A Smashing Good Day

I have had my eye on one of those omnidirectional TV antennas that continuously receive VHF/UHF and FM signals from all directions. They contain a built-in solid state amplifier that boosts signals for clear reception. They also have no moving parts. What we have now is one of those original batwing antennas that you crank up from inside and then rotate to get a good signal.  But the biggest obstacle is getting up on the roof and taking the time to disassemble the old antenna to make room for the new.  And than a great idea came to me. We left Minneapolis and I left the antenna up. But the wind wasn’t blowing hard enough or did my speed make enough back draft to do damage to the unit up above. It wasn’t until later, after we left Iowa and crossed the Mississippi River into Prairie du Chien,  Wisconsin, that I found a solid and low hanging limb to just obliterate the hell out of the unit. By the sounds of things, I thought I had done a great job and everything would have been gone.  I pulled into an abandoned diesel station, procured the ladder from a bay underneath and climbed atop the RV. Much to my dismay, much of the unit was still there.  Half of the wing was gone, the electronic capacitator-resonator gizmatto was smashed, and the gears that intertwined to raise the unit looked as if they had been through a car smasher. I was disappointed.  I had planned on eliminating the entire unit somewhere along the trail. Now I’ll have to stop at a Camping World and pay them to do what I and a tree branch couldn’t.  The good news is that we’ve made it all the way to Champaign, Illinois and we found a solid concrete campground that was almost empty, sans for a one other RV.  We parked for the night, turned on the TV just for the hell of it and couldn’t believe it.  I had great reception on the Titan-Cowboy game. So much for my first attempt at smashing an antenna.