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    D11 outage 2/27/2024 (Resolved on 2/28)

    All of the HD transponders should have the exact same modulation characteristics such as modulation type, symbol rate, data rate, FEC, etc. The thing that is specific to each DirecTV HD transponder is the scrambling code. That is an obscure feature in the DVBS2 protocol and I think DirecTV is...
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    Aiming my Direct TV dish

    Its completely sufficient and met all pointing specs called out by DirecTVs chief technology officer for the original KaKu dish and the Slimline. We (several brilliant PhDs and I) did a lot of research and I did all the field testing for proposed alignment ideas and when the smoke cleared it was...
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    D11 outage 2/27/2024 (Resolved on 2/28)

    I believe D11 has XIPS propulsion and that requires very little propellent along with a lot of electrical power compared to traditional bipropellent thrusters. Station keeping fuel is the main thing driving satellite lifespan and XIPS really extents the lifespan. Unless it fails.
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    Aiming my Direct TV dish

    SWM is a problem for simple meters but if I remember right, when the SWM boots up its in a test mode that might provide the needed transponders which used to include the specific 101 for alignment plus 110 and 119 which are not needed these days. I've been retired for 10yrs and have forgotten...
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    Aiming my Direct TV dish

    Its best if the mast is plumb to initially find the satellite faster from pointing data but in reality it can be way off as going through the alignment with "dither" adjustment will get you right on target to potentially +/- .1deg. That's 1/10 of one degree. The reason for this accuracy is to...
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    D11 outage 2/27/2024 (Resolved on 2/28)

    If its the entire satellite I would suspect a station keeping maneuver went wrong pointing the antennas away from earth. There is a lot of redundancy in the spacecraft like power busses, maybe a few spare transponders, etc. A complete failure is unlikely but has happened in the past.
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    DirecTV lays off hundreds of managers as cord cutting accelerates

    I find this amusing because when ATT took over DirecTV they not only got rid of the old but knowledgeable and effective upper management, they laid off a lot of the people that made the place run smooth and kept problems under control. I was hoping when ATT took a back seat in the day to day...
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    win directv for life sweepstakes

    I believe you will be responsible for paying state and federal sales tax on the retail value of the prize. I suspect it will be charged yearly. Let's see here, divide $198,000 by 30yrs is $6,600 per year and at my tax rate that would be about $2,500 per year in tax. Nothing is free.
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    Looking for a good magnifying glass with light for working with electronics

    Luxo is the industry standard for desk mounted lighted magnifying glass stuff, just search eBay for "luxo magnifying" and there will be lots of new and surplus lights. When I worked in the 2-way radio industry then aerospace there was a Luxo on every work bench.
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    AT&T Fiber Wiring Inside the Home

    I have ATT fiber and they brought the fiber in parallel with my old copper wires from the pole to the side of the garage, through the garage and installed equipment in my basement near the original TELCO demark point. There is a box that converts fiber to Ethernet, a battery backup power supply...
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    5G interference questions

    Mesh screens around dishes can be very difficult to build right and in many cases will not address the problem. The commercial one's I've seen around Intelsat sites for their critical monitoring dishes were made of fine copper mesh and I had one 11m C-band dish project that required a huge...
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    Alaska 1.2 Meter Dish Performance

    Last time I checked they were still in use at two uplink centers and its been at least 10yrs since they were installed. We installed a redundant set of Alaska/Hawaii dishes and a pair of 1.2m for DTVLA reception (6 dishes total at each site) to a custom amplifier distribution system I designed...
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    Alaska 1.2 Meter Dish Performance

    Yes they work well. We installed them at a couple of DirecTV uplink centers in CA to give more headroom for feeding hundreds (and hundreds!) of receivers for confidence monitoring.
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    FREE 14ft Prodelin C-band dish, mount, actuator, Seavy feed and LNB in So Cal

    A friend has a 14ft Prodelin fiberglass dish with mount, actuator, Seavy feed and LNB. The dish is located in Glendale, CA and is on a pole up against a house. There is easy access from the roof to dismantle. This dish was in commercial service at his house receiving various programs then...
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    Slimline SWM3 alignment using Orbital Tracker Light OTM500 3.0 meter

    If you don't have any meter, including the on screen receiver signal strengths, then how would anyone point a dish at all? You cant go for best picture quality.
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    Slimline SWM3 alignment using Orbital Tracker Light OTM500 3.0 meter

    You should be able to use the receiver as a crude signal meter if you can display the 101 signal strengths if you can get a long cable from the receiver to a TV monitor on the roof or take the receiver and monitor to the roof. Use the dither procedure to detune slightly off one side of the peak...
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    Slimline SWM3 alignment using Orbital Tracker Light OTM500 3.0 meter

    With a SWM LNB there is no 13v, or 18v or 22KHz, the SWM stacks 8 different transponders on fixed L-band frequencies and each frequency could be 99 or 101 or 103 or whatever. If my memory is intact, when you power one up from scratch it goes into alignment mode with 101, 99, 103 and the old 119...
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    C-band extended

    I have had a good experience with Swedish Microwave which should be easy to purchase in EU. Here is a link to their C-band LNBs. https://smw.se/product/single-band-pll-lnb-c-band/
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    C-band extended

    I don't think its possible unless you have some specific microwave test equipment, knowledge and skills to do the mod. It would require changing the LO frequency and retuning the front end filter. It would certainly cost more in labor than a new extended LNB would cost.
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    Cband has become more frustrating....

    The commercial C-band users are also having a difficult time with 5G interference and since its a multi tiered rollout over time you had to buy a specific filter or filtered LNB at the start of this mess then when the next tier is on air throw away your new filter or LNB and buy another and so...
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    Fine tuning the dish question

    The original Slimline alignment instructions had you peak on 101 then go to 119 and peak skew, which would fix any mistakes or misalignment of skew, but now we don't have 119 to play with. I would make sure the mast is perfectly plumb then set the skew for your zip code and do the basic...
  22. I

    Big dish base

    Putting a bend a few inches long in the bottom ends would have been fine.
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    Big dish base

    The size, shape and amount of concrete in the base will depend on your soil compaction in addition to the dish wind load and that's usually calculated by a professional engineer. If you don't know or can't afford to have soil compaction tested, and its expensive, I would calculate like the base...
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    DTV DOWN!!!

    I'll take a guess that it was either a power buss problem on the 101 spacecraft or a mistake in maneuvering that mis-pointed the satellite antenna. The power bus is redundant and I don't know if they are in parallel or switched automatically or requires commands from the ground to switch to...
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    Broadcasters to Encrypt ATSC 3.0 Signals - How it Impacts Free OTA TV

    Lots of TV transmitters out there cheap these days after the repack. I had a 6ft high UHF transmitter in my garage for a year until I was finally able to dump it on fleabay. The shipping cost was a lot more than the actual transmitter.