I have a long history with tv addictions.....as a young 4 or 5 year old I remember we had an old tv given to us, it was a nice wooden cabinet for like a piece of fine furniture than anything you buy these days, that would have been back in the 50's. It had a funny round screen and was rather greenish in color, not the gray of most black and white tvs. It only worked a few times and always needed new tubes.
Back then most grocery or drug stores had a tube machine.....it had many sockets for you to plug your tubes into and test....
As you can see the tester had drawers full of most of the popular tubes...lots of fun for a kid like me...
I remember my dad watching Friday Night Fights......they were hard core fights, usually heavy weights fighters and the fighters really looked beat up back them......much more so than today...well maybe not.....I just Binged bloody heavy weight boxer and it's not stuff for my blog.....LOL
Anyway the old 40's tv never got used much and it was given away to a antique dealer....
I found one similar to ours...it is the one on the bottom left in this photo...
We had another portable tv in the early 60's.....it was plastic, futuristic and would be cool today.... They had rabbit ears unless you were rich in which case you had an antenna on you roof. Portable meant there where no legs....you had to sit it on a table or something and you could easily pick it up and move it around the house, readjust the rabbit ears and you were ready to go.
We had rabbit ears with tons of aluminum foil stuck on the ears to increase reception.... and it worked!!
Made you look a bit trailer trashy....but....it worked, my mon would usualy tear it off after I goet it working just right.
What I remember most about our second tv were the odd looking pattern left on the tv when the stations went off air...
I remember watching the launch of the earliest spacecraft....
Back then, they would just show the live rocket sitting on the pad for hours with the ticking down of the clock showing on the screen, they would leave it like that with no talking or anything.....and I would stand there starring at the screen till I made myself late for school.....a habit I had for much of my school career.
When I got into the 5th grade we got another hand me down black and white portable tv from my mothers parents.....they were rich and got to buy one of the first color tvs.
I remember how exciting it was to see the NBC peacock.....
Now remember we had black and white so we saw it in black and white, but still it was exciting to know we were watching collor shows just like the movies.....lol.
My first time watching color tv was Thanksgiving dinner at Uncle Lee Liston's house....he was the winning est football coach in Utah for many years back in the 30s 40s and maybe 50s......so we watched football.....man where those bowl game fields green.
Romper Room, I LOVE LUCY,SOUPY SALES,GUN SMOKE, RIFLEMAN,THE MONKEYS (Sandy got to spend some time with Davy and Mickey...I tease her about Davy being her boyfriend ) and don't forget the Munsters with their cool cars.
So what was this story about?????
Satellite tv in my rv......
I have the solar system to power it so I brought it with me.....
I got the service department to send a tech out to the house before I left and got a 2 hour lesson on setting it up for free......and I did not have to buy into the expensive program they tried to sell me for rvers.....just do not have all the local channels......but I do have them here at Lake Mead.....cool!!!
The first time I tried to set it up, it took hours and I had plenty of help....Mark and Dieter come to mind....thanks guys!!!
When I moved to Lake Mead I was on my own......I tried and I tried....no luck, so for a few weeks (?) I was without tv, I stopped off by a camp site of Berry and Mini and Berry came over the next day and offered to sett it up.....wow it was so exciting to see tv.....I thanked him and he drove off.....we had not tightened the bolts on the stand and guess what happened when the wind blew.....no tv and Berry was just getting out of yelling range....I thought how hard can it be......well hard enough I gave up!!!
after a day or two, I got out there again and guess what I found.....RED lines....
I had been shown how to get the needed settings off the tv by pluggin in the zip code.....it gives you the skeew....I knew that was still set correctly.
Azimuth......you need a compass for this one
and elevation......how hard can it be????
Well being an old gear head, I looked at the elevation bolts and just adjusted them like on a motorcycle.....you know use the center of the bolt and line it up on the mark....my mark would be 47 here at the lake.....then things should work just right.
The hidden red line....LOLWell don't know how I found this little hidden red line or better yet how I missed it....get that right and presto.....easy peasy....tv.
Now what a HAPPY CAMPER I became......tv, local Utah channels gave me some of my now favorite shows...Blue Bloods, Elementary, Unforgettable and Up to date Survivor. This has to be my favorite spot so far this year.
BREAKING NEWS.......BLM IS MOVING OFF THE RANCH......hope it is not just for now!!!!!
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