and The Satellite TV Dish - Who Will Win?

Not a 'Complete Idiot' yet - but I'm working on it.

So as you know, if you've been following Betsy's posts, we've been traveling from Snohomish, WA to Phoenix, AZ. So far we've gotten by with hooking up to the various camp ground's tv cable outlet. Well, now that we've gotten to the Phoenix area and are stayin in one spot for the next week it was time to drag out and set up the satellite tv dish. The satellite receiver has a built in application with two bar graphs and an audible signal that runs on the tv screen to help you aim the dish for maximum signal strength. So I'm all set up, the tripod is leveled and locked in place,the dish is aimed in the general direction (145 deg south) and I'm slowly moving the dish right to left trying to locate the signal. After several attempts with no luck I remember we are now much further south and the dish probably has to be re-aimed higher. I fired up the old computer and Googled 'directv aiming dish' and found a web site were you can enter your zip code and get the proper coordinates for that area. Sure enough, I need to aim about 10 deg higher. I make that
adjustment and...what!! still not a hint of a signal.

As I'm sitting at my computer, scratching myhead, I look up and notice that although I had run the dish cables through the window I neglected to connect them to the dish receiver. Once I had the cables connected it only took another minute to tune in the dish and, voila! tv!

I'm not sure if continuing to work at becoming a 'complete idiot' is better than finally becoming one and not have to keep making dumb mistakes. I'm sure I'll never know.

Satellite TV Installation

On Friday, we got satellite TV installed in the 5th wheel. We decided to go with Directv. The technician showed up this morning about 9am. First he set up the dish and tripod and using his expensive satellite finder homed it in on the proper satellite. Next he installed the cables and ran them into the trailer using flat wire adapters. The adapters go through a window opening and then you can close (almost) the window. Next we went inside to set up the satellite receiver/DVR box. Again, this only took a few minutes to make up the inside satellite cables to the receiver box, plug in the video and audio cables to the TV and plug in the box. After turning everything on it went through a self-initialization process and downloaded a system upgrade and, Ta da, we now have satellite TV. We got the DVR option so we can pre-record our favorite programs. We had this option when we had Comcast cable and really liked being able to record and then watch programs at a more convenient time. Plus you can record one program while watching another.