The foibles of sending an engineer to do a technicians job

This story starts early on Monday when I texted Cybele to see if Jemma could come and stay with Ellie in Stanthorpe for a few days.  There is not much mobile coverage at Stanthorpe way and so it was not until around 3pm that Cybele and I managed to connect.  And yes it was OK for Jemma to visit.

Jemma and Dan were at Daryl & Wendy's playing with Steven in the pool.  Phoned them and briefed them on the plan.  Drove over picked up Jemma and took her home to pack.  I packed a bag for Dan and somewhere in all of this Chris arrived on his bike and put some PJ's in a back pack and rode off.  Jemma and I hopped in the Vito and drove toward Stanthorpe.  The first stop being to drop Dan's clothes in at Steven's. (~5pm)


7:00PM
Upon arrival in Warwick we stopped in at the Von Steiglit's where Clare whipped up a lovely dinner Chicken, rice & veggies and washed it down with a Christmas pudding that Lewis seemed to acquired in dubious circumstances involving a delayed foreclosure or something.

10pm ish.
Arrived at Cybele's where it transpired Ellie had kept herself awake.  Jemma hopped into bed.


4:40am
Opened one eye.  Checked time.  Closed eye.

5:01am
Drove out toward Toowoomba.

7am
Arrived Toowoomba and dropped into the hardware store and bought a tap reseater and some tap washers and screw on F connectors.  Then drove to Richard Hodgson's where I was treated to a wonderful omelet for breakfast.  This was definitely the highlight of the day.




Drove to Sinclair st and did a quick reconnoiter.  Decided to start with the leaking laundry tap.  Upon dismantling it, I discover a tap washer of a style that I have never seen before and a seat that is not one that can be fixed with the reseater.  Hmm.  Decide to ponder that one and check the state of the kitchen tap washers.  A lucky decision because the cold tap in the Kitchen sports the same mysterious washer as the laundry while the hot tap has a standard tap washer.  This leads me to conclude that the mysterious arrangement is an after market upgrade.  I extract the removable seat from the laundry tap and make use of my newly acquired reseater.  I then reassemble the tap using one of the washers purchased this morning.  Turned the water back on and guess what it leaks.  I suspect someone discovered that once before.

Had a look at the toilet.  Also leaking.  The float valve not closing.  Decided, stuff this.  Turned off the water, flushed the toilet and removed the valve mechanism.  With the toilet valve and the mysterious tap seat in hand I made my way back to the hardware shop.   A nice man directed me to the toilet mechanisms and for $9 you could buy a repair kit but I chose a complete new mechanism for $20.  The fellow looked at the mysterious tap seat and shook his head and said he had never seen anything like it and offered me an array of tap washers and seats and wot not.  Decided to follow the same path as with the toilet and bought a whole new tap for $23.  As a small aside I noticed my phone had no service.

Back home.  Fitted toilet mechanism and tap.  Turned the water back on and both work perfectly.

Now for the easy bit.  Electrical stuff.  I had brought a new TV antenna that Ross had had at work.  Packed some tools into my back pack & climbed up on the roof.  In my younger days I could put one arm on the top of the tank and the other hand on the gutter and lift myself up.  Now it is prop ladder against tank stand and climb onto tank stand.  Then lift ladder up and prop against roof and climb onto the roof.  Much more genteel.

Some time around 1977, mum had arranged two antennas on the roof. The VHF antenna pointed at Brisbane (0, 2, 7 & 9) and the UHF antenna was used to receive the local 10, 4 5A station.  These were combined on the roof with some kind of passive diplexer that had rusted out and the ribbon cable from the VHF antenna was shredded.


The nuts on the old antennas were well and truly rusted.  Looking for a quick fix here so I just clamped the new antenna on below the old antenna.  Someone had mentioned that there was a transmitter at Picnic point as well as Mt Lofty. A pair of side cutters and snipped the coax where it entered the rusted out diplexer.  Inside the coax looked good.  There was no white powder on the shield and the centre conductor was a shiny copper colour.  Attached one of the screw on F connectors that I had bought this morning.  Some electrical tape to keep out the weather.

I had brought my own TV to use to test it.  Took it inside and connected it up and turned it on.  Scanned for channels - Nothing.  Mmmm maybe the Picnic Point idea was just a bad rumor.

Back up on the roof and swiveled the antenna round to point at Mt Lofty.  Back inside and scan and we get 7 digital channels and they are all SBS in some form.  Maybe the proximity of the VHF antenna is somehow shielding the new antenna.


Back up on the roof and with spanner in hand gradually worked away at the very rusted nuts of both the UHF and VHF antennas.  Back down stairs and no improvement.

Check out the size of the VHF antenna.  Look at the length of the "reflector" on the road. 

Not having any idea what frequencies are being used in Toowoombawifi" and netbook.  It boots and announces SMS only.  The netbook connects and amazingly google comes up albeit very slowly. I wonder if I was surfing the net by SMS? From this pitifully slow connection, I can establish that all the Toowoomba channels are in the 700MHz band.  I am pretty sure that the antenna covers this.

It's coming up to lunch time so I figure I should take a break.  A good idea in principle but even with the break I missed an important point that the astute engineer would have already worked out. Tried to find Jaycar but missed them.  Observed no service on my phone.  This is Toowoomba.  The largest non costal city in Australia I am told and has the Vodafone shop at Mt Ommany sold me a phone that won't work in Toowoomba.  Decide to combine Maccas and a visit to the Vodafone shop with a visit to Grand Central.  The queue for Maccas is daunting so head to the Vodfone shop.  It is also packed but service was quick and the fellow apologised that there was a fault and that everywhere from Toowoomba Westwards was out.  Queue at Maccas was still too large so went to the flood prone maccas.  I told you that breakfast was the highlight of the day.

Decided to follow the plumbing approach and just buy new cable, connectors and a crimping tool.  With no phone service, I could not search for Jaycar.  Decided to go see the new Easterfest office.  Turns out they are in the same building as Elliott's accounting.  But they are closed.  Drove around.  Could not find jaycar.  Took a deep breath and walked into Dick Smith.  The kind man sold me a 20m roll of RG6 ($40) and 4 F connectors for $9 and a good looking F type crimping tool for $10.  Ten bucks! I should have been suspicious.

Got home.  It's stinking hot so I start to put the F connector on the cable at ground level with the intention of minimising my time on the roof.  The DSE fellow has sold me RG59 size connectors that wont fit on RG6 cable.  But luckily I have one RG6 F connector in my tool box.  Now I find out why the crimping tool was only $10.  Only superman would have the strength to use it and as there is only one of him it kind of limits the market for these tools.

Grrffrrr.
The phone works at home because we are East of the top of the range.  I assume it connects to Grantham or Gatton.  Look up the Jaycar address.  Seems I drove right past it earlier in the day.  Typical.  Drive down.  Buy a new more expensive crimping tool ($33) and 4 x RG6 F connectors.  Then down to DSE where armed with my unusable crimp tool and undersized F connectors I queue along with half a dozen people for the lone fellow to service.  Gave up.  I was not going to wait that long.

Back home and the crimp tool works a treat.  Make up the cable.  Up on the roof.  Connect it up.  In the laundry connect the other end to the TV and tell it to tune.  It was not long before we had 30 or so channels.

Go to look into running this cable and discover that the hole in the roof is too small and so is the hole in the lounge room floor.  The old cable is RG59 which is slightly thinner than RG6. Then the penny drops.  The RG6 has proved that antenna is OK.  With the RG59 we got SBS but none of the other stations.  I had assumed the old cable was too lossy but cable loss is broad band and yet we were getting SBS.  That meant that whatever was causing the problem with the RG59 was not loss and remember the cable looked visually good.  Took the previously unwanted RG59 size F connectors and replaced all the connectors on the old cable including at the joiner.  Back on the roof and put a new F connector on the old RG59 and connected it to the antenna.  Now with the old cable the TV would find 30odd channels.  Plugged it into the tenants TV.  Switched it on and there we have it.  All working.