Home » News » EsPRSS-O » A Look Back EsPRSS-O: A Look Back 30 Year Anniversary Memories The First Dish By Phil Burger, Nevada Public Radio I was news director at KWGS in Tulsa when the big Andrews dish was installed in 1979.  I paid no attention to what the crew did, but was amazed when the satellite-fed audio was so clean I could hear the newscasters shuffle paper. In 1980, I moved to Pensacola to help start a new station, WUWF.  As a new NPR station, we were eager to get our satellite dish, but it wouldn't be that easy. We were told the installation crews had completed their contract and been disbanded.  They had one satellite dish kit left, in boxes, and they could send that to us...but we'd have to build it ourselves. Otherwise we'd have to wait up to a year for PRSS to create a system to handle new stations. Since WUWF wasn't on the air yet, I volunteered to help the engineer build it. How hard could it be? We quickly found the installation manual was written by someone who had installed 100+ dishes.  There were very few illustrations. We'd try to follow the instructions for 3 or 4 pages, then find an illustration that showed we did step 1 backwards, so we'd have to undo several steps and start all over. And we had no power tools.  How many bolts held that skirt on? As I recall it was about 850. Anyway, we finally did it. We got all the parts put together and got a crane to lift it into place.  Made all the connections, installed the electronics and wiring. We were ready for satellite audio. If we could find the satellite. We spent two days cranking that dish up and down and side to side. We used three different compasses and every surveying device we could get our hands on, but there was no satellite signal to be found. Everything seemed to be in working order. We spent lots of time on the phone with PRSS and still nothing. Finally, they said a couple of guys from PRSS would be in our neighborhood soon, and they would stop by to see what they could do. This was the fall of 1980 and I remembered the problem created by sun transit outages.  As luck would have it, we were just a few days past the fall outage. So we went out to the dish and lined it up directly with the sun so the feedhorn shadow was on the center of the dish.  Then we very slowly raised the elevation...and there it was.  NPR. Ha! What's so tough about these satellite dish installations?  We're the new crew.  Where's the next dish? Phil Burger Nevada Public Radio www.knpr.org www.classical897.org