Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Lake Havasu Balloon Festival 2016

Going Up!

This is our second LHC balloon festival and the 6th Annnual Lake Havasu Balloon Festival.

Yesterday the 6th Lake Havasu Balloon Festival got off to a cloudy start — the morning  mass ascension was cancelled because of wind and a light rain. Bummer.

However, this morning (Saturday) the festival got off to a great start. The mass balloon ascension got off to a great start at about 7:30am.

Jan went with some of our friends on a pontoon ride to watch the balloons. I biked to London Bridge to take some pics and movies . . .

New DISH Hopper 3

Updated 1/20/2016

Some DISH dealer information . . .

• Hopper 3
• Joey 2.0
• 4K Joey
• #50 Remote
• #52 Remote
• DISH Pro Hybrid Networking

Just announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the DISH Hopper 3 is a major leap forward in satellite TV technology as well as a boon to RVers. See WIRED, Verge, or CNET articles.

This new DISH Whole-House (or RV) DVR features the following:

PROS:

• 16 tuners (Yikes !!!)
• USB 3.o – allows connecting fast hard drives to a Hopper 3.
• 4K ULTRA HD capabilities
• Broadcom BCM7445 Quad Core ARM @ 1.5 GHz chipset (It’s really fast)
• New “Carbon” user interface (Looks like DirecTV now)
• 2 TB hard drive (like the other older Hoppers)
• YouTube app (Yes!)
• HopperGO – a 64GB hard drive with a built-in private WiFi network that allows you to take your favorite Hopper 3 shows wherever you go. (Available in Spring for a one-time $99 fee).
  
• Hopper 3 available in January for $15/month. Some users (?) will be able to get a free upgrade.
• Only one Hopper 3 available per antenna. You can connect up to 6 Joeys to a Hopper 3, but that’s it — you can’t connect another Hopper 3 ( Hopper 2 or 1), or a SuperJoey.
• Simplified Wiring – you’ll only need 1 wire from your Winegard Travler or a portable satellite dish to connect a Hopper 3.

CONS:

• Hopper 3 requires DPH (DISH Pro Hybrid) equipment and if you use a portable dish, it must be a 1000.2 with a DPH LNB, not a 1000.4 dish. If you have a Winegard Travler SK-1000, you must upgrade the current DISH Pro Plus (DPP) LNB to a DPH. See Winegard Travler DPH Upgrade Instructions.
• You can only have ONE Hopper 3. While 16 tuners is great, so is redundancy . . . some folks (including me) have more than one Hopper as a backup — if one fails, you can still watch TV. With one Hopper 3 and some Joeys . . . if your Hopper 3 takes a powder, you’re SOL because your Joeys need a Hopper.
• You must use a 1000.2 dish. Sure, that means you can use your Winegard Travler (once it’s converted to DPH), but 1000.4 or 1000+ dishes will not work. Note: an Eastern Arc DPH LNB is available along with the Western Arc DPH LNB for the 1000.2.

New Hopper 3 with New Remote (same footprint as other two Hoppers)

Winter Is Coming

Up until now the lot of us in Arizona have been kind of jealous of the balmy “Winter” weather up north.

Up until now.

During the last 24 hours we have been experiencing constant, 20 – 40 MPH winds as low pressure moves through the Southwest.

The winds hit us about 3:30 AM Saturday (It woke us up), and it hasn’t stopped since. The wind was strong enough to kick up enough sand so we couldn’t see the mountains all morning.

It’s headed your way — up North — as a “Panhandle Hook”.

Fasten your seat belt.

See This Movie

I Origins

Merry Christmas (Part 2)

!

JAN & ME: Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way . . .

OUR NEIGHBOR: Hey, your electrical box is smoking !!!

JAN & ME: Where’d our power go?

Yes, indeed, when we went outside to check, there was smoke coming out of the top of our electrical pedestal.

We pulled all our breakers and called the campground for help.

Harold to the Rescue

Long story short . . .

One of the buried power line “legs” fried. It seems someone (who shall remain nameless) dumped salt water from our water softener near the power pedestal yesterday.

Because the campground power cables are 20+ years old, one of the cables didn’t take well to being drowned in a solution of highly conductive salt water. C’est la vie.

The guys from the campground had it fixed in a jiffy, and we — along with several other park models — were up and running again.

Ho! Ho! Ho!