11 Mar 2019 - Visitors from Iowa; Directv Troubleshooting

11 Mar 2019
Today we enjoyed the company of Mark and Tonya O'Donnell.  We had corresponded in advance so we knew they were snowbirding down here, and they knew our travels were going to bring us through the Phoenix area. 

Mark and Tonya were Fort Des Moines (FDM) baseball parents as were Doreen and I.  Their son Ryan, aka "Ryno" and our son Dan, aka "Danno" played baseball together for many years, including both regular season as well as tournament teams. 

Once the boys got older and the Fort Des Moines era passed, we lost touch with many of our FDM families, but Facebook has helped keeping in touch.  Ryan is in the Chicago area now flipping houses and doing great.  Mark and Tonya live in Missouri at Lake of the Ozarks and winter down here in the Phoenix area. It was great to get caught up on whats been happening in their family!  Lots of laughs for sure!

We started having some issues receiving certain Directv channels.  A couple years ago my dish reflector had been slightly bent at the top, but it did not seem to impact operation back then and until the last couple weeks I had not had any issues with it.  It appeared to be the 99(ca) Directv satellite and primarily transponder 16.  Using the receiver's signal strength test capabilities it was obvious something was causing weak to no signal on those certain channels. The numbers should be as high as possible, nearly 100.

I contacted Winegard, the company that makes our RV Directv roof-mounted dish system and worked with one of their technicians.  They needed photo's of the reflector and the arm, so we climbed up on the roof , took the pictures and emailed them off to Winegard.

The arm

The small bend in the reflector has been there for a couple years.  It is apparently enough of a distortion to prevent reception from certain satellite transponders.

I figured we would be eliminating the obvious, i.e. replacing the reflector at a minimum, so while I was up on the roof I went ahead and tried to straighten the bend from the reflector.  It's not going to make it any worse!  Sure enough, when I got back down from the roof, the missing channels reappeared, although the signal strength is still not what it should be. 

 
Winegard called me back, and they verified I needed a new reflector. No surprise there.  They gave me a list of local dealers who might have the part.  Keep in mind the tens of thousands of RV's down here especially this time of the year, so parts might be more available here than anywhere.  My first call score the replacement reflector and the price was $20 less than the MSRP.  Also, the dealer was less than a mile from our RV park.  I got the reflector today but rain prevented me from installing it.  We will do that tomorrow

We met another friend and military comrade for dinner, Jon Linn and his beautiful family.  Jon is an Air Force firefighter in Des Moines, and is a funeral director in his family-run Linn's Funeral Home and Monument Sales in Iowa Falls, Iowa.  As I mentioned at my retirement ceremony, Doreen and I are so blessed to be a part of so many families and our fire department families are near and dear to our hearts.  We met Jon's family before when he deployed to the Middle East as we saw them off at the airport, but we got to meet his in-laws and other relatives tonight. 

 
Tomorrow we will attend the second of four baseball Spring Training games down here, Cincinnati Reds vs the Chicago Cubs at 7:05 pm at Sloan Park.