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[ndgmtlcd]

J'habite dans un coin vraiment tranquille pas trop loin de la campagne. C'est tellement tranquille et ça fait tellement campagne, avec des voisins qui ont des pelouses immenses, qu'il y a des fois où j'ai l'impression que des Montgolfières vont se poser juste à côté de moi

Comments

[uplinktruck]

RDI has a little Gerling truck. You can tell by by the doors over the I/O panel. Gerling's prime industry is production trucks and trailers. It's interesting they went with a 1.2M Sweedish antenna. That is a small dish for a truck based on the northern edges of the satellite footprints.

Did the crew let you get a look inside?

[ndgmtlcd]

I didn't ask them. By local standards it was a phenomenally (and I wish I had a longer and more impressive word for that heat) hot and humid day. Moods can get bad. We're not used to this kind of weather. Also the single guy around seemed very busy setting things up for relaying the evening show. I really wanted to ask him if he would be eventually sending the signal to a satellite with the 1.2M dish or if he'd be using the other dish, the little dish (mounted high on top of that telescoping mast) to send it to one of the many microwave towers in the area. All the time I was there the 1.2M dish was pointed in the wrong direction, away from the equatorial com satellites. I was overcome by the heat so I didn't stay to see if the 1.2M would eventually get turned around.

[uplinktruck]

If that dish wasn't pointed somewhere between SE and SW he was using the terrestrial microwave on the mast. That is the downside to the Sweedish system. The auto locate system is not entirely reliable. If the operator doesn't know how to find the satellite manually and the fail factor comes into play, it won't work.

The other possibility is he deployed it (pressed the button that uncovers it and stands it up to the ready position) and let it do its thing while he tried for the microwave shot. I also noticed that his jacks are down which is only needed for a satellite shot. (Those keep the truck from wobbling on the springs and sweeping several hundred miles of stray RF back and forth across the arc.)

The microwave is preferable because they own the spectrum. That means it is free. If he had to use the satellite, it costs money in five or fifteen minute blocks of time depending on their vendor.

[uplinktruck]

P.S. The word we use down south is Hellaciously hot. Also common: screaming hot, bone cookin' hot, egg frying hot and "heat advisory." That last one is mostly from the weather trolls on TV.