We had been tracking the new satellite system since I finally got the UPS tracking
number last Friday. (Hmmm...I thought satellites usually tracked people rather than people tracking satellites.) It was scheduled for
delivery on Wednesday and we were hoping it would not arrive late in the day
because we had to drive 3 hours to Billings, Montana, to Bretz RV Sales with
whom we had an appointment on Thursday
to get it installed.
Since we had a little extra time that morning, I decided to
give the motorhome a very good cleaning while we waited on the satellite to
arrive. Also, we decided to flush out
the black tank several times because we had not done that in a couple of weeks. When Chuck does this, he lets the black tank
nearly fill up and then flush it out several times to try to get it as clean as
possible. Of course, someone has to look
down the toilet with a flashlight occasionally
to see how close the tank is to filling up and that someone would be me.
In my usual multi-tasking fashion, I decided to answer my
phone when it rang rather than let it go to voice mail while performing my
P.L.O. (Permanent Latrine Orderly) duties because I was expecting a call from a
campground where I was trying to make reservations in Washington State in
August. While I was on the phone trying
to make the reservations, Chuck asks me from outside the motorhome "Is it
close to filling up?" I go to the
bathroom, press down on the toilet pedal to look inside and....... well,
let's just say we almost had an RV movie moment. (Remember in the movie RV when Richard
Williams is trying to dump his tanks in his rental RV for the first time at a dump
station?)
When I pressed down on the toilet pedal to look down the toilet,
we had a small backsplash explosion up the toilet (fortunately hitting only me,
the toilet and the floor). I told the guy I was on the phone with I would have to call him back and
then proceeded to change my clothes and mop up and disinfect the bathroom. Thankfully, it happened after the 3rd flush
so the tank was cleaner than if it was the 1st flush. The backsplash did not necessitate my having
to put on my "Hazardous
Materials" uniform and mask. :)
Lesson #1 for the P.L.O.: Don't try to do two things at once when you
are responsible for visually monitoring the fill level of the black tank from
the toilet perspective while the black tank is being flushed out.
The campground office knew we were expecting the delivery
and allowed us to stay in the site until the satellite arrived unless the next camper
who had the site reserved came in early.
Fortunately, the UPS truck was on time and we were headed for Billings,
Montana, by 1 pm.
Bretz RV allowed us to boondock in the parking lot across
the street so we didn't even let the slides out or the jacks down. The parking lot backed up to I-90 so it was a
little noisy and we didn't get much sleep.
We also could hear noise from an oil refinery on the other side of the
interstate.
The service tech at Bretz (Chris) started working on
replacing the satellite by 9:00 am on Thursday.
About two hours later, Chris asked us to come out to the coach to turn the satellite on because he did not realize that we had a six-way power outlet behind the receivers powering the satellite. I turned
it on and got the same message: AZ motor
stalled. (Great!) On top of that, Chris said the new satellite
was making this clicking noise as it turned.
(Wonderful!) And a really nasty
thunderstorm came up and lightening started popping with Chris standing on top
of our RV. (You couldn't write this kind
of stuff in a movie.)
Chris called Winegard for assistance, and like us, had to
wait for someone to call him back. When
he told them the problem the Winegard Tech Support guy said "what?" They suggested he run another cable to see if
the problem was in the cable. Still same
error. While waiting for Winegard to
call him back again, Chris further inspected the new satellite and
saw that two of the teeth on the gear of the new replacement satellite were
broken (which is why we were hearing that clicking sound).
He decided to try using the gear from the old satellite
(that had a good gear but a bad motor).
We turned the satellite on and after about 20 minutes of the satellite
trying to find the DirecTV satellite way down in the southern sky, it locked on
and worked. We stowed the satellite and
it worked. And we tried it one more time
turning it on, letting it lock on to the satellite, and then stowing and it
worked.
Hopefully, it will keep working. What probably should have taken a couple of
hours to replace took nearly all day.
Thank you very much to a persistent Chris who kept working on it (with
little or no help from Winegard) and figuring out how to make it work and to
Brian, the service manager, for allowing him the time to figure it out.
After not getting much sleep boondocking next to the
interstate the night before, we decided to stay at Yellowstone River Campground
in Billings for one night. It was kind
of pricy at $52 for electric and water only.
Because of the trees and the difficulty locking into DirecTV in the
Montana sky, it took what seemed like an hour for the satellite to lock on and
work...but work it did. Thank goodness!
From our campsite, we saw these two deer walk up behind the
dog walking area (there weren't any dogs around at the time).
But before long, some people began walking their dogs and
off they went.
On Friday morning, we had to take the old satellite system
to a UPS store to get it shipped back to Winegard. Thankfully, all of this (we hope) has been
covered under their warranty of 2 years on materials and 1 year on labor. I say "we hope" because it took so
long to install the new satellite because of the defective gear and lack of
response from Winegard. "We
hope" that Winegard pays the labor to Bretz RV in full like they should.
We finally decided that we will go to the FMCA rally in
Gillette next week so we said good-bye to Billings...
...and headed back to Wyoming.
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