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One nice thing about Cable TV....

skijay

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
911
Points
16
Location
MA
I have been having a problem with my reception on my satellite dish. It seems that at night I have nothing, every satellite & channel I get nothing. During the daytime it is fine. When the picture goes it is gone, no fading, just gone. I suspected that it was the LNB that was burning out since this system is 9 years old. The hard part is this is for a C-band dish and I can not just go to WalMart and buy a new one like you can for a DBS dish.

After I opened the pool today I decided to walk through waist high grass to get to my dish. I made sure I had plenty of DEET on. I open up the ladder and start to climb up to access the "cone" and three wasps flew out. I suspected that I may have a nest inside and possibly it was blocking something or maybe a wire became frayed inside. As I carefully unscrewed the cone, more wasps flew out. I had to do this quick and bail from the ladder. Well I got it off and to my surprise it was full of old nests and new ones and lots of angry wasps! I used a little bit of wasp killer, came back in an hour, cleaned up the nests. I found the coaxial cable from the LNB to the receiver had the plastic and the insulation chewed off inside the cone. This was where a newly formed wasp nest was. My guess is at night time the weight of the nest inside caused the coax to touch metal and therefore cause a short. I replaced the 12 foot long piece of coax and all seems well.

I did all of this because I ordered HBO to watch the Sopranos!

Here is my nest collection. There was one active wasp nest on this side, the other side, not pictured was where they swarmed:
waspdish060207.jpg
 

bvibert

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Aug 30, 2004
Messages
30,394
Points
38
Location
Torrington, CT
Damn wasps! At least you got it figured out and fixed relatively cheaply.
 

Marc

New member
Joined
Sep 12, 2005
Messages
7,526
Points
0
Location
Dudley, MA
Website
www.marcpmc.com
RUN AWAY.



I was using a weed whacker once and disturbed a nest of yellow jackets. I dropped the trimmer and ran but the trimmer was still running. After a half hour of the yellow jackets attacking the trimmer it finally ran out of gas.

I wisely chose to retrieve the trimmer the next day.
 
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