Our technician was afraid of heights. Unfortunately, I wasn't. 📡😂
One failed wireless backhaul, a 10-foot aluminum dish, a laptop, and a winter tower climb later, I began to appreciate his decision.
Back in 1998 or 1999, I was involved with Central Alberta Publisher, which operated XpressNet, an early internet service provider in Red Deer, Alberta.
We had a problem. Sylvan Lake News had lost its wireless backhaul connection to our facility near the Red Deer Industrial Airport. Without that connection, getting newspaper files to the printing plant was becoming rather difficult.
We needed a repeater.
Our technician knew of a tower somewhere west of Red Deer. Apparently, we had access to it through some arrangement with CBC.
At least, that's what I was told. Nearly 28 years later, I'm beginning to wonder about that part.
There was one small problem.
**Our technician was afraid of heights.**
I wasn't.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I found myself climbing a tall, guyed communications tower in approximately 0°C weather, with 25 km/h winds, absolutely no fall protection, and a 10-foot spun aluminum dish that had a remarkable resemblance to a sail.
This was the 1990s. Wireless internet wasn't something you plugged in and forgot about. Our radios worked best with very short antenna leads, so we mounted the radio in a box right at the dish and ran power up the tower.
And because alignment was everything, I also had to take a laptop up there.
Imagine trying to fine-tune a 10-foot dish while hanging off a tower, fighting the wind, and staring at a laptop, desperately hoping to catch enough frames for synchronization.
I honestly can't remember whether we got it working that day. I suspect the wind won the first round, and we had to return when conditions were calmer.
Eventually, Sylvan Lake News was back online and the files reached the printing plant.
**Victory!**
Well, not quite.
Our Windows NT 4.0 server was convinced its Named Pipes were working perfectly.
The German Heidelberg plate burner disagreed.
That particular disagreement cost us another two or three days and, if memory serves, a visit from a vendor technician out of Calgary.
All this modern technology was producing printing plates for a Goss newspaper press that I believe dated back to the 1930s or 1940s.
The old printing press wasn't our problem.
**Windows was.**
And that, my friends, was internet infrastructure in the late 1990s.
No cloud dashboards. No automatic alignment. No helpful setup wizard.
Just a tower, a laptop, a giant aluminum dish, and a technician who wisely stayed on the ground.
**Sorry, Red Deer. And CBC, if you're reading this, I was told we had permission.** 😂📡
*Based on actual events. Some details are reconstructed from nearly three decades of questionable memory. Please don't attempt to recreate the safety procedures. There weren't any.*
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**Adventures in Technology**
Real stories from the early days of computers, networking, and the internet — when making technology work occasionally required a screwdriver, a ladder, or a complete disregard for common sense.