Dishes useless in bad weather

[vchimpanzee]

Since I spent so much time writing this on another site,

http://lounge.cwtv.com/showthread.php?p=13567052#post13567052

This is bad if you don't live where you can get cable and you're too far away for dependable DTV reception. In my case, I have cable.

 

[landtuna]

Heavy rain will attenuate the pizza dish signals but generally it doesn't last very long - several minutes at the most. Light rain, snow and clouds have no effect unless the dish has been moved off the sat.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I've heard stories about light rain, but if that were true, they'd never sell dishes.

I don't remember his dish ever coming back, but it wasn't too bad when I finally went outside. The ditches were creeks.

 

[ansky212]

I've heard stories about light rain, but if that were true, they'd never sell dishes.

If a satellite receiver loses signal in light rain it means the dish is not properly aligned. I had Directv for 4 years and only lost signal during heavy thunderstorms.

 

[NHRadio]

I've had DirecTV for 16 years and only get dropouts in extremely heavy downpours maybe 5 times a year. None lasts more than 15-20 minutes.
Sounds like your dish isn't aligned properly or there is a terrain obstruction in your dish's line of sight.

I've heard stories about light rain, but if that were true, they'd never sell dishes.

If a satellite receiver loses signal in light rain it means the dish is not properly aligned. I had Directv for 4 years and only lost signal during heavy thunderstorms.

 

[philosofy]

Or the cables are getting wet and shorting out when it rains. If you have had service for a while take a quick look at all the fittings and connections. There may be water leaking into someplace it shouldn't and causing problems.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Or the cables are getting wet and shorting out when it rains. If you have had service for a while take a quick look at all the fittings and connections. There may be water leaking into someplace it shouldn't and causing problems.

It's my barber who was having the problem.

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

Hey Chimp... I have Dish (E*) and unless the sky is falling and we are having a heck of a storm I hardly ever loose my signal... Believe it or not my neighbors loose their cable more than we loose our signal on dish... From the sounds of it like others have said it sounds like an alignment issue... CC1

 

[vchimpanzee]

Hey Chimp... I have Dish (E*) and unless the sky is falling and we are having a heck of a storm I hardly ever loose my signal... Believe it or not my neighbors loose their cable more than we loose our signal on dish... From the sounds of it like others have said it sounds like an alignment issue... CC1

I do know one thing. My middle modem light was blinking a lot just now (translation: no Internet). Whether my barber was having problems just now I don't know since I'm not there.

 

[whit979]

Of course, the danger in this is that losing a signal in the middle of a severe thunderstorm could mean not having access to life-saving weather information at a critical moment, especially if you're talking about an outage as long as 15 to 20 minutes, as one poster reported. Not taking the side of cable--they definitely have their own shortcomings right now--but certainly something to keep in mind, depending on where you live.

 

[NHRadio]

I hate to be picky, but "lose" has just one o. Why do so many people make this mistake? I'd think it would be obvious...guess it's just me.

Hey Chimp... I have Dish (E*) and unless the sky is falling and we are having a heck of a storm I hardly ever loose my signal... Believe it or not my neighbors loose their cable more than we loose our signal on dish... From the sounds of it like others have said it sounds like an alignment issue... CC1

 

[vchimpanzee]

I had my first real problem with digital TV in bad weather.

I wasn't home, but I was taping. Probably not a good idea to leave TVs plugged in, but it was the only way to see some shows.

As it turned out, I had seen the episode I taped, but it was at a time when 20 miles to the north, trees were falling and power was out for thousands and it was a real mess. I saw a videotape of the radar and there was a line of thunderstorms. Now I guess it's logical that if the line extends from where you are to the digital station's tower, you're going to have problems. As I fast-forwarded through the show I taped, I kept seeing long bars with the same color and lots of squares. These are things you don't want to see while watching digital TV.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I have DirecTV, and notice that I lose it only in very intense, severe downpours. Has only happened a few times in 3+ yrs of having it. If you live in Florida or someplace where a daily thunderstorm is the norm, I can see how this would get annoying. The problem is that the wavelength that the FCC assigned for TV dish use is the approximate physical size of a raindrop.
(guess the military wanted the better freqs, or they got auctioned off to the highest bidder in a spectrum auction).

 

[markwooldridge]

Easiest solution: bigger dish. After all the cable company still use stonking big dishes to get the signals to feed into the cable system... and as such don't have the rain fade issues the small home dishes have.

 

[landtuna]

Easiest solution: bigger dish. After all the cable company still use stonking big dishes to get the signals to feed into the cable system... and as such don't have the rain fade issues the small home dishes have.

I still have my BUD (Big Ugly Dish) - a 3-meter expanded metal version. Never had any weather-related drop-outs digital or analog.

Somewhere on the 'Net there are instructions for mounting a pizza dish inside the BUD reflector so the alignment isn't as crucial and a stronger signal gets picked up. This might be a good place to begin: http://www.satforums.com/

 

[vchimpanzee]

Easiest solution: bigger dish. After all the cable company still use stonking big dishes to get the signals to feed into the cable system... and as such don't have the rain fade issues the small home dishes have.

I have a neighbor who has one of those dishes that looks like NASA should be using it.

He also has a Dish Network or DirecTV size dish, but it looks like it's been positioned where the big dish would block it.

 

[johnnyu]

I really don't care. I will never have the dish. I hate it.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I really don't care. I will never have the dish. I hate it.

Oh, look, my last post was no. 2000. I don't even know where it was. ;D

It doesn't matter as long as you're where you can get cable or you're able to pick up all the digital stations you want with an antenna. If you want to watch no TV, that means no stations is the number you want.

As for me, I've got cable and mostly watch that. But I live where I can get it. I'm not sure whether my barber could, but the line is just across the street..

 

[Darth_vader]

"(guess the military wanted the better freqs, or they got auctioned off to the highest bidder in a spectrum auction)."

That is because DBS systems like Hughes Directv, Echostar DiSH Network, etc. operate on Ku-band which uses a way smaller signal than the bands that require a larger dish to receive, like C band. Someone mentioned above that the cable companies have the giant dishes--that is because most of the cable channels in the USA are on C band whigh generally requires a Big Ugly Dish to receive reliably. (Look up some of the charts at http://lyngsat.com/america.html.)

____________________________________________________________________________________

(The following stuff is just my rambling thoughts and observations, sized down so as not to make it too obtrusive. You can always zoom in your browser's text size if you really want to read it.)

My only theory as to why Ku-band was chosen over C for DBS systems is because of the size of dish. Nowdays it's doubtful that many people (outside of DXers and FTAers like me) would want to go through the hassle of installing and maintaining a big ugly dish and besides, a mini dish doesn't make your house look like a NASA outpost. ;o)

At any rate I personally feel to get decent Ku-band reception the dish should be a threefer, no less--ESPECIALLY in areas with bad reception like Florida (weather) or even many parts of Washington (mountains and trees). Attached to a rotator, even better.

I have tried using a second-hand Direct TV dish with my Pansat and a decent dual-band Invacom LNBF--JUNK RECEPTION. That reflector ended up in the salvage bin a week later. Optimally you'd be good to use a big ten-foot BUD even for Ku, but I can't as I am in an apartment. You may be able to get C Band channels using a threefer dish (I can get a number of them here) but it isn't 100% reliable. People have told me that you should have at least an 8-10 footer (yes, a BUD) for C Band. A threefer is, in effect, too small of a dish for 100% reliable C-band reception but it's better than nothing.............

Saying of which, I discovered through whimsical experimentation a few years ago, that it *is* possible to receive DVB signals on C band with a little 18" dish (like the stock ones Hughes and Echostar sell) if you stick a C-band LNBF on it. The reception, as can be expected, isn't even worth bothering trying to set up something like this because the signal drops out incessntly. Basically it works but it doesn't. Like trying to listen to a VHF FM station with a UHF antenna.

//end of rambling

 

[landtuna]

That is because DBS systems like Hughes Directv, Echostar DiSH Network, etc. operate on Ku-band which uses a way smaller signal than the bands that require a larger dish to receive, like C band. Someone mentioned above that the cable companies have the giant dishes--that is because most of the cable channels in the USA are on C band whigh generally requires a Big Ugly Dish to receive reliably. (Look up some of the charts at http://lyngsat.com/america.html.)

Actually, it isn't the frequency but rather the strength of the satellite signal that determines dish size. In the early days of C-band the birds would usually have 24 analog transponders. Each would be putting out something in the neighborhood of 4-10 watts. You needed at least a 7' reflector to gather in the signal and preferably 10' to reject 2-degree adjacent satellites.

When Ku frequencies began being used you could fit 36 analog transponders on those birds and most of them operated at or near 12 watts. Alignment was critical and, again, the BUD was needed to bring them in.

DBS birds transmit in the Ku frequency range at an approximate power of 25 watts. That is how they can get away with the smaller dish.

What is disappointing about the move away from C-band is that they were rarely affected by weather (other than very high wind) and provided an excellent uncompressed signal. PQ was very similar to what digital is today. DBS services use high compression to pack as many services on their birds as possible so their PQ is not up to what the former sat generation was. Of course, with only 24 transponders per bird it would have been impossible to put enough transponders/satellites up there to provide all the programming we have today.

BTW, to get an idea of the electrical length of a Ku signal just look at the front door of your microwave. Those little holes shielding you from the radio emissions are just a hair smaller than the length of the wave. Most BUD's have that same screen as a reflector.