Well here's a voice from the other side of the coin.
I sort of inherited a few FTA dishes from my ex who essentially walked off and left them dumped all over the yard in a state of disrepair. In the past I was rarely home (traveled a lot for work) and I didn't care one flip what he did with dishes in the yard as I was just never home. So anyway, I wanted to just have one single dish on a motor. HA!! That didn't happen! The PC couldn't operate a motor so I had to use switches and multiple dishes and a few years ago there were a lot of channels on a lot of satellites so I ended up with a lot of dishes. Well, as I learned, it grew on me. Then I stumbled into cool deals with cool people where I acquired even more dishes. I rebuilt a 10' C-band dish pretty much by myself after fighting half a year with a POJ WSI 6' special. I got it working (the 10' dish) and I was thrilled to get MeTV and ThisTV. And RTV, PBJ, etc.. Lots of good stuff on 87w. And it's free. It just costs you some hard labor to get it.
So this weekend my new(ish) boyfriend was over. First thing he does is see my Dish Network system, grab the remote and announce "Hey, this is just like mine!" as he went skipping channels like a fool and making me angry. "Aw come on, I know what I'm doing, I have one of these, I know about satellites ya know." he says..... Then he goes through my DVR asking me why I have every episode of Storage Wars, Mythbusters, etc.. Hey man, BECAUSE I WANT TO, MKAY???? So we get in an argument about the remote. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!
So then I decided to take advantage of having some muscle around the house and I informed him he was going to help me in the yard playing musical satellite dishes.
I got my tools and we took down that piece of rusted junk WSI dish and retired it. I'll strip it for parts, scrap the reflector and use the polar mount and motor to build a mini-bud out of a 1.2m Pordelin I have.
Then we lift the 10' Odom dish off it's pole and moved it to the pole the WSI came down from. This is to hopefully clear the trees so I can get 101 (MeTV and ThisTV)..
Then I got my meters and we sat down and I aimed an old Direcway dish at 125 and tweaked in PBS then I went to the 10' dish and tweaked it in. For now I'm still on 87, I'll find 101 later Sunday.
So my guy was standing there with his mouth agape catching flies as he watched me do this stuff and he said "Wow, that's awesome that you can do all this stuff, I want you to teach me about this ok?"
We went inside and I had to manually enter everything into the PC since it won't blind scan then do a scan and add the channels. He was trippin out..
HA!!!!! Gotcha big guy! Yeah, he's a computer nerd and he's smarter than me but I showed him up real good this weekend despite it all..
I used to (and still do) get a great deal of satisfaction out of "Hey, I did that!" but I really got a big boost by showing up Mr. Smartypants this weekend. I think he has a new level of respect for me now too.
I've got more really large dishes to put up and he's going to help me with the labor. And he's also going to help me take down those giant 11' and 14' dishes I am buying. I told him about them and he's like "WHY?????"
My reply? "Just because. Just because I want them." He told me I'm crazy. I told him "Yep. Sure am. Crazy like a fox but a fox with BIG satellite dishes!" He said my neighbors must look at my backyard and think "
: is she doing with all those dishes????"
Now I've got someone to help with the heavy lifting I can get a lot done and I plan to play musical satellite dishes again real soon. I'm putting up my two 1.8m Prodelins within 30 days. All I need is to buy some big pipes and some cement.
If you guys can show your wives what good channels and shows you can get on satellite for free that would help. Try to get them to participate when you're working on the stuff and be patient and teach and explain things to them and try to get them interested enough to where they might want to learn more and maybe try their hand at it themselves. It's not too terribly hard because If I can do it I'm pretty sure most anyone can. I'm not the quickest learner but where I am lacking there, I make up for it in stubbornness and hard headedness. That is what really got me through the learning curve to the point where I am now. I'm not 100% able to do it all alone, I still have to hit you guys up for tips pretty often but nowhere near as much as I did 2-3 years ago when I first started at this.
Seriously, this is an addictive hobby and it's kinda cool too. And it's well worth the trouble and effort. Seeing my boyfriend's reaction as he stood by dumbfounded all weekend as we shuffled dishes around and I tweaked em up with my meters, that was priceless. That alone made it totally worth the 3 years of headaches.
And finally, there is that sense of independence you get when you can do stuff like this without having to pay someone else to do it for you. We need more women to learn this stuff.
