HughesNet and Irma.

[WT4FEC]

Ok, the eye of Irma passed about 40 miles west of my location, we took a lot of wind, many buildings and homes have roof damage and power failed out at 6:12PM yesterday.

We lost a few trees, one of which lost a branch, which slid down the primary hitting my neighbors transformer taking out our power.

Prior to the event, I did what a HughsNet subscriber should not do, or is allowed to do and drilled a 3/16" hole through the antenna mounting and supporting pole, once completed I powered down the modem, disconnected the TRIA from the coax, removed the antenna and stowed it in the garage.

We then bunkered down and rode out the storm, which at times actually moved the roof a tad.

This morning after surveying and photographing the damage outside, I reinstalled the antenna by pushing a 3/16" drill bit through the pre-drilled hole and torqued the mount in place, reconnected the TRIA, powered up the modem and now have internet.

Century Link is my primary ISP, their DSLAM went down about 3 hours after the power failed.

My second backup is AT&T wireless, however our AT site on St Rd 80 NW of me has backhaul provided by CL and it's backhaul (T1 based) is saturated.

So I fell back in HughesNet, somewhat expensive, but guess what it's working and working well and when you telecommute, the expense is minor compared to having to travel to one of our workcenters 90 miles away to do my job.

Bottom line, if you telecommute, don't fully rely on land based connections, be they ADSL, T1 or cellular, have a satellite based backup, yea it has latency, but who cares, many of the NMA's most telecommuters I log into are by their nature slow anyway, but with satellite I can stay at home recover from the damage and still do my job and get paid.       

[GabeU]

@WT4FEC

Good thinking.  Like you said, it's not anything that anyone would ever recommend, including myself, but still, good thinking.  

[BirdDog · Accepted solution]

I say good on ya!

Very smart thinking creating an alignment pin. The mount, pole and dish are not items you ever have to return anyway. Getting the dish and radio inside out of harms way was the way to go. Chances are if left on the pole everything would have been damaged or destroyed including a bent/unset/off vertical pole.

Good old American ingenuity is what made this country great back in the day. I give you kudos personally.

Come to think of it an alignment pin should be something on all installs.

[GabeU]

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@BirdDog wrote:

Come to think of it an alignment pin should be something on all installs.

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Agreed!

And for the OP to make realigning the dish practiclly foolproof like that was a great idea.  I probably would have scratched the metal with an awl or something, but the hole and bit is a MUCH better idea.    

[C0RR0SIVE]

Kind of surprised there isn't an alignment pin that installers can drill the pole out for, then again, it's usually the pole that gives out in some way.

[WT4FEC]

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@BirdDog wrote:

I say good on ya!

Very smart thinking creating an alignment pin. The mount, pole and dish are not items you ever have to return anyway. Getting the dish and radio inside out of harms way was the way to go. Chances are if left on the pole everything would have been damaged or destroyed including a bent/unset/off vertical pole.

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The pole is schedule 40 pipe it can take a beating, the dish not so much and the TRIA pole is fragile.

While removing and resetting the antenna not in regulatory compliance, I would much rather have my antenna up and operating after the storm versus looking like this.

I have done a ton of satcomm work and have a Birdog meter I don't know if ti could be used to properly align a HughesNet antenna.

  

[MarkJFine]

@WT4FEC
Good thinking, good story, and most of all - real glad you're ok.