I hate it when you write a long email and only a couple of people are gonna see. So mashwell paste it here eh. Its a quick story of the satellite re-aligning we did. For you Knerds out there.
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The satellite training went good and went right to the point. Most of us
already had experience in the same or similar satellite installations.
Adi did up the training and instructions so we were all familiar with the
equipment, and steps involved with re-aligning the dish and reprogramming
the equipment. He prepared all the programs and boot files necessary so
that our time setting the sites up were minimal. He prepared all the DVB
receivers ahead of time to allow for the changeover as well. So all the
hard stuff was taken care of him and Terence and made our jobs easier.

We all started the re-alignments on Monday. John and Lyle went to Slate
Falls first. I was already in Muskrat Dam as thats where I live so I got
the dish re-aligned and working by Lunch on Monday. We ran into a hitch
were the MRTG in Sioux had to be reprogrammed and it ended up taking the
sites offline that we did already. I left Muskrat by that time so I
couldn't go back and reprogram the equipment. Sadly they are still
offline until I get back there on Wednesday.

On Monday morning and afternoon the weather threw us for a loop and we
had to cancel some charters we were going to take. I was going to go to
Sachigo Mon afternoon but had to cancel. So I headed to Sioux but got
stuck in Round Lake for a couple of hours because of lack of seats on my
flight. While I was in Round Lake I called up the technician Danny
Kanakeesic there and we started working on the dish while I was in town.
We were able to repoint the dish and reprogram the receivers there and got
it working that evening. Since Adi fixed the problem we had before, the
dish went online and is still working. So I made my flight to Sioux
Monday Night.

Tuesday morning we all met at Robins at 7:00 am and were all set to take
our Charters up to Kas, Webequie and some other sites I forget. The
charters got cancelled because of freezing rain. So we headed back to the
office. Lyle and Jeannie ended up driving to Slate Falls to reprogram
their equipment that morning. For myself, Jeannie got me on a flight
using Wasaya that was leaving from Sioux right away so I drove to the
airport and flew into Kasabonika. I got the dish up and running in a
couple of hours with the help of Keith Mason there. Keith had experience
with working with dishes and Telesat. When we were on the phone with
Telesat doing the crosspole alignment, he recognized the Telesat
technician and had a chat with him while I was getting the equipment
ready. Quite a small world eh.

Naomi Barker at K-Net managed to get me on a charter using Northstar
airways from Pickle and going from Kas to Webequie, since all the regular
flights were booked. It was funny since one of the Bell technician's got
off the charter in Kas and I got on and went on to Webequie, it was a
tradeoff of technicians happening. It seems like K-Net has as much or more
of a presence in the communities than Bell Canada. The plane felt like a
private jet and I was the VIP lol. It had that wood veneer finish and
only 2 seats in the back. It was only missing a minibar with Jim Beam,
lol.

I arrived in Webequie and the Webequie Telecom team met me and we started
on re-aligning it. Paul Quisses the Telecom coordinator, Barney and some
other dude helped me in re-aligning the dish and locking it down. We got
it going within 2 hours of arriving there. So now it is the evening and
here I am putting my feet up and checking my email using the new
satellite.

The big joke around here in Webequie was that it is National Addictions
Awareness Week and the Internet was down for 2 days. Everyone was having
Internet withdrawals from barely 36 hours of lack of Internet. The
effects of the Internet loss was felt in Kasabonika too as staff heavily
use it for work and the finance department does alot of their banking
online. Keith Mason mentioned that it was good to get it back online so
they didn't have to cancel some Telehealth appointments. He mentioned it
in passing to a couple that were walking by that their telehealth
appointment should be ok. Even through Telehealth doctors appointments
are valuable and the effects are felt by patients when they don't get
seen. For KiHS in Round Lake I noticed that class was announced as closed
for 2 days since there was no Internet. I was glad that I could shorten
that time to only 1 day. So all in all, it's been a crazy couple of days
and this experience has shown me how dependent people are on the network
connections we have in the communities.

So it was quite a team effort of everyone coordinating, travelling and
getting the equipment going. It took the local community technicians to
coordinate things at the community level, the K-Net admin staff to work
with them and arrange our travel around the weather conditions to get us
here, and finally the tech staff to point the dishes and reprogram them
with the help of Telesat SNOC and our own SNOC team in Sioux.