Reid and I headed for Rawlins today to work on a satellite dish. We seem to be doing a lot of work with dishes in some form or another lately!

A few weeks ago, Larry and Reid had installed a dish at our Rawlins translator site to replace an unreliable over-the-air pickup from Laramie. This translator is well over 100 miles away from Laramie and the receive signal was prone to fading.

The Rawlins translator…Pretty simple…A satellite receiver and a transmitter!

The satellite dish and transmit antenna

When the dish was initially installed it was on a non-penetrating mount. This type of mount simply sits on a roof or on the ground anchored by cinder blocks. Unfortunately at this site it would be prone to cows rubbing up against it this close to the ground. Yes, I did say cows. A number of our sites have cows grazing near them during the summer months.

The initial (temporary) dish install

Reid and I moved the dish to a more permanent pole mount which was much higher off the ground. Unfortunately the wind was pretty severe when we made the move. We nearly flew away as we picked the dish up from the temporary mount and set it on the pole!

Finally, we did get the dish set on the pole and covered with a dish cover. The signal level is much lower than I would like to see it but that is probably due to the fact that we were trying to aim the dish in such a strong wind. We will need to wait until a calmer day to get a better aim on the dish.

Reid connects the feedline to the LNB on the now pole mounted dish

Finished! Complete with dish cover to keep snow from accumulating.