Jan 11 - love that salt air

It's never simple.  I thought that a minor horizontal and/or vertical tweak to the satellite dish would get the signal strength up but I soon found that a) the bolts are quite rusted and in some cases, disintegrating -- love that salt air -- and in fact the LNB support arm is starting to rust through.  I did manage some tweaking though but I lost the signal entirely, according to the signal strength display at the TV. 

Tweak, tweak, tweak, back to where I started (I'd placed some marks so I wouldn't get too far off) and still zero, not good.  Ok, out with the signal strength meter, which goes in between the dish and the receiver, up on the roof.  Zero.  Tweak, tweak, tweak ... still zero.  Oh oh. Perhaps I've bent the LNB support arm.   BTW, the LNB is that thingy that picks up the signal reflected from the dish. 

From Wikipedia -- A low-noise block downconverter (or LNB) is the receiving device mounted on satellite dishes used for satellite TV reception.

Anyhoo, I told Sandy that we had no TV and that we might have a dead dish.  She didn't want to miss Downton Abbey.  She has her priorities.  I couldn't care less.  We'd save $100 per month without Satellite reception and I'd watch Netflix :).  She could download and watch DA later !

But ... I don't give up easily.  So, I got out my voltmeter, thinking that something was weird.  I checked the voltage at the coax cable coming out of the receiver ... 13.something.  I then checked at the dish ... zero.  Ah ha ... cable issue.  I disconnected the connector that's a few feet from the dish ... the copper wire in the center of the coax has disintegrated -- don't you just love that salt air !?!?

So I got out my connectors and my stripper and my crimper and put it all together again and Sandy, who is working in the garden, tells me that something is making a lot of noise in the house ... yup, the TV is  back on again.  I'd turned the volume up so that I could hear it up on the roof.

The signal is back at full strength, or at least as full strength as it gets this far south.  The loss of reception was likely the corrosion about to break through and/or shorting and then all I had to do was touch it up there for the job to be finished.

That connector had been sealed with silicone but obviously that didn't do the job.  It only takes a little bit of salt, air and time for these to corrode.  I guess that I'm thankful that it wasn't the connector that's right at the edge of the roof at the back, 30' off the ground.  Sooner or later that one will go too ... I really need to be able to reach up there with a ladder from the ground, rather than leaning precariously over the edge.

Sandy weeded most of the day.  I did some trimming -- one of the bushes, the bananas and mangroves.  It's now piled out front.  The next day, i.e. today, Monday, is yard trash pick-up day, so Sunday is a good day for these exercises.

Harris and Debbie were trying to arrange for the six of us to go to dinner, including Chet and Jean next door.  They weren't available so we went with H&D to Off the Hook at the Publix strip mall Beachside and then to Wild Side for ice cream.  I ate too much.  I definitely need to ride today !  It looks foggy out there, in the dark, so it will be wet.

Oh yes, progress on another front.  iPhoto, even though in beta, seems to do the job nicely, synchronizing among Sandy's devices.  I can even create albums online with my PC and load pictures, but not into those albums ... I guess that beta means that it's not quite ready for prime time !  You're also not allowed to have albums within albums.

Of course this now means that I'm paying Apple $0.99 per month for extra online storage.  That's the thin edge of the wedge.  Hey, it's still only 1% of what I'm paying for Satellite TV !

Onward ... !