Thursday, August 2, 2012

The big day has come

Today we are going to tackle the replacement of the AC units.  The campground owner is going to help me get the units on the roof.  We have gotten together all the items we think we need to do what we hope is a straight forward remove and replace.  If we have time we will also install our cellular amplifying system today.  We got the few items necessary for that install and have planned out the project.  There is an exterior antenna that is hard wired to an amplifier, and then an interior antenna that is also hard wired to the amp.  That way the exterior antenna picks up the cell signal, amplifies it, and sends it through the interior antenna to our cell phones or Verizon modem.  We have high hopes that it will work superbly and get us internet in those weak signal areas!  The exterior antenna has to be at least 15 feet from the interior antenna and optimally 20 feet or more.  That poses a challenge combined with the fact the exterior antenna is 30 inches long, where do you mount it where a tree branch won't rip it off the roof?  We did solve that issue, we are going to mount it to our "Batwing" antenna next to where we mounted our exterior WiFi antenna.  The "Batwing" is an over the air TV antenna that we never use for TV.  It is motorized, in that it raises and lowers and rotates from a remote pad inside the motorhome.  Since we don't use it as a TV antenna it provides a fantastic spot to raise and lower the extra antennas.  We were worried that the motor wasn't going to be strong enough to raise the extra weight of two antennas but we experimented with it yesterday and it works like a charm!  BUT, that definitely sets the position of the exterior antenna, and where we were originally going to mount the interior antenna puts it too close the the exterior antenna.  We played around and have come up with a new spot for the interior antenna that should work.
The day is beautiful, cool, no rain in the forecast until this evening so I better quit typing and get doing!

2 comments:

Nancy said...

Hoping this all goes well for you today and then you have a few weeks at least without needing some sort of repairs, etc!

Bill said...

Thanks for the good wishes. As you can see from the next post, it went well, but much slower than we anticipated, but it works!