AMC 9 kaput?

[Dee_Ann]

I haven't been on RTV all day but at midnight I kicked over to Tuff to see what sort of B movie they would have on and I get no signal at all, RTV is down and that annoying colorbars channel is even down too. I rescanned the satellite and there's nothing at all showing on any transponder. Zero signal.

The weather here should not be a factor. Could it be bad weather where they are transmitting up from? I forget where they are sending it up from.

I have no problems picking up any other satellites and it was working perfectly earlier today so I doubt there's anything wrong with my equipment.

Just to be sure, I did a total power down of everything and when it came back up, everything works just fine except AMC-9.

BTW, a bit of a worrisome issue, RTV went bye bye on Facebook. What's up with that? Another Equity / Whitesprings fiasco in the works??

Thanks!

 

[TimLones111]

Both RTV and Tuff TV still here in Northeast Ohio..Lower signals than I'd like but I've been having dish alignment issues recently as well..

 

[Dee_Ann]

Both RTV and Tuff TV still here in Northeast Ohio..Lower signals than I'd like but I've been having dish alignment issues recently as well..

Hrmmmmmm...........

Well, my bird dog meter is charged up. I guess I'll go out there in the morning and hook directly to the dish and see what the heck is up.

Since you guys turned me on to some awesome cool tweak tricks for the bird dog maybe I can pin that sucker down like never before... I can't imagine what could be wrong because ALL my other dishes are working 100%, even the touchy PBS S2 channels are coming in great. But AMC-9, zero signal on all transponders. Weird...

 

[Blindowl1234]

Their signal has been lower than usual for me lately. Sathawk usually locks a signal of about 60-65% this past weekend it was down about 10% for me...Blind

 

[upnatm]

Hi Dee Ann, you mention other dishes and S-2 channels.

Are you doing C-Band? 8PSK?

If you are, then there are scads of RTV channels over on AMC-3.

Some of those channels share the same feed, but I've seen maybe a dozen different
oldies on at one time. Some of the ones you miss, can be seen an hour or two later.

Just thought I'd mention.

By the way, last night, I reset all my sat positions in both my G-box and AZbox, and
found RTV and Tuff TV coming in nicely on AMC-9. (10ft mesh with C/Ku LNB).


Cheers.

 

[Mr Tony]

working fine here in Minnesota

 

[Dee_Ann]

Frickin ~termites~ !

Yep. Termites.. In the face of the LNB there was a clear plastic cover where the signal passes through into the innards of the LNB.

Well, a long time ago I saw water in there so I poked some pin holes to let the water weep out and any future water weep out.

Apparently some infant termites, in their wee-itty-bitty stages found their way into those pin holes, enlarged them enough to let friends and family in and set up house.
There was some muddy mess inside, eggs and of course, live termites.

I ended up having to totally disassemble the entire LNB to flush it out with hot water then blow it out with an air compressor and now I'm cooking the circuit part under a sun lamp to be 100% that there is no moisture under the chips and stuff to short out.

Thank goodness that's all it was. I should be back in biz by this evening.

Lemme tell you, taking apart a directway LNB without the proper tools, NOT easy....

 

[Dee_Ann]

Hi Dee Ann, you mention other dishes and S-2 channels.

Are you doing C-Band? 8PSK?

If you are, then there are scads of RTV channels over on AMC-3.

Some of those channels share the same feed, but I've seen maybe a dozen different
oldies on at one time. Some of the ones you miss, can be seen an hour or two later.

Just thought I'd mention.

By the way, last night, I reset all my sat positions in both my G-box and AZbox, and
found RTV and Tuff TV coming in nicely on AMC-9. (10ft mesh with C/Ku LNB).


Cheers.

No, I am afraid I do not have my cband dishes up. I am physically unable to do the labor so that is a dead project until I can hire someone to do it for me.
Believe me, I really, really, really want to get those dishes up but I can not do it myself. I'm not allowed to lift over 10lbs for the next 3-4 months.

 

[turbosat]

Dee , great story on the termites, lol. I never had that one happen! You can tell spring is close when all the bugs start crawling out again, I saw a grasshopper yesterday here.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, this was a scary, scary day for me. I tore into this thing and had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have the right tools, at all. I needed some little L wrenches which I don't have and some screwdrivers with a star tip which I don't have and some other screwdrivers that are octagon shaped. Which I also don't have..

I tried to get into this thing with pliers and that didn't cut it so I went across the street and my friend let me dig in her man's toolbox and I found a few tools that got me into the stupid thing.

After I washed it out with hot water and blew it out with compressed air, it still didn't work. At all. Even less so than before. Like, deadsville baby..

Uh oh.....

So I opened up the part with the circuit board and put it under a grow lamp to heat it up and dry it out. Put it back together and still deadsville. Oh poo...

So, this time I took it ALL the way apart. I removed the circuit board even. I found a broken connection that goes from the circuit board to where the cable screws onto the thing so I got out the soldering iron (Thank you Dad!) and fixed it. Thank the giver goddess for my mega strong reading glasses I bought just for things like this!

So again, for like the 200th time, I put it all back together and back on the dish and this time, paydirt! Ta-da! I got a signal. So I used the bird dog and tweaked the dish as best I could, put the main wire back on it, covered the LNB with a coffee can (original cover is missing. ) and went back inside.

Bingo! RTV is back. And it seems the signal is stronger than I ever got before!

Lemme tell ya, I was sweatin it.. I was just about to chunk it all and go on ebay and find a replacement LNB for that thing.

I'm pretty pleased with myself that I actually fixed it all by myself and it didn't cost me a penny!

Oh, and I took a hint from you guys. I invested in a roll of duck tape some months ago and I made liberal use of it today. I took some clear packing tape and put over the face of the LNB since I cut away the original plastic then wrapped duck tape all around to make sure the clear tape can not come off by itself.

So, I think I did pretty good. It kept me busy all day and distracted me from my pain and problems and pulled me out of my depression a little so today was a big WIN for me..

I included some pictures though I wish I had taken better pictures during the process of taking it all apart. The pictures were more or less an after thought, I just picked up the camera at random and snapped a few here and there.

 

[SatelliteAV]

Way to go Dee! Your troubleshooting skills are much better than most devout hobbyist!!!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Way to go Dee! Your troubleshooting skills are much better than most devout hobbyist!!!

Pure, unadulterated dumb luck... And red head hardheadedness.

 

[billyboy_1]

Thats gotta be the best Satellite story i have heard in a long time...Congrats on the great job Dee. That story almost tops the one about the shady satellite guy that use to be around here. He would sneak into peoples backyard and put a small piece of tin foil in the polorotor throat cover and snap it back on. Then would charge the folks fifty dollars to come out and "fix' thier dish. He didnt last long though.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Thats gotta be the best Satellite story i have heard in a long time...Congrats on the great job Dee. That story almost tops the one about the shady satellite guy that use to be around here. He would sneak into peoples backyard and put a small piece of tin foil in the polorotor throat cover and snap it back on. Then would charge the folks fifty dollars to come out and "fix' thier dish. He didnt last long though.

Holy smokes! I would think something like that would be illegal! I hope Mr. Wonderful is doing a little bunk time with Bubba in the pokey... !! :rant:

 

[Tron]

Great work, Dee! Termites. Yes, there are plenty of those here in New Orleans. They come from ships in the port, and the Formosan variety are the worst. They swarm sometime in April, I believe, and can be seen like a cloud around any light. I've never heard of them infesting an LNB, though...

 

[Dee_Ann]

Great work, Dee! Termites. Yes, there are plenty of those here in New Orleans. They come from ships in the port, and the Formosan variety are the worst. They swarm sometime in April, I believe, and can be seen like a cloud around any light. I've never heard of them infesting an LNB, though...

Isn't that crazy?? I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck they were doing in there. I mean, what's the attraction there?
I thought they are into wood. Maybe they were ants? Don't termites and ants look a lot alike? Maybe it was ants in there?
All I know is they had multiple legs and were crawly looking. I didn't sit there and study them, I sent them to meet their maker as quickly as possible before they got on me!

BTW, I don't like bugs. Bugs need to stay in Bugville and out of Deeville.

 

[TRG]

Hey, termites need RTV too. Makes you wonder. If they are in your LNB what are they doing to your house?

 

[Dee_Ann]

Hey, termites need RTV too. Makes you wonder. If they are in your LNB what are they doing to your house?

Um, yeah.. Lemme tell you what, they are NOT doing me any favors. My house is 60+ years old and in serious need of a good and thorough bulldozing..

 

[Mikhel]

Um, yeah.. Lemme tell you what, they are NOT doing me any favors. My house is 60+ years old and in serious need of a good and thorough bulldozing..

Isn't this hobbie great? we end up doing some nifty geeky-nerdy things we would never imagine ourselves doing =).

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh yeah, and here's something weird!

After RTV degraded the picture last year, the sound has been out of sync on both RTV and TUFF. Every time I would change to one of the channels the sound was out of sync with the picture but several seconds. VERY annoying. But, recordings would play back just fine. What I would have to do is press the fast forward button (I'm using a PC DVR software app) and that would "jigger" the whole thing and then the sound and picture would sync up.

After this problem, I deleted the channels then rescanned the satellite.
It found only RTV, TUFF and that color bars channel listed as "AMC-9/3-F". Ok, cool. Used to be some other channels listed as Tandberg or something like that but they were always blank anyway. Big whup..

But now, when I change channels to RTV, the sound and picture is in sync! I don't have to touch a thing or jigger it (I kind of think of it like smacking the top of an old TV), it just works right, like it used to before they messed things up last year. But, Tuff TV is still messed up, out of sync and I have to jigger it to get the sound synced.

Does anyone else notice this and if so, do you have any suggestions on how to fix it?

The DVR app I'm using (but don't really like) is called Mytheater. My ex put it on the pc because he said it was simple. Well, he was right. It's very simple with no features. It just plays TV and that's about it. What chapped my backside is that he paid MY money for it! So for now, I'm stuck with it, mainly because I don't know what to replace it with or how to replace it. It does allow me to schedule recordings and automatic channel changing on schedules though and that's the only reason I'm dragging my feet on replacing it.

I looked at some other app last year called Sage but I couldn't figure it out to save my life. The site showed it to have some cool features but it looks like it only allows you to have a few foreign satellites, no provision for USA satellites and no way for multiple satellites like I have.

It's just too complicated for me so I gave up on it.

I looked at a Boxee thing but I don't like how it's all cockeyed with the missing corner, it has no Blu-ray ability and it doesn't do satellites or even OTA TV..

I need ONE box that gets everything. That records and plays back. And uses a remote control. I have several old iPhones I can use as remote controls or I would even buy a wireless keyboard if I had to. I saw a little clamshell keyboard with touchpad that works wirelessly but it was pricey.

But really, I need something better than this thing. This mytheater thing is sooooooo limited. Dumby stuck me with it because it was simple and he wanted to throw something on it and get out fast. Lazy bum. Grrrrrrrr.... Ok. Enough grousing on that. One thing at a time. Next step coming up is getting those big dishes up.
After that then I'll try to work on finding a "do it all" box.