What an adventurous job you have :) And, it turns out we are colleagues, kind of :) Of course, I recognized this "plate" from a glance. There was a time when it was the only chance to connect our remote departments to corporate network. But it was not good for a voice because of latency.
Great post, and great memories... :)
I knew anyone that worked in the field would recognize it right away, I used to always joke the first dish we installed wasnt anything to do with comms but was a big WOK for our bar-b-ques LOL
Yes the latency made telephone calls a bit of a disaster but it was more reliable that the HF comms which was our only other option in many cases, and infact we will have some sites where Satellite comms is all we have