Getting Ready - Part 2

Yesterday, late on Friday afternoon, the packages from Dustyfoot arrived. They contained the Mobility Kit for the HughesNet satellite internet dish which arrived about a week ago. The reason that I didn’t order the entire system from Dustyfoot is that when I wanted to order they couldn’t provide the satellite (SatMex5) that I wanted. Since that time, HughesNet is allowing their systems to be commissioned on SatMex5 again. I ordered my HughesNet System from a friend of John Calypso’s in Pueblo, Colorado.

The bottom line is that today I’m now online via satellite. Here is a shot of the dish and the rig.



Setting up the dish was not without some problems. The first was that I had assembled the dish right after it arrived. The Dustyfoot Mobility Kit includes the tripod, Align-A-Site, OPI (Outdoor Pointing Interface) and some parts which allow the dish to be adjusted without a wrench by hand tightening. So I had to disassemble the dish, replace some parts and then put it back together. I think if you buy the whole system from Dustyfoot, they will have already done this part of the assembly.

The Align-A-Site can be either used when you are trying to locate a suitable location to set up the dish or it can be slipped into a mount on the dish to aid in the aiming of the dish. So while you are installing the mount on the dish for the Align-A-Site the dish tripod must be level and plumbed. I didn’t catch this part of the instructions, so I went ahead and tried to find the satellite. Well, after awhile, I installed the mount correctly and started over.

Even though the Dustyfoot instructions warned of sharp pieces of metal on the dish, I still managed to slice a finger.

I’m sure the next time I set up the dish things will go much smoother. Some people state that they can set up a dish in 15 minutes.

The first realtor showed up with a client to look at the house yesterday. My realtor had suggested that I should get a haircut so I won’t scare away prospective buyers so I got my first haircut in over a year. Here is a shot taken by the camera in my Viao notebook computer while in the rig.



Here’s hoping that I’ll see you On the Road with Gary

Datastorm location