Installer says GloryStar system won't work!!!

[Cemguy]

Which part is called the reflector?

I'm pretty sure that's the dish itself.

[wescopc]

Yes, the reflector is the dish.
Bob

[ShaneLinder]

That is what I kind of thought since the dish reflects the microwaves. I just wasn't sure because I hadn't heard it called a reflector before.

[Cemguy]

Got my first experience with significant rain on 4/20.

It started as a "torrential downpour". I lost reception, as I assumed I would have (I would have lost reception on Sky Angel during that kind of rain too).

As soon as the rain diminished from "torrential downpour" to "heavy and steady", I got the programming back.

Lost programming on some channels again whenever the rain intensity increased again.

All in all not too bad.

[elder]

I used to lose Sky Angel in heavy downpours, other times when the rain wasn't directly overhead. In another life I was in charge of the earth station that supported the ATS-6 Satellite which had a Ka and Ku Band rain fade propagation experiment. The scientist in charge of the experiment said the beam is in the rain path for approx two miles, so we had rain gauges located on azimuth for almost two miles from our antenna to correlate rainfall with rain fade.

[Cemguy]

I've decided to accept what I have in the way of signal qualities rather than "trial and error" to see if something like RFI is a problem.

Thanks to everyone, especially GloryStar1, who's helped.

Actually, in looking at the Galaxy 25 coverage map, I see that most of the US is in the 48 dbW area whereas I'm located in the 46dbW area (Central PA).

By my calculations, that means:

48dbW = 10^(48/10) = 63095 W
46dbW = 10^(46/10) = 39810 W

39810 W/63095 W = 0.63

.63 * 70 signal quality = 44.1 signal quality

That would seem to indicate that my signal qualities are normal for my area.

Am I misinterpreting the concept?

[ShaneLinder]

Would a bigger dish, like a 39" or 48" dish increase the signal quality?

[rv1pop]

Would a bigger dish, like a 39" or 48" dish increase the signal quality?

a slightly qualified YES. It depends on the quality and stability of the dish and mount. I went from the 39" GEOSAtPro to the 1M primestar and went from SQ of 35 on TBN on G25 to 48. Dish is only slightly bigger and I moved the LNB to the new dish. The tin dish wobbles in the wind, the Primestar does not.

[billing]

There are lots strange things happen when involved with FTA system installation.

Here are some common things will effect your dish signal quality or you get one channel up but not the other channel.

Shape of dish. Any bent ?
Size of Dish, a little too small?
LNBF support arm seem too short ? This will happen when you get one TP lock up but not the other TP.
Skew for the LNBF, depending where you at and what satellite you want,
Dish is not plumb, you will not get maximum signal quality on this.
Picture come and gone, this could be bad or cold soldering LNBF, or dish need readustment.

If an installer only deal with DTV or Dish network, very possible they has no idea how the FTA system work, even worst, they even don't know how to do the OTA antenna installation right.