Coronation Part 2 – The Great Do-over

If you’ve been following any of my previous posts you are probably aware of my last trip to Coronation which was, shall we say, less then a total success. As a quick recap, I found myself left with a satellite tuner server that was inaccessible and a backup Internet connection that reset itself every 3 hours. The situation was less then ideal, and I knew that if I left the status quo it would bother me endlessly until my next trip. So…. I looked at my travel budget for the year and determined I had just enough leftover to squeeze Continue Reading

Delays, Overshoots and Misfortune – Another trip to Coronation

I should have known the trip would have problems when right from the start a foggy day delayed our flight, but when travel is booked and boxes are shipped, what can you do but press forward and try to make the best out of a rough situation. It was a Tuesday morning and I found myself sitting in the lounge at Victoria’s airport with two of my good friends tracking what should have been our plane as it did loops over Hope, BC. It was a foggy morning in Victoria and our plane wasn’t able to land until the fog Continue Reading

A Trip to Coronation

As I sit on a plane to Vancouver, over 24 hours after my original scheduled departure, with at least four more hours of buses and ferries ahead of me, I find myself contemplating the past 6 days of ridiculousness and how I managed to get here. But, before we get to the day of travel hell, let’s start at the beginning – with a small town of just under 900 people named Coronation. I found myself the owner of a small, 2800 sq ft plot of land in Eastern Alberta. My plan for the property was to set it up Continue Reading

Do I Own this? The Property Purchase from Hell

It all started as an impulse buy. My buddy and business partner Blair had overheard me fantasizing with another buddy about buying a rural property and setting up a sick-ass remote HAM radio site. Blair then took it upon himself to search for some suitable properties, I guess it was a slow day at the office. After a few hours and what seemed like a thousand descriptions of basically the same thing my ears perked up when I heard “this one already comes with Satellite Dishes.” I wandered over to his desk – my curiosity was piqued. Sure enough the Continue Reading

Guns, Grub and a Satellite Ground Station – My trip to Alberta

I am sitting in a restaurant surrounded by co-workers. A server comes comes by with a skewer of beef and looks at me; As I ponder whether I trying to fit more delicious meat into my already full stomach was a good idea, one of my co-workers nodes ‘yup’ and another slice is loaded onto my plate. This was my first evening of a week in Calgary. Things had been a bit challenging of late at work. The company was growing from a small operation to a medium-sized business and was experiencing all the associated growing pains that go along Continue Reading