Wednesday 19 November 2003

Kangaroo Valley

Driving through the mountain on our approach to our new location I could not help but be fearful of the accuracy of the reporting that came from our hosts who lived on the side of a mountain. It transpired that there was no need, but I will admit that driving a van like ours up the side of a mountain up a road that was as wide as the van in first gear was an experience.

We set the dish up next to the house, and at 45° we basically went over the top of the garden arch and the next mountain across the valley without any difficulty. Again we used the trusty Ethernet cable to link up and a connection was made within two hours of arriving.

The dish saw lots of action as a base for some travelling friends of ours who used the broadband connection to update their web-site and upload packet loads of photos of their travels around the country.

During our stay we also experimented some with the tarpaulin that covered the dish because there was some pretty hard rain and wind around. Because we stayed in the same spot for a while, the grass got pretty high underneath and we tried to find ways to drain water from below the dish. On one occasion I was underneath the tarpaulin when I thumped my head against the elevation bolt - the big long one you can see on many of the photos here - I stood up and thump. I saw stars and had a headache for several hours, but the dish was fine...

During loading of the dish, Frances and I were left to lift it on our own for the first time and we dropped it. Well, it sort of slid sideways and left a big crack in the side of the dish. Neither of us was hurt, but we were both pretty upset for a few days.

Seems the dish is pretty robust, because it never even seemed to notice the crack.

Sunday 2 November 2003

Bamera

Windy Barmera caused some stir when we installed our trusty connection, because we set it up in the court-yard of the old train station. We visited the home of the last station master and he took great interest in the goings on next to his old platform.

The technology worked just fine, we didn't use a wireless link, I cannot recall why, but ran the 80m Ethernet cable that we constructed in Crossing Falls for the first time in a non-troubleshooting role.

Setup was uneventful and our hosts took great delight in explaining to their friends that we carried the dish around to watch TV - seeing as they had one on their roof too and that's what they used theirs for. We decided that it was a little too complicated to explain that we didn't use it for TV.