Sep 29 - come and gone ?

It was raining lightly.  Sandy said "I've got one Bell bar on my cell phone".  What ?  Wait !  I've got one too ... I went upstairs, texted her and called her and it worked !  Choppy but it worked !

I then went up the driveway and at Osprey Road, I had 3G !!  I sent an email; I called Sandy; I called Jason; I called David.  This is exciting !!  Jason said "so you called me just because you can ?" ... "absolutely", says I.  This is amazing !  Perhaps they've increased the signal strength at a tower or something, don't know.

Later that one Bell bar on the cell phone was gone in the house, but at the top of the driveway it showed one roaming bar.  I drove to Loring, keeping an eye on the phone and at the Narrows, for a fleeting moment, I had 3G, roaming occasionally along 522, Bell at some point in Port Loring (LCBO always seems to be a good spot as it's on a high point).

My trip to Home Hardware was for a couple of ground clamps and a ground plate.  They have supplanted the 10 foot ground rods as they have more surface area.  I had a little chore to do that's been on my bucket list for, oh, 9 years.  Eventually I get these things done :).

Back home, I dug a shovel-width hole three feet deep by the A/C unit and grounded both the Bell landline connection and the generator.  The ground connection for the Bell line has been dangling for 9 years.  I may have eliminated some of the ground hum from our line.  More testing is required.  Grounding the generator is simply "dotting an 'I'".  It has an external ground clamp.  It has to have been grounded already to the house wiring, but this is a good thing to do as well. 

Back to the cellular situation -- if I can get cell service consistently running, I can get rid of that Bell landline.  Any installation cost will quickly pay for itself.  Uniden base models run around $400 for the package.  The higher end solutions run to $1,000 with directional outside antenna, much stronger signal gain and transmission strength.  The different models cover from 2,000 to 20,000 square feet of area with from 20 to 50 simultaneous cell phone connections.  I talked to them and the deal is that if you're not satisfied within 60 days, you can return the device.  They referenced a map of all the cell towers and recommended a particular unit / antenna combination.  

This is pretty straightforward for me -- I would test it out either at the top of the garage or top of the barn and if it worked, complete the installation.  Another option is at the top of the satellite dish pole.  If it worked at the garage, I could always install both the outside and inside antennas there and likely cover both our place and the Davies.  It's too close to our departure date at this point to do anything and I'm certainly NOT going to do it when it's -20 outside at Christmas. It's definitely a Spring project to which I'm looking forward.

Again back to the cellular situation -- the cloud cover must have provided some sort of reflective signal bounce between here and the cell tower at Key River.  I know from my cycling Garmin that we're slightly lower than that point of land, elevation-wise and certainly lower than the top of the tower.  Uniden sent me a bunch of case studies -- boy are they ever marketing these things -- and people have attached the external antennas to trees, in some cases.  I don't expect that they are as sensitive to minor changes in direction as, say, the satellite dishes.  That point in the sky is much further away than the local cell tower, which is an omni-directional antenna.   

What else ... oh yes, spent some time loading the car with Joyce's stuff.  We're making a quick trip to Burlington to drop off a dresser and a bunch of pictures.  The car is piled to the roof.  She's also got a bunch of books and photo albums that we'll be able to take later, but this stuff needed a separate trip.  She's staying at a friend's house right now and will be moving back into her own on November 1st.

We'll have lunch with Joyce and then head to Magnetawan to see Jim and Bonnie, have dinner with them and then return home.  I want to stop at Home Depot along the way to pick up that pipe that I need for the propane regulator but if time is tight, I can do that on Sunday.  Depending on timing, we might also stop at Stef's, but if we want to get to Magnetawan by 5pm, that might not work out.  We will be seeing Stef on Sunday.

As for Saturday and the 200k, that will depend on the weather.  Right now it's showing p.m. showers with a starting temperature mid 40's and high low 50's.  That's an improvement over the previous forecast, but we'll see.  If I don't ride on Saturday, that will mean doing a 200k Permanent shortly after we get back to Florida, as I need a 200k by the end of the month.

That's it ... the thermometer was showing 41F when I got up.  I've now got a fire on.  The forecast is frost before the end of the week but we won't actually get a frost, being so close to the lake.

We had steak for dinner last night with mushrooms and potato for Sandy.  She / we forgot vegetables, believe it or not, but I had my after-dinner salad anyway.

Onward ...