119 W Conus Locals

[nelson61]

I was browsing through Jame Long's excellent site and noticed that Sacramento HD locals are on 119 Conus along with Baltimore and Billings SD locals.

I am wondering when that occurred.

 

[cpalmer2k]

Nice find! Finally a set of CONUS west coast time zone channels!

 

[pattykay]

Don't expect them to last. These locals shifting to CONUS seem to be temporary moves while Dish upgrades the encoders for the spotbeams from QPSK to 8PSK. Right before these latest moves, Dish temporarily moved a bunch of locals from Texas and Alaska to CONUS while the spotbeams were being worked on. So, it looks like Dish is going region-by-region across the country with these moves.

 

[pattykay]

Here are my observations that I posted in the Uplink Activity thread on dbstalk in December: Uplink Activity for December 2017
Scroll up from there to see when the changes pointed out by the OP of this thread took place.

 

[nelson61]

Don't expect them to last. These locals shifting to CONUS seem to be temporary moves while Dish upgrades the encoders for the spotbeams from QPSK to 8PSK. Right before these latest moves, Dish temporarily moved a bunch of locals from Texas and Alaska to CONUS while the spotbeams were being worked on. So, it looks like Dish is going region-by-region across the country with these moves.

You may be right of some moves, but the Sacramento move along with many others, was something else.

Echostar 10 - a spotbeam satellite - had a major power supply failure in December with 75 percent power available.
With 4 years depreciation life left on Echostar 10, they either will be moving Echostar 18 to the 110W slot or things will stay as they are today for quite some time.

From their latest SEC filing:

" In December 2017, EchoStar informed us that EchoStar X experienced anomalies resulting in the loss of some electrical power available from its solar arrays. As a result, EchoStar X is currently operating at 75% of its designed satellite capacity. Pursuant to our satellite lease agreement with EchoStar, we are entitled to a reduction in our monthly recurring lease payments in the event of a partial loss of satellite capacity or complete failure of the satellite. This satellite is currently still in service at the 110 degree orbital location. There can be no assurance that future anomalies will not further impact the commercial operation of EchoStar X. Based on the redundancy designed within our satellite fleet, we generally have in-orbit satellite capacity sufficient to transmit our existing channels and some backup capacity to recover the transmission of certain critical programming. "

 

[pattykay]

You may be right of some moves, but the Sacramento move along with many others, was something else.

Echostar 10 - a spotbeam satellite - had a major power supply failure in December with 75 percent power available.
With 4 years depreciation life left on Echostar 10, they either will be moving Echostar 18 to the 110W slot or things will stay as they are today for quite some time.

From their latest SEC filing:

" In December 2017, EchoStar informed us that EchoStar X experienced anomalies resulting in the loss of some electrical power available from its solar arrays. As a result, EchoStar X is currently operating at 75% of its designed satellite capacity. Pursuant to our satellite lease agreement with EchoStar, we are entitled to a reduction in our monthly recurring lease payments in the event of a partial loss of satellite capacity or complete failure of the satellite. This satellite is currently still in service at the 110 degree orbital location. There can be no assurance that future anomalies will not further impact the commercial operation of EchoStar X. Based on the redundancy designed within our satellite fleet, we generally have in-orbit satellite capacity sufficient to transmit our existing channels and some backup capacity to recover the transmission of certain critical programming. "

Thanks. That explains why Dish had back-up spotbeams for many of the markets in the eastern states that moved at that time, and why none of those channels have moved again since then. I guess I will look into opening a second Dish account and "moving" it to Sacramento.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Thanks. That explains why Dish had back-up spotbeams for many of the markets in the eastern states that moved at that time, and why none of those channels have moved again since then. I guess I will look into opening a second Dish account and "moving" it to Sacramento.

Are you running Eastern and Western arc setups simultaneously?

 

[pattykay]

Are you running Eastern and Western arc setups simultaneously?

Yes. That gives me backup if I lose the satellite signal from one arc or the other, and I am prepared to "move" no matter which satellite Dish puts CONUS locals on.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Yes. That gives me backup if I lose the satellite signal from one arc or the other, and I am prepared to "move" no matter which satellite Dish puts CONUS locals on.

Can you feed both arcs into one receiver at the same time, or do you switch between them?

 

[pattykay]

Can you feed both arcs into one receiver at the same time, or do you switch between them?

For some receivers, I use a mixed-arc setup by feeding 129 into the input on the 1000.4 EA LNB. That gives me 61.5 / 72.7 / 77 / 129. I replaced the single-output LNBs for 110 and 129 (that came with my original Dish 1000+) with dual-output LNBs. One cable from each LNB on the 1000+ goes to a DPP44 switch (for 118 / 119 / 110 / 129) while the second cables from 110 and 129 go to a dual ground block which then feeds one cable to the 1000.4 input. That way, I can easily switch from 129 to 110 on my mixed-arc setup by just moving that cable to the other port on the ground block and running a check switch on the receivers. (I used to switch that cable directly from one LNB to the other, but that was before my Dish 1000+ had to be moved to the roof, making it harder to reach the LNBs to switch the cable.) If I wanted to add 118 or 119 to my mixed-arc setup, I could do that, but that would mean un-hooking that satellite from the DPP44 switch. I have cables from each dish ran to each room, so it is easier just to switch the cable on the back of the satellite receiver and run a check switch whenever I want to change from one arc to the other.