Busy, busy

In addition to making some decisions, we have taken advantage of this glorious weather to do a few more projects.  First of all, I decided to sell my kayak.  Although I enjoy it, it doesn't give me the pleasure that Jan gets from paddling around.  Of course just deciding to sell it doesn't mean it's sold, time will tell on that.  We are going to get the KaBoat, but haven't completely decided on the 14' or the 15', but we are leaning toward the 15'.

We did already sell the 37" TV we took down on Craig's list.  The WiFi external antenna and amplifier was returned to us all fixed so that needed to go back on the roof, and we had a problem with our Satellite antenna after we replaced the AC units.  Our Wingard Trav'ler antenna is an extraordinary device, with one push of a button, it raises up from a stowed position on the roof, whirls around a few times and locks on to 5 satellites to give us HD TV!  Amazing, even the DirecTV guy was impressed with the signal strength it gets all automatically.  When we replaced the 2 AC units this summer, we noticed that the front one interfered just a bit with the dish when it stowed, but figured it wasn't a big deal.  You see, the new AC unit was just a little bigger than the old one, so when the dish came down the LNBF would press against the AC unit then go past and stow.  We thought we might have to alter the front of the AC to make it miss, but hadn't done anything yet.  A few weeks ago, all of a sudden, we stopped getting HD channels.  At first we thought the receiver had gone bad, so after a few minutes on the phone with DirecTV, we confirmed it was not the receiver.  I called Winegard about the dish antenna, and we found out the LNBF was good but not aligned properly.  We knew immediately why.  The constant rubbing against the AC unit when stowing and extending took its toll and bent the arm, although we didn't admit to Winegard what had happened ;-)  We ordered a replacement, mounted it, and got our HD channels back.  We knew we would have to fix the problem.

Well, we got out our installation manual for the antenna, and determined we had room to move the antenna 2" forward so it would not interfere with the AC unit.  That would be a much better solution than cutting or altering the AC unit.  So with two projects to do on the roof we waited til the weather got perfect.  As you saw in the pictures we have NO shade at our site.  So with 65 degrees and a nice breeze we decided it was time for our high level work.  So Jan and I moved the dish, and remounted the WiFi antenna, and all is well.  No interference at all as the dish goes up or down!

We have awnings that sit above our slide outs, called slide toppers, pretty novel, huh?  They keep rain, dirt, snow, etc off the top of the slides.  We had replaced the fabric awhile back, and we noticed that some of the stitching was starting to fray.  When we went to the big RV Supershow in Tampa, I stopped at the Carefree booth to complain about the way the fabric was wearing.  The rep was very nice and asked how long I had had the fabric, well I thought it had been just over a year, she said even though it was out of warranty, they would fudge and replace all my slide toppers.  WOW, super!  She said she would call me after the show and I could give her the exact model numbers, and the exact date I replaced them.  I said sure.  So we got back and looked it all up and found out they were really a little over 2 years old, whoops, how time flies!

Well, she called and I sheepishly told her I had been wrong about how old they were, and was sorry to have bugged her.  She said no problem, and for goodwill they would replace ONE for free if I wanted to determine which one was the worst.  So that arrived here 3 days ago.  So I rented two big stepladders and Jason and I replaced the slide topper.

So busy, busy, feels good to get things done.  Our list is getting smaller!