Long ago, when Habr was without invites, and Bash could be read completely in 2 days, we did satellite Internet in Astrakhan

It was that wonderful period when the dial-up began to take place, GPRS and EDGE were incomprehensible words for the bourgeoisie, and instead of social networks there was a city forum, ICQ and night chat. As the main source of connection for the lucky ones, the ADSL lines were working (overloaded to the limit, and the new ones were connected three months after the application). Plus, various tricky cable technologies with a star topology from provider points. Up to the heap - often connected by uncoordinated Wi-Fi spans of 1-2 kilometers from "household" antennas and painted cans of pineapples and coffee. There was only one trunk provider in the city, RZD channels were used as an emergency reserve. A megabyte dial-up cost 7-8 rubles, an hour - 50-70 rubles. Cards were sold throughout the city. ADSL was also considered megabyte.

And then came the satellite Internet. Relatively cheap, about a ruble or two per megabyte. But it wasn’t a question of any unlimited information, this is understandable. We went to one of the first montages on an application with the entry “Grandfather from the 38th apartment bites”.
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Disposition

Perhaps it was the most enchanting installation in my life. It all started simply - my colleague Lenya and I came to a point (4-storey house with a slightly icy roof "corner"), met the customer. It turned out to be a current military man who unwrapped his satellite Internet for quick access to mail. And chat dating, as we noted on the screen. On the roof there was already a fixed ordinary supral plate of 0.9 m at the reception (on the anchors to the brick pipe), which had to be aimed at a new satellite. Outgoing channel - GPRS. The military himself was genuinely surprised that he couldn’t put it on the compass.

The procedure is simple: you climb up with a laptop or a special squeaking device - “tamagotchi” in the jargon, connect the cable to the converter on the plate, evaluate the satellite location from the table and the compass (you only need the first couple of trips, then you already know where that hangs on the geostationary orbit), you start to slowly drive a plate and listen to how the software beeps. The more often - the higher the signal. Catch the maximum and tightly fix the plate. The procedure can take from 3 minutes in the hands of an experienced installer to 40 from an intern who does not understand what a narrow beam is.

Everything. Incoming feed ready. The outgoing channel is any suitable one, most often a cell phone (there were no modems then), which sends the data to the Moscow site, which is then answered via satellite. With a traffic ratio of 1:10 outgoing to incoming, it turned out to be very profitable. The satellite broadcasts to the entire coverage area, the terminal accepts everything and selects your packages specifically. What creates the conditions for satellite fishing, but you already know everything about it.


^{A piece of our poster. Opened and surprised 9.6 Kb / s.}

In place

So, we climb on the roof to put a plate for the incoming channel.

We went up the fire escape, Leon ahead, I follow him. Somewhere in the area of ​​my third floor, Leon grunted. I looked up and saw that he was really hanging over me. Not in the sense that it was higher up the stairs, but above my head: the pillars of the stairs rusted, and she turned away from the roof under his weight. And she began to take shape back. Fortunately, Leon managed to grab the edge and climbed. And then he fixed the ladder with a cable from a box with tools.

Plate "did not start." This happens, the real range of error is about a third of a degree. But we were tormented for an hour, but there was no signal. Get down. The first thing I saw below was a grandfather trying to bite Lenya's hand. Naturally. It turns out that the postscript to the form was not in vain - my grandfather lived exactly opposite the plate, and was very worried about aliens who wanted to survive it from the apartment. We retired to the military and tried to understand the technical problem.

The dialogue will be awesome:
- Tell me, is your plate normal? Did not fall, did not shoot at it, did not beat?
- Yes, normal. How to buy, assembled immediately, everything worked well.
- Yeah. And when was the last time the signal was?
- Well, two weeks ago ... SchA. Lieutenant, when was the last time the internet from the dish worked?
- Yes, two weeks ago. Yes, exactly two. Until I crashed, I worked.
- Where crashed?
- Well, from the roof fell. We set it back, but we could not aim it, - turns to us, - well, they called you.

There was still a wonderful case with the military

They brought a plate, they say "with a small hole." The hole was really small - 7.62 caliber. A parabolic mirror is an exact thing, and after a bullet hit it went in waves in the trash. Obviously, the focus from the converter went for a walk in all the neighborhoods.

The military has no money. This is their last plate. Asked to help as best we can. We tested, made sure that the mirror is nothing. Explained. The lieutenant who was listening to us, recognized some key words and brightened, was delighted. "The plate is a curve? It's us fast. ” And sent a fighter with a mallet. We tried to explain once again that the mallet and the mirror are not very compatible things. But the lieutenant, to us as small children, explained that the fighter was promised a leave to leave for two days. Therefore, he will do the impossible. Because it is trained to overcome.

The fighter knocked on the plate all night. In the morning we checked - earned. Perhaps the point is in the new low-noise converter, perhaps - in the fact that he really straightened some segment. So I met our nanotechnology.

Smart automation

We envied the sailors' plates for a very long time. Very roughly speaking, a conventional satellite targeting system in motion works like this: the coordinates of the plate are fixed, the coordinates of the satellite are taken out of the almanac, the motor turns the plate to the desired angle, and then using the signal level estimation, the angle is fine-tuned.

The sailors had tricky mechanisms left from the time of the USSR, which didn’t have any processors or motherboards at all. Almost on bare iron, like a clock. It turned out that all this machinery was connected with the compass and the systems of the ship. When the captain gave the right steering, the plate turned exactly the same. The signal was saved. How is this even possible - we did not understand, but were eager to check.

One day guys from the merchant fleet came to us and offered to put a satellite television dish on the ship. “With automatics?” We ask. No, say the sailors, with your automation is almost 7 times more expensive. Let us put our own, we still have a cool method with the USSR. We were delighted: a great chance to see how they will do.

Plate mounted. The question of automation was solved simply: a sailor was put on her watch, turning it, searching for a satellite on a compass and a signal level scale. So I met with military wit.

Devices

As a “workhorse,” we had a good old IBM - because only by its red joystick in the middle of the keyboard could we normally hit with our fingers in working gloves. I saw him in -21, saw it covered with snow, I saw it in the hands of interns - well, he survived everything. The second device was supposed to be smaller and safer, fit on the belt (this is convenient when you climb on the roof). We ordered the Tamagotchi, and he arrived in a huge box somewhere meter by meter. Inside, the whole box was tightly packed with polyethylene packing with pimples, and in the middle, in a rigid box, was waiting for our device. Apparently, our overseas friends by that time made at least one delivery by mail of the Russian Federation.

"Be extremely vigilant"

We had a forum where people asked questions. Most often, when the satellite channel was broken, they had GPRS on their cellular, which was just enough to come in and ask around.

The first case was associated with grapes. Unnoticed by the owner, the grapes sneaked to the plate, covered the converter and gave a brush. The water in the berries had a decisive effect on the signal level - and the incoming channel disappeared.

Often low hanging plates hit the trucks. We fastened our own high, but when the client assembled himself, he often forgot about this feature.

Once we went to a huge house where the Wi-Fi channel was lost. The first time I saw the corridor, at the end of which a grand piano stood almost unnoticed. So, the problem was that some radiation was acting around the house - whether the external thermal sensor exchanged information with the oven, or a microwave, or something else - but Wi-Fi did not go beyond three meters. The first shamanism. Stretched the cable.

Once wrote an upset client. The essence of the message was that his plate was unscrewed from the roof and carried away by vandals (I don’t imagine why they needed it). He asked what to do now. The manager replied: "Be extremely vigilant." So I met with PR.

Free time

Between departures installers had free time. They spent it on folding the results of fishing (supposedly), Rambler-dating, ICQ and chat rooms. Instead of Habr was iZone magazine - you download the cherished 730 kilobytes, and here you have 30-40 topics, each of which reads about 40 thousand people. Then tech support found Bash and dropped the link - there was something to do for two days. Even in my spare time, it was possible to master new technologies - this is how I became acquainted with the products of Novosibirsk production associations, from which I was struck by a stern Russian device powered by a Nokia battery. Bolted along the edges.

Advertising

One third of clients found out about us from the site (technically savvy people). On the site they got from the search. Another third came from outdoor advertising - we had two or three banners on billboards in good places. We also carried two heavy pillars to one of the busy streets of the city every morning - it also worked great.

Then the share of those who came on word of mouth increased, but before that we had tried almost all channels of attracting attention. It all started with the purchase of books "Marketing for idiots" and "PR for idiots." A look at the books was satisfying. We felt like complete idiots in these matters, and hoped that, thanks to them, we could figure it out. In general, there were one successful attempts for 10 unsuccessful attempts, which we repeated and replicated.

Just then I learned about the ingenious reception with testing ads - you need three ads with three phone numbers. The number that is most often called corresponds to a more working ad. Then from this working announcement 3 more versions become - and we come on new iteration of tests. The method struck me with its mathematics. So I got acquainted with the fact that in business there is also a model “test-result-test” in numbers, and not just “I know what to do if we succeed — we will see.”

Or work with the press - we tried ads, called for journalists, ordered advertising - and compared the effect. Expensive advertising in the "glossy" did not work, but the stories about what kind of animal it is - a satellite dish - in ordinary newspapers were just to cheer. Before we created the informational reasons, we thought of it ourselves, but we couldn’t really do anything - there was a lack of experience. Today, of course, they would have lit the whole city, but then they simply did not know which way to approach the question.

With outdoor advertising, we did the most important thing - by some miracle, I managed to defend the layout without details, where only “Satellite television and satellite Internet” was written - and the telephone. In a city where every ad turned into a hell of a newspaper page with all the details, it looked insanely clean and cool.

Radio - like fuckers, we trusted their advertising department, because we read in books that this is what needs to be done. No wonder the books were written "for idiots."

And another unpleasant cant - we somehow made a contract with an advertising agency that provides accommodation at a very sweet spot in the city. A prismotron is a thing, where 3 advertising structures are placed on the triangular in cross section at once. Prisms rotate once a minute - and the image on the shield changes. We saw such in the Big Moscow. But since it happened in Astrakhan, the illumination broke on the third day. No one was in a hurry to repair it. The agency unscrewed ingeniously - every morning their installer came up to the billboard and scrolled through the prisms. Total - we, as expected under the contract, had a third of the placement - only not 30 days in a rotating unit, but 10 days (a day or two). Since then, we have read all documents very carefully. The agency lost at least a dozen future customers, because we told the story to all our friends.

About aliens

Once across the city, the only trunk provider lost the Internet. On the third day we wrote an official letter. After almost a month, we received the answer that there had been no communication for two weeks due to unidentified actions of third parties on the trunk channel. Since splicing a cable torn by an excavator — these are 6–9 hours with the road and the search for a cliff — we immediately understood: the aliens flew to us. After the lunchtime discussion of the case, it became clear that they boarded the highway and held all-round defense. And the employees of the provider defended the Earth - and they still had to keep secrecy and talk to hundreds of people breaking the lines about technical work. So we defended our planet.

Keys to attics

A very interesting quest was getting access to the roof. Somehow we continued the moment when it was possible to climb (due to the presence of the house manager on site) - and we had to order an expensive tower because of the urgency of the installation. In general, the issue was resolved quite simply - the tenants took out the keys themselves, explaining to the others why this was necessary.

Here, for the first time, I understood what marketing is . After the departure to the client, we began throwing leaflets into each box. With the title "Your neighbor is already standing." Lucky, my colleagues were understanding - in other conditions it would be so easy to write. On the flyer below was information that the roof now has a satellite TV dish, and you can connect quickly and easily. And you can ask how everything works, you can have a neighbor from such and such an apartment. Of course, we asked the client for permission before such an action - and most often it was received.

The same leaflets helped with the keys: when we explained that we did not damage the roof covering, but fastened to the pipes, plus we made it so that everyone else at the entrance would be cheaper to connect to the satellite, people gave the keys more readily. Well, sometimes connected.

In the most neglected cases, cunning installers would open the locks with a screwdriver. When I saw it for the first time, I didn’t believe it at first: it all just hurt. Then he met another excellent option: it turns out that it was possible to unscrew the eyelet for the lock, and then, leaving the roof, carefully tighten it back. Another lock could have been eaten by a bolt cutter, but it seemed blasphemous.

The rooftops were very beautiful. Especially when a dense fog rose - the feeling was that you were in the middle of the sea on an island. For the sake of this kind, it was possible to endure even two-hour coaxing of the grandmother from the last floor.

Then

Then, after a couple of years, the normal EDGE with conditionally unlimited tariffs, and then 3G, gradually appeared in the city. Satellite Internet is outdated, and the plates are redirected to satellites with television channels. The montage romance was over, and I gathered in the Greater Moscow.

Here it is. Actually, why am I this: Happy radio day to you!