After reading and hearing about my earlier entry my former roommates gave me lots of encouragement (harassment) to get up on roof without concern. With this new found courage I decided to try the antenna again. I did it the way I originally had thought of, by placing my shorter ladder on the deck and getting on roof. Then I walked the length of the roof to get to where I wanted to mount the antenna.
What I realized was that the absolute worst part of the whole experience (for me at least) was the getting off ladder onto roof and the reverse. I didn't exactly love the rest of the whole roof thing but it wasn't all bad. By the end I was almost comfortable moving around up there.
I only had to redrill one set of holes since I didn't line up the upper and lower bracket properly. Also I only dropped one tool (on accident) which was my socket wrench I was using to tighten down the lag bolts. In many ways mounting the antenna while on the roof was easier than it was standing up on 15' tall ladder. I just lay down on roof and reached over the edge. The one part that was much easier was the actual placing of the antenna. Last time I had a 10' long pole with the antenna on one end just swinging around. This time I placed one 5' pole in the braces and then just placed the antenna mounted on the other pole on top of it. Much easier this time and no tangling in the electrical wires.
It still took me about 4 hours since I was going slow and careful. Mostly I couldn't carry everything up at once so there were many trips back and forth. One of the hardest things was drilling the hole through my outer wall to get the wires through. It was tough concrete that took a while to break through, and then the hole was just barely big enough to get the cables in. Luckily everything worked perfectly once I hooked it all up.
The only downside is that I was hoping to be able to get the DC stations. I can't seem to get a whiff of them. I was able to get the Baltimore stations in Alexandria so I was hoping the reverse would be true. I even bought a bigger antenna in hopes of helping, but no dice. It is so nice to have HD again though, football, lost, CSI, er and everything else.
Leave a comment