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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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    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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    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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    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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    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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    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...
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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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    DIRECTV 1.2M DISH

    It would not be practical to cobble a DirecTV Ka/Ku LNBF onto a random dish, the spacing and aiming of the individual feed horns is very specific to the Slimline dish geometry and they are all cast together as one metal feed. In fact they had to compromise where the 99 and 103 feed horns...
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    DIRECTV 1.2M DISH

    I kind of remember a 1.8m on a large non-pen tripod mount for Alaska but that was probably 10yrs ago. It could also have been a prototype that never caught on.
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    From DIRECTV - Alternate ways to watch the Super Bowl Tonight

    I watched the Super Bowl on my TVs tuner with off air antenna. Picture was noticeably better than through DirecTV and I get all kinds of random drop outs and freezing on DTV lately and my system is in good shape and signal strengths are fine. DTV reception is nothing like the old days when it...
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    DirecTV and AT&T Internet combined bill - unlimited Internet?

    I had ATT DSL over copper for years with a separate DirecTV bill. Ok, that's not counting 18yrs of getting free DIrecTV, but the DSL was always unlimited. Several years ago I bundled by ATT home phone, ATT DSL and DirecTV on one bill and there was no change in the unlimited DSL. Then 100MB ATT...
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    Pointing the Directv 1.2 Meter dish with the triple (99,101,103) Advice

    I've peaked a number of Alaska/Hawaii dishes in So Cal and also the first prototypes issued to the DirecTV ODU lab. That was a long time ago and I don't remember them having a turns counting or "dither" procedure, just typical adjustments you would find on any 1.2m dish. The beamwidth would be...
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    Wondering if it is possible to get 119W or 110W with 18" dish?

    I believe an old 18" dish will work fine for 110 or 119 if there is any programming still there. If you think about the old phase III dish that got 101, 110 and 119, it was just a stretched out 18" dish that was probably compromised some and it worked fine.
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    In a hotel, how does 41 directv channels in analog work

    I had access to the prototype Alaska/Hawaii dishes and the new at the time Slimline dish and was able to make exact C/N comparisons, I just wish I had kept the data from that. The reason I used the larger Alaska/Hawaii dishes was to provide a little more C/N for rain fade on a huge distribution...
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    In a hotel, how does 41 directv channels in analog work

    I sort of remember measuring the difference in gain between a Slimline and Alaska/Hawaii dish and it came in around 5dB. As a general rule, double the size of a dish and the gain goes up about 6dB. I designed and built the head ends for two DirecTV uplink centers feeding hundreds and hundreds of...
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    Mobile setup: can’t acquire 99 & 103

    Yup, those numbers look low all around. What are you getting on 101? Here is a link to the alignment instructions for the dish which starts at step 9. I would recommend going through these steps then see how your numbers look for the 99, 101 and 103 slots. The instructions will explain what the...
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    Mobile setup: can’t acquire 99 & 103

    The skew adjustment is very critical for the old 110 and 119 slots but not that critical for 99 and 103, you can probably be 500mi from the setup zip code without much skew degradation. I'm not familiar with the green and yellow aiming menu but would be interested in hearing what the actual...
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    Satellite 95 no signal

    DirecTV pulled the plug on 95 for International programming and now the channels come off their mainline sats. I would reconfigure your receivers for a Slimline 5 SWM and no 95 dish.
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    DIRECTV SD / HD Changes coming

    I kind of remember HD ran in the 8mb/s range before I retired with five channels per 36MHz Ka transponder and I thought they were running 8-PSK back then. I have the data somewhere but I'm sure many here have old and new rates if they have changed.
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    DIRECTV SD / HD Changes coming

    I don't know how many SD or HD channels DTV is sticking on each transponder today but 5yrs ago they were fitting 5 HD channels on a 36MHz wide Ka transponder. The Ku transponders are narrower, around 27Mhz so you can't fit the same 5 HD channels on Ku without some serious degradation. Loosing...
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