As promised, Winegard was contacted first thing the next morning (see previous post), which was a Friday. To my and the technician's dismay they defaulted to their standard routine of wanting to replace the data cable. Never mind it has already been replaced twice, they are sure that is the problem. Now we have to wait some number of days for the shipment to arrive, install it and then by the technician's and my prediction, confirm that the data cable is not the problem.
Alb. has a lot to offer so we thought we would make it around to a number of them over the weekend while waiting on UPS to do their thing. It was a good plan but it was not to be. The winds we have been having in the preceding days turned out to only be a warm-up for what the weekend had in store. From the moment we got in bed Thursday night the wind hit a steady 50 mph with long bursts cresting at 70 mph. For the next four days visibility oscillated between a few hundred feet and zero because of blowing dirt. You may have noticed an absence of photographs in this and the last post. With dirt so heavy in the air there is no way I am getting my camera out of its bag.
Monday came and went without a shipment, then Tuesday came and went the same. On Wednesday we got word that UPS left the shipment on the doorstep Tuesday evening and that Chuck, our technician would be coming to our rig to do the install. What a blessing that is. We will not have to move the rig to the repair shop and be homeless for the day.
Chuck arrived as scheduled and we got the data cable out and almost started to fish it through the walls when I got a brainstorm to just string it from the control box to the dish. Chuck plugged his end into the dish and tossed my end down to me where I took it through the door and plugged it into the control box. Voila, the dish started working. But like before we were not ready to claim victory. This time it only took two cycles of raising and stowing the antenna before it began displaying the now all too familiar "no communication with antenna" message. Like we expected, it was not the data cable. Back to Winegard. But disappointingly they wanted to replace yet another component that has already been replaced twice, the control box.
This means instead of getting to Flagstaff today as we were scheduled to, we will be spending another week in Albuquerque. That's okay but I think most of that time will be wasted waiting on chasing a repair down a rabbit hole. I don't know what it is going to take to get the Winegard people to think deeper about what the problem is.
Stay tuned if you can stand to hear me whining.
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