It's Been a Good Day!

One little fall. Yep, that's all it takes to make a man think safety. We put up a new antenna and replaced our old rotator today. This will be the 3rd replacement in the 25 years we've been here. I guess that's not too bad but I sure hate the job.

Anyway, it's always a dangerous job and I'm never satisfied with D on a ladder (and me tagging along) trying to balance this huge antenna while lifting it up to the roof. Yesterday I went outside and this is what I saw. Talk about home made scaffolding! You couldn't fall off this thing if you tried. I loved it. He made the platform large enough to fit both of us without being crowded.

I think this is the first time we've gotten an antenna up without bending or breaking one of the tongs. You're not supposed to do it in the wind but we rarely have moments of no wind or breeze. We decided to tackle the job early this morning because the air was still. As soon as I got on the roof, the wind picked up. It was hard holding the antenna and not have it turned into a big metal sail. I think it's the largest antenna we've ever bought but strangely enough seemed like the lightest.

Dave's working on attaching all the wiring for the rotator. Then he affixed all the guy wires to support the beast. I was in the house removing the old rotator and hooking all the wires to the new one. I turned on the power and it started to turn while D was working on the roof. Hahahahahhaha! He didn't see the humor. I immediately unplugged the rotator but D says it turned 90 degrees in a short time. I said, "Well, it works!" Still no humor from his perspective.

Once everything was up and running I spent the next couple of hours syncing the rotator, then scanning for stations with the converter box (again!). I pulled in 45 stations at 090 degrees. About half were foreign stations so back to the drawing board reading instructions on how to block those out.

Happily, now instead of getting only 3 stations we understand (ABC, one PBS station and channel 36), we now get somewhere in the area of 25 good quality english speaking stations. I picked up my Bay Area, Sacramento and San Jose PBS stations again. Yippee!!!! Back to watching British comedy again.