Outside antenna rotator question...

[dpb]

Far SW KS. Cattle are subject to suffocation in heavy snow/wind from nostrils becoming hard-packed with snow they can't get clear. This was severe blizzard conditions of high snowfall rates combined with 40-50 mph winds for a period of 24 to nearly 48 hours in some locations. Total numbers I've heard so far are about 1-2,000 head in KS, but there's fear in SE and E CO of as many as 30,000 in serious jeopardy. I've not heard hard counts as yet from there, but the Guards of both KS and CO are still helicopter-dropping hay to stranded cattle. The other serious problem now is, of course, water since most rural areas are still without power and all water here is subterranean. They can get a little by trying to eat some snow, of course, but by now it's frozen solid with some thawing and then the hard freezing over night and in many places covered by inch or more of ice so can't get sufficient water for a longer term that way.

We were in the freezing rain band for most of the duration as the front essentially stalled and didn't move more the 40-50 miles from Friday until it finally cleared here late Saturday. Even then, further north and west where the worst was continued to get snow and wind from the "backside" wraparound effect behind the low long after (like another 12 hours or more) it was already clear here. We had over 5" of precipitation of which 2" or so was freezing rain, so you can imagine what that would have amounted to in all snowfall and high winds. The NWS total precipitation radar estimates had a maximums of nearly 12" moisture when it was over. I suspect this was an over-estimate since those areas were almost all snow rather than rain, but I have heard 8" totals reported.

I don't have any specific URLs, but look for news stories on the storm(s) of last two week(s) in CO and KS. I've not looked to see what sort of coverage the Denver Post gave to the second storm that mostly bypassed them after the Christmas week bullet on the airport, but would be a start. Wichita Eagle, Hutchinson, (KS) News, Garden City and Dodge City, KS, Lamar and LaJunta (CO) are possibilities. We take the Wichita paper and they've had some coverage, but certainly not on the details of the livestock operations although do mention numbers and general problems. Not had the newest High Plains Journal, a weekly ag paper to see what their coverage is, but their site is at

and might be of some interest anyway.

[dpb]

That certainly has not been an option I've been offered nor heard advertised here, but as I noted, it isn't the programming that I'm interested in. The closest I've heard on the "rental" thing has a hefty up-front payment that isn't refundable and the deferred or included installation fees are then collectible and payable and aren't all the cheap. And, even if they did, it doesn't solve the problem of the "locals" not being the ones I have interest in.

And, yes, no one here has DVR, TIVO. Also, there's only one set and there are not going to be any more. It doesn't help any to kill the commercials during the local news and weather; it isn't going to get it transmitted any earlier, and as soon as it and the sports are over, it usually goes on mute again, anyway; the wife goes to bed and I read a while longer. I may listen to the "Top Ten" list or the Leno "Headlines" on Mondays, but other than that, "off" is the normal position. (Oh, I forgot, Red Green usually gets his shot on Friday night as does the local farm markets weekly review show.)

[hallerb]

my best friend from 8th grade has a 2 year old. i traded some old satellite stuff for a slightly used TIVO. friends hubby got nose out of joint we just watch whats on when its on attitude.

I set up tivo with a push button for regular tv expecting the comments.

her 2 year old loves watching his favorite shows, he operates it great. her hubby loves sports, replaying football plays, the family is now firmly a TIVO one:)

she watches our 4 dogs anytime we go away, it was a nice thank you.

she asked me to remove the swich now they always watch TIVO

[hallerb]

my best friend from 8th grade has a 2 year old. i traded some old satellite stuff for a slightly used TIVO. friends hubby got nose out of joint we just watch whats on when its on attitude.

I set up tivo with a push button for regular tv expecting the comments.

her 2 year old loves watching his favorite shows, he operates it great. her hubby loves sports, replaying football plays, the family is now firmly a TIVO one:)

she watches our 4 dogs anytime we go away, it was a nice thank you.

she asked me to remove the swich now they always watch TIVO

[dpb]

OK, how would/could it help with any of the issues _I_ have? None, that I can see.

I've not had a 2-yr old for over 30 years and certainly don't expect any more. But, for the most part, it is about the right intellectual level of most tv content, I'll agree.

While I do enjoy sports to an extent, it's a case of can "take if or leave it" and certainly not of sufficient interest that would play stuff over and over or rewatch old games, etc. The wife's level of interest is even less...

You seem to have a difficult time with the thought that somebody else's interests and activities don't seem to mirror yours... :)

[hallerb]

OK, how would/could it help with any of the issues _I_ have? None,

you see untill you or a good friend uses one you cant understand how it really changes your life:(

prime time shows have nearly 20 minutes of commercials that I skip thru, for each hour I get that time back to do other things, and avoid hemmroid and other messages:)

hey that gal looked nice, run it back:) what did they say? run it back:)

Phone rings just pause tv.

2 good similiar shows on at same time? why choose I record them both.

Now before you say VCRs do stuff like this NO VCR will allow you to start waching a show thats already recording skip thru commercials and catch up by the end

It REALLY changes how you look at tv forever!

[dpb]

Only can change your life it you let it. That, to me, is the fundamental difference -- I have no intention or desire to change my life to conform to something else -- I'm perfectly content as I am.

There are no prime time shows worth wasting 20 minutes on, anyway, so what difference does it make?

If it wasn't worth watching the first time, why would I want to see it again?

Or let the answering machine pick it up, or ... No TV is worth enough to make it of any real significance if it goes by unseen.

Hard to find even one good show on ever, what more two. Again, tastes vary, and I have no idea what you watch or think "good", but as noted previously, with something approaching 100 channels at Mom's apartment, the likelihood of anything other than sports being anything I would watch at any point in time during an evening visiting was almost vanishingly small... :( If it hadn't been part of the basic rent at the assissted living complex, I'm sure Mom would have been just as happy without it as she was never a TV-watcher, either.

Again, only if you let it. OK, I could record the 15 minutes of local interest on the evening news and weather and cut out the 2-minute segment between the two where Bucklin Tractor plays their commercial and another one and then play it back in 13 minutes instead of 15. Or start watching (really, only listening) five or ten minutes later in the broadcast. Whoopee! :) If I'm watching the Friday "Farm and Market", it's on local PBS and is straight-through.

I read a lot; this winter has been Churchill's four-volume history of WWII. That got me into some other contemporary and posthumous biographies of Churchill and others. Other than that, have been working on a syllabus for a series of Adult CE courses on modern physics and similar topics, hopefully to start teaching next fall at the local Community College if I can find enough time to get it completed by then. That's been a major brushup on events since I finished grad school nearly 30 year ago, now. Then, there's the routine farm recordkeeping and bookwork. And, just to round out the schedule, there's a board or committee meeting on average of two or three nights a week plus the associated effort required to prepare and fulfill obligations of/to those organizations of which I'm an active member. Overall, there simply isn't much time to devote to TV or need to use TV for entertainment or a distraction. The wife has her own agenda -- different, but not much (if any) less full...

[dpb]

...

...

Yes, it wouldn't be hard to make a controller that I could use from the entrance point in the attic; the problem is the local interface in a convenient place w/o having to pull new cable through the two story exterior wall or w/o having to run a new cable into the basement to come out through the foundation wall (poured concrete). But, is a good thought...

On the harrassing/annoying solicitations, I'm still getting about 2 or

3 phone solicitors (all on the auto-dial robots) a day from Dish and whoever else, too. It seems their "out" on this is that if you call them once, that counts as the "business relationship" to let them off the hook on the DNC list for actual prosecution for a couple years or more... :(

[dpb]

dpb wrote:

I'll add a lot of the suffocation also comes when the herd up and try to find shelter, they'll drift along w/ the wind and tend to head to low spots like any gulleys or washouts that may provide some windbreak. In high wind and snow that gets to belly high or deeper, it's also easy for them to get down and then they're in real trouble. It's virtually impossible for an individual to walk and stay upright in such conditions, not much easier for them. The one single large loss I mentioned was at a large feeding operation and I'm sure a lot of them were in a particular lot or two and a bunch herded together and went down.

A lot of the area, particularly E CO is open range. Most of W KS isn't actually open range, but in such wind and snow, even barbed wire fences are pretty much of no use once the snow drifts over them.

With the larger operations as here, though, there simply isn't any way possible to have cover for thousands of cattle or even feasible to try to collect them when scattered over large open range pastures. Believe me, if there were any way, they certainly would as the economic loss is sizable.

We are on the smaller end of operations running from 1-2000 head over winter on wheat pasture depending on the year and have enough space at the lots to accomodate roughly two-thirds that. Except for those on rented pasture that may be upt to 20 miles away, we can usually manage to bring most of ours into the corrals at the house if the forecast is really dire. It's these kinds of decisions that are why I'm so interested in truly localized weather -- the forecast for (and actual event) even 30 miles away for this storm was drastically different than for us.

Warning -- geezer story coming!!

The last blizzard here of this magnitude I went through personally was '57. My brother and I were jr-high/early hi-school age. With our dad we brought the cattle in off pasture to the corrals and finished the morning the snow started shortly after noon. It was snowing heavily, but no wind as we finished up unsaddling the horses, etc. out in the barn, roughly 100 yards due east of the house. Just then, the wind hit and went from near-calm to almost 60 mph in only a few minutes at most--seemed instantaneous. Could see absolutely nothing, even your hand at the end of your arm and barely able to stand leaning into the wind. Dad tied the three of us together so as to not get separated and we started off across the driveway to the house. We ended at the chicken coop, having in that time traveled farther south than west, even in our own driveway that we could have walked blind-folded from directly to the yard gate! From that point we were able to follow the yard fence and get back to the house. A few yards further south and we would have missed any other outbuildings entirely and had a very difficult time indeed in finding out precisely where we were. Could have easily been lost on own farmstead. That one lasted from that Saturday noon until late Monday before the wind abated. At that time, we saw we had drifts that nearly covered the tops of 30-ft light poles. That's about what this storm was for those in the brunt of it although from what I've heard, it was more actual snow but not quite as strong of winds.

End of geezer story... :)

[George]

You can specifically request that the calls be limited to actual need such as billing and not sales solicitations.

[me]

Which is why you call them from a payphone if you want information. Better yet, dont call them. I have yet to meet any of them who are honest or reasonably priced. The dish network is one of the worst.

[mm]

How could someone have no idea what a DVR is unless he had never had a VCR?

[hallerb]

gee for my family tv is entertainment and informational. while doing other stuff, i watched a documentary on the start of the spanish american war over sinking of the battleship maine in cuba. it wasnt torpeoded, war as mistake coal bunker blew up. also watched seconds from disaster about the final columbia flight and some general enterainment. while out for dinner and new printer recorded CBS national news, watched it when we got home, following war and democrat take over of congress carefully

all whiole working on networking computers and printers, lots of dead ime on this project, waiting for reboot etc.

you know if you had a TIVO or satellite tv you might find some shows worth watching.......

some day when your around it, you too will see the value. the device is a tool for watching tv, just like a shovel is for digging a ditch

[lp13-30]

Instead of a rotator, you could add another antenna pointed to the other station, run the coax from it and the other one to a selector switch inside. My grandparents'house in upstate NY had a setup like that in the

50's-60's. Larry

[dpb]

...

Your choice, my choice is different.

[dpb]

Interesting alternative, thanks...I'll first find out if it appears the other is even accessible w/ the new antenna, then decide what to do. It looks like it would be about same $$-wise; only real potential problem I see is I'm not sure the antenna tower has the strength w/o some significant modification to handle the extra weight against the W KS winds so I might choose the rotor route for that reason alone.

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

...

I think it just dawned on me the underlying difference here -- it's owing to age, most likely. While I spent my technical career on computers from the old tube- and discrete solid-state beasties "in the beginning" to today's desktops and workstations, the fact is that fundamentally I'm still a paper person as most of my generation are. I see the same dichotomy with the current students at the Community College -- everything for them seems to have to be electronic.

My answer to the two points above which are essentially like talking with/observing the students are "turn the page back" and "stick the bookmark in", respectively.

So, we geezers had those capabilities long before TIVO (or even TV) was invented... :)

As I noted in a response a little bit ago just before this struck me, you chose/prefer the electronic medium, I choose and am much more comfortable w/ the printed still for this kind of information and for my entertainment I still really prefer the mental images generated from the printed word over the direct picture of the movie screen.

[Michael Strickland]

If local weather and storm info is your primary concern, I'd suggest that you purchase a weather radio that you can program for your local area. Just got one from Radio Shack for about $60 and it's much better than the old one it replaced - no codes to enter, you just choose your state and county from menus and it'll provide you with a list of surrounding counties to choose from. You can, of course, manually enter the county codes if you like. The radio I have in the storm shelter is not as old as the one I just replaced and it has a USB port to program the codes (similar menu choices but on the computer) - I like that option just as much as the new radio.

The radio is nice since it will provide warning without you having to turn it on - a signal from the NWS activates it. Since the NWS activates the radio, I highly recommend the programmable ones as opposed to those that come on whenever they receive the activation signal - programmable means that they only activate when the code for the particular county(ies) in the list you set up is received.

If reception is not good, you can tap into the antenna wire for the TV and rig it to the radio - takes a RCA jack on mine, which I rigged from coax to an old piece of speaker wire that has a jack on it. Of course, that means that if the weather's bad and the antenna is torn down, you may not be able to get a good signal, but you'll have been warned of the bad weather.

Although reception on the new radio is good, I have both it and the one in the storm cellar (which gets very poor reception in there) hooked into my TV antenna (which has an amplifier) and they get excellent reception. Just make a point to pay attention from time to time on Wednesdays at about 11:30AM for the test to insure that you're getting proper reception - the radio should activate and, if you have the voice option turned on, you'll hear the test message.

I don't know how good NWS coverage is in KS (I'm in GA and coverage is very good), but considering how common severe weather is in that part of the country, I'd think it would be good.

Anyway, you have another option to look at...

Later, Mike (substitute strickland in the obvious location to reply directly)

----------------------------------- [e-mail]

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[Mark Lloyd]

My grandparents (on a farm in east Texas) did that too. One channel (7) was in a very different direction than the others (3,6,12).

[Beachcomber]

If I were you, I would check on what your local stations plans are for DTV (digital television conversion). The current NTSC analog/hybrid TV system as we know it is scheduled for shutdown on Feb. 17, 2009 (This does not necessarily apply to translators, but it does apply to full power stations). You could be making a big investment for nothing. You will also need to buy a new tv or a DTV signal convertor.

Over the air reception of terrrestrial DTV signals is possible. You may need a different antenna though and the TV stations new digital transmitters may not be located at the same site as their current transmitters. Every locality will be somewhat different.

Here is a link for more info:

Note that DTV does not necessarily mean HDTV (High Definition Television). The stations are allocated the channel and the bandwidth. It's up to them how they decide to use it.

Just my opinion here... With all of these changes coming in the next two years, the satellite dish doesn't sound like a bad option.

You say you can't get a clear shot of the southern sky. Are there mountains in Wichita? The look angle is pretty high and unless you have trees everywhere on your property, it should be possible in most situations to get a clear shot at the satellite.

Beachcomber