Thread: have to ask a bout weak signal strength

A couple of years ago I had dish network installed, I live in Little Rock Ar. The installed comes and looks at his compass and some other cute little instruments and says. Well since you are getting HD you really need 2 dishes mounted on the roof.

I had never heard of need ing 2 sat dish to receive TV and asked if this was normal. He kinda said yes piddles around some more and then said ok I can do this. He mounts a wide dish with 3 lnb and it works. The only problem is my max signal strength was 24. It didn't have to rain to get fade, just some heavy thunder clouds and loss of signal.

What should I expect in signal str and can it be done with a single dish ?

Depends on the arc you are on.

For Western Arc, on the new meter, I average 60-70 on all three sats when checking CONUS transponders.

From what I understand, Eastern Arc is lower than that, but I have no first hand experience with that. Although, my HD Locals have been uplinked to 77, so I will eventually be an Eastern Arc market.

etrin,

How many different threads you planning to start on this?

Originally Posted by etrin

A couple of years ago I had dish network installed, I live in Little Rock Ar. The installed comes and looks at his compass and some other cute little instruments and says. Well since you are getting HD you really need 2 dishes mounted on the roof.

I had never heard of need ing 2 sat dish to receive TV and asked if this was normal. He kinda said yes piddles around some more and then said ok I can do this. He mounts a wide dish with 3 lnb and it works. The only problem is my max signal strength was 24. It didn't have to rain to get fade, just some heavy thunder clouds and loss of signal.

What should I expect in signal str and can it be done with a single dish ?

Well what sats are you looking at? You can see them listed in the system info screen as in 110,119 and 129

Depending on the transponders the numbers can be low around 40 to 50ish for 129.

What channels go out the most..HD or non HD channels? Also when the channels are having issues flip over to the signal strength screen and look at what Sat it is sitting on so you can get a better idea of issues. The dish may have been loose and just dropped slightly or the wind blew on it hard to twist it right to left or something.

I am sick and tired of people accepting low signal strength on eastern arc dishes. The average signal strength should be the same. What is different is that it's harder to aim an eastern arc dish. This is because a digital meter is required to aim it accurately OR if your cheep two guys and a pair of phones.

Originally Posted by Tech#344

I am sick and tired of people accepting low signal strength on eastern arc dishes. The average signal strength should be the same. What is different is that it's harder to aim an eastern arc dish. This is because a digital meter is required to aim it accurately OR if your cheep two guys and a pair of phones.

So, when I install my 1000.4, I should expect 60-70 as well?

This is good news to me, because I don't mind taking my time with the install.

From everyones posts, I was expecting to have 40-50 on EA.

Yes you should be able to expect that. That being said there is more variance in transponder signal strength than on western arc. The average should be the same. There are some transponders that are just low. A tip, adjust the elevation last, tightening the azimuth bolts affects the elevation.

Originally Posted by Tech#344

Yes you should be able to expect that. That being said there is more variance in transponder signal strength than on western arc. The average should be the same. There are some transponders that are just low. A tip, adjust the elevation last, tightening the azimuth bolts affects the elevation.

I discovered that here too. The dish has some forward weight balance and the fine azimuth allows it to lean a few degrees of elevation. The skew is also very sensitive to minor adjustments.

I too have had some serious signal issues with the 1k.4 and the best I have been able to get on TP25 which seems to be the best signal here for 61.5 is 35. I'm cheap and use my sling player for my tweaking. It is slow going as it takes a 3-7 second lag for the reading. The problem is with the weak TP's the signal with the best tuning I could achieve was 12 on TP32. This is just too weak for reliable signal and goes out when it rains even just a little. As posted in another thread, that same TP gets 65 on a 30" side dish I have here just a few feet from the 1k.4 TP25 gets 85.

Two other things I noticed are that, first the skew calculations are often wrong(if the satellites don't peek together the skew is wrong), and second is that DISH buys 1000.4 LNBs from two different manufacturers and on one of them the signals are generally 5-7 points higher on one than the other (The way you can tell them a part is on one the 61.5/72 "eye" cover is one piece on the other it is three pieces.)