The Sat Saga
Nearly a two years ago, I was on the verge of deciding what my latest tech challenge might be. I decided that a skill around here that would be useful, would be to learn about satellite reception. The high school typically had received a free-to-air australian channel, but then one day all stopped working after a lightning storm.
The electronic engineer working on the dish came to me and said 'Chad, I think I've fixed this but without a dish to plug into, I can't make it work, and the high school configuration is too confusing, too many pieces of equipment, I can't be sure which is failing.'
So I decided to get involved. I asked the school to tell me everything they knew about the satellite configuration. What bird it was pointed at, what type of lnb they had, etc. They had no idea.
Okay... so how does a guy like me, knowing almost nothing about satellites figure it out?
By reading, joining internet forums, playing around with the equipment etc.
So I think I've got a decent understanding of Free-To-Air Cband and KU band satellites. About the easiest beginner level stuff. I get there and I find 2 dishes, 4 coax cables, and 2 sat receivers.
No one knows what satellite they're supposed to be pointing to, nor which dish is functional if not both.
So, I give it a try.
On the first visit I find 1 dish has been knocked over in a storm, which tore a huge hole in the roof. ( Oh yeah, it's mounted up on the roof. Our roofs are shiny tin, so tuning a dish is like sun bathing in a tanning salon) was that the functional dish? We decided to remove it, and make 1 good mast. So we do.
Now I have 1 dish, and I have to guess where to aim it. I notice a dual lnb, one looks to be C-band so I guess, given the direction it's pointing, that it's probably intelsat8 (pas8). But I can't tune it.
Visit 2 - a month later (because I'm doing this on my free Saturdays since it isn't work related). I'm convinced I have it tuned right, but still getting no signal. Trace the coax and find it just dies in the roof somewhere.... okay...
Visit 3 - several months later, by this time the school is tired of opening the door and letting me in only to sit around for hours while I tinker. We decide that we have no signal, and can't tell if it's the receiver, or the cable, or the lnb. WE simply don't know what equipment is good. We declare to give up. Do they REALLY need news channels?
Furlough.
Return from Furlough.
Get VSAT training. Install a few VSAT dishes. The self-training on the satellite tv stuff came in very valuable here. Suddenly I'm more confident and I have an idea. I had purchased a $9.00 analog sat finder tool, and had downloaded a few sat finder apps onto my iphone. I decide to give it one last try.
So today I get up on the roof, because it's the first sunny day in a while. I bring a monitor, the tuner, my two sat finder tools, and my wrenches. Very sunny day, I might get a sunburn.
When I plug in my tools to the dish, bingo I have signal... I KNEW I tuned it right... I did the math right. NICE!!! So I tweak it a bit to get max signal. And then I play with the receiver.
After 1 hour, I have a tv channel. I'm very excited, but I'm up on the roof and the sky is turning grey.
In december alone, we got 11 inches of rain. 2 days ago, we got 3 inches of rain. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about to start raining. How ironic would it be, to be doing this off an on for over a year, only to get a signal and then have water destroy the equipment?
So I hurry down, plug it all back in, NO SIGNAL!!!!
AHA!!!
I troubleshoot coax cables, video cables, finally I find the combination of things that were wired wrong, and I re-configure the receiver to the correct transponder signal and polarization.
BOOM.... AUSTRALIAN NEWS, and BBC come online.
I have an enormous sense of accomplishment now. I stuck with this puzzle, this detective work troubleshooting thing, where I knew very little, and finally it's working. I feel good about that.
And then I ask myself 'is getting the T.V. turned on all that important?"
Here's the answer from a friend:
"When 9/11 happened, everyone here felt so disconnected. As if it was a dream, a horrible nightmare that we were so far from. We would all huddle together at the high school and turn on the television because it was the one place we could get news. We saw pictures of the World Trade Center and were flabbergasted. We were very thankful that we had that 1 television on center to get information from."
I would not have thought 2 years ago, that my growing interest in satellite technology would have allowed me to get 3 regional centres online, and a news channel on at the high school. I am feeling pretty good about that right now.
Here's a note I got from one of the directors here:
Dear Chad,
I want to thank you for all the sacrifices you have made to help bring the "Good News" of Jesus Christ to the people of Papua New Guinea. Chad, your service as the IT Manager helps keep people connected and has allowed language workers to focus more on their work. Because of your support of Bible translation, you have helped six people groups receive the New Testament in their tok ples this year alone.
Thank you also for all the other ways you serve our community. We all depend on each other.
It's time like this when I think 'wow God, you fashioned me this way, taught me these skills, gave me this attitude of total obsessive desire to solve technical puzzles, and you let me serve you in ways I never could have predicted, you use skills I never thought could be used to serve you, and you use them to server you.... you are AWESOME'
