HR-20 and new satellites

[Rakim]

I just got a tree chopped down, and I was hoping for a better result...I am still getting a searching for satellite message on 206 (the new mpeg-4) ESPN, and I checked my signal strength. Very low on both 99 and 103 satellites. The 101 is pretty solid. Is it just an alignment issue, or could something else be causing it?

Thanks!!

Eric

[stevel]

Either alignment or there's still something in the way. How are you on 110 and 119?

[Rakim]

The 110 is 95 95 95 and the 119 is between 95 and 98.

[stevel]

That suggests you still have something blocking the signal.

[Rakim]

OK, thanks. That's disappointing. I'll check it out.

[litzdog911]

I just got a tree chopped down, and I was hoping for a better result...I am still getting a searching for satellite message on 206 (the new mpeg-4) ESPN, and I checked my signal strength. Very low on both 99 and 103 satellites. The 101 is pretty solid. Is it just an alignment issue, or could something else be causing it?

Thanks!!

Eric

It's most likely an alignment problem. The Ka-band signals (99 and 103º) are much more sensitive to proper dish alignment than the Ku-band signals (101, 110 and 119º). Most likely some careful adjustment of your dish's "dither setting" will get you high 80-90's on 99 and 103º. Check out the installation videos here if you want to try it yourself ....
http://www.solidsignal.com/dtvkuka

[gpg]

Do you have the b-band converters attached to your dvr?

[Rakim]

Yes, I have the b-bands connected. My problem only started with the new (D11?) simulcasts of the HD channels.

[JimSpence]

What litzdog911 said.:up:

[TonyD79]

Low on 103 makes little sense if you are getting the other MPEG4 channels like TBSHD. How low?

[kaszeta]

I'm in the exact same situation. My 101/110/119 satellites are all in the high 90s. 99 and 103 are in the 60s and 70s.

(Yes, I will realign it, if I can find a time when I'm home and it's not rainy...)

[TonyD79]

I'm in the exact same situation. My 101/110/119 satellites are all in the high 90s. 99 and 103 are in the 60s and 70s.

(Yes, I will realign it, if I can find a time when I'm home and it's not rainy...)

60s and 70s are not good but you should be able to watch programming with those numbers.

[kaszeta]

60s and 70s are not good but you should be able to watch programming with those numbers.

I should've been clear, I can indeed watch with those numbers. Very slight artifacting and audio glitching, and near-zero margin when it comes to rain fade, however.

(hitting the occasion 70 made it "good enough" that the D* tech wouldn't even attempt to realign it)

[TonyD79]

I should've been clear, I can indeed watch with those numbers. Very slight artifacting and audio glitching, and near-zero margin when it comes to rain fade, however.

(hitting the occasion 70 made it "good enough" that the D* tech wouldn't even attempt to realign it)

Yeah. 70 is considered nominal. You would need to make it worse to get a tech to call.

BTW, what has been reported (and has been my experience) is that the margin on the new birds is not as important as it was with the older stuff. That is, the signal when it goes down goes down quickly. The older satellites, you would lose maybe 20 points and the difference between 60 and 90 was huge. Now it seems that my 90s and my 70s get knocked out at the same time.

[kaszeta]

BTW, what has been reported (and has been my experience) is that the margin on the new birds is not as important as it was with the older stuff. That is, the signal when it goes down goes down quickly. The older satellites, you would lose maybe 20 points and the difference between 60 and 90 was huge. Now it seems that my 90s and my 70s get knocked out at the same time.

This is matching my experience as well. The new MPEG4 channels on 99 seem to be doing a lot better in the rain.

[JimSpence]

FYI, with my HR20-100 I get the following strengths on 99c: TPs 1-14: 95 94 91 94 92 89 90 92 92 86 91 95 & 88.
On 103c TPs 1-14, 17: 95 92 94 88 91 86 92 86 89 81 91 87 91 81 na na na 95.

[TyroneShoes]

...BTW, what has been reported (and has been my experience) is that the margin on the new birds is not as important as it was with the older stuff. That is, the signal when it goes down goes down quickly. The older satellites, you would lose maybe 20 points and the difference between 60 and 90 was huge. Now it seems that my 90s and my 70s get knocked out at the same time.I'm not sure what you are saying, but it's hard to make value judgments about arbitrary numbers when the numbers refer to two completely-different downlink systems on the same antenna. There are just too-many variables.

For one thing, alignment parameters are different. A misalignment that drops you 3 numbers from where the actual peak might be on Ku can drop you 12 numbers from the peak for Ka, which is why a sloppy alignment will still work for Ku but maybe be marginal for Ka. So unless you are assured of a proper alignment, what you subjectively experience during a rain fade means very little, comparitively speaking.

And rain fades affect different frequencies differently. Rain drops are usually closer in physical size to the wavelength of Ku than they are to the wavelength of Ka (although that can vary in either's favor under certain conditions). The reason Ku fades as much as it does is exactly because the raindrops are the size they are, which is the optimal size to trap and absorb RF energy at Ku frequencies. Raindrops act like little tuning forks and vibrate changing the RF energy to heat, rather than simply diffracting it. RF at other frequencies is affected less, with less absorption. That means that Ku typically would fade more than Ka in a typical rainstorm, and is also why C-band hardly fades at all if you compare similarly-sized professional antennae. So conditions during any fade scenario are different for the two systems and can't be compared directly with any accuracy.

The actual fade margins for both systems, IOW, what portion of the peak signal do things have to fall to before you get noticeable problems, are actually pretty much the same, because the physics of the amplifying systems and their windows of operation and noise figures are pretty similar, and these are the determining factors of how the system performs. And the antennae and LNBFs are engineered to function with about the same performance in degraded conditions (IOW, minor differences between Ku and Ka performance are somewhat engineered out to keep performance similar), assuming proper alignment, of course.

[TonyD79]

All I was saying is that I have seen the numbers drop off by 20 or so points under certain weather conditions on the older satellites but they always drop off almost completely on the new ones when they do drop.

I know the numbers are arbitrary but it you still need a reasonable number to get consistent signal in either case. In almost a year of D10, I have almost never seen those numbers drop from 90-ish to 60 or 70ish but have seen that many, many times over the years with the original satellites. D10 seems to be as strong as always or drops to zero or near zero and not in between.

I don't know the techincal reasons (which I know you revel in), just reporting the black-box behavior I have seen.

And because of this behavior I have seen (maybe incorrectly or incompletely), I have been less concerned about tweaking those last bits of signal out of the D10 or D11 than I normally would.

[TyroneShoes]

OK, now I understand. 'Nuff said. And that's an interesting point (about the dropoff) and now that I know more, I'm glad you brought that up. But again, for it to be of any importance, or to mean anything MORE than simply being an interesting observation we would need to know WHY they drop off in that manner, and whether is is relevant to how well your dish is aligned, or whether this might be universal behavior. That is the point I was trying to make regarding your findings.