Broken LNBA

[RTCDude]

I had one of the three ports on my 13 year old DPP LNBA die. It still got all three WA satellites on the other two ports. Fortunately I had a spare LNBA I could quickly swap in. But I was curious if installers see this kind of single port failures very often? I would have expected the whole LNBA to die instead of just one port.

 

[tjboston5676]

I had one of the three ports on my13 year old DPP LNBA die. It still got all three WA satellites on the other two ports. Fortunately I had a spare LNBA I could quickly swap in. But I was curious if installers see this kind of single port failures very often? I would have expected the whole LNBA to die instead of just one port.

I've seen a few times. Usually hapoens after a power outage and a surge is sent through when power is restored. No its no an often occurrence but when dealing with electronics it does happen more than we would like to see. While the other ports will usually still work, if I come across this situation I replace it just in case. Which with our newer hybrid lnbs it's an absolute must replace as the hopper receivers are required to be connected to port 1 of the lnb.

Also not trying to be demeaning but educational, its lnbf rather than lnba. It stands for Low Noise Block downconverter Feedhorn

 

[RTCDude]

Thanks for the failure info. That’s kind of what I was assuming.

You are technically you are correct for the acronym for the current generation of satellite TV feed-horns. However, as for a bit of history of LNBA, or Low Noise Block Amplifier; that comes from the feed-horns used in commercial downlink stations and in the early days of consumer satellite dishes (think BUDs, Big Ugly Dishes). While feed-horn technology has come a long way since those days, and over the years LNBA is still commonly used as a generic term for satellite dish feed-horns and is easily understood in these forums.

I’m a product of those early dish days and old habits die hard. I will think about updating my vernacular.

To get back onto topic thread; 13 years was a good long run for a piece of electronic equipment that’s constantly exposed to the harsh outside conditions. What kind of reliability have we seen so far for the newer crop of hybrid feed-horns?

 

[tjboston5676]

I've seen a few times. Usually hapoens after a power outage and a surge is sent through when power is restored. No its no an often occurrence but when dealing with electronics it does happen more than we would like to see. While the other ports will usually still work, if I come across this situation I replace it just in case. Which with our newer hybrid lnbs it's an absolute must replace as the hopper receivers are required to be connected to port 1 of the lnb.

Thanks for the failure info. That’s kind of what I was assuming.

You are technically you are correct for the acronym for the current generation of satellite TV feed-horns. However, as for a bit of history of LNBA, or Low Noise Block Amplifier; that comes from the feed-horns used in commercial downlink stations and in the early days of consumer satellite dishes (think BUDs, Big Ugly Dishes). While feed-horn technology has come a long way since those days, and over the years LNBA is still commonly used as a generic term for satellite dish feed-horns and is easily understood in these forums.

I’m a product of those early dish days and old habits die hard. I will think about updating my vernacular.

To get back onto topic thread; 13 years was a good long run for a piece of electronic equipment that’s constantly exposed to the harsh outside conditions. What kind of reliability have we seen so far for the newer crop of hybrid feed-horns?

I guess I'm not old enough to have ever seen lnba lol.

As far as reliability it seems to be about the same overall. I know for awhile there was a pretty big run that had some issues. I never had issues but techs in colder climates were having major issues when it got super cold. It's since been fixed and really the only issues we see are basically what we've mentioned here already.

 

[NYDutch]

From time to time of my Dish installer friend drops off a box of DPP LNBF's removed from service for me to use as spares when I help out other RV'ers in our travels. There's usually at least a couple of units with a single bad port in testing that I discard. Personally, I used the same eastern and western arc DPP LNBF's on my portable 1000.4 from 2008 until last fall when I swapped in a 1000.2 two satellite eastern arc LNBF to replace the original 1000.4 triple satellite LNBF due to wind damage that cracked two feed horn covers.

 

[RTCDude]

Makes me believe that these single port failures, with the other ports still getting all satellites, means this is an internal switch failure and not a feed-horn failure. That would suggest that the solid state switching elements (FETs maybe) may be more vulnerable then the feed-horn receiver/downconverter elements are.