Did I make a mistake with Dish?

[j25a]

Here is the situation. I have a Dish 500, DPP Twin LNBF with a 522 and a 311 reciever through SBC/Dish Network in River Falls, WI. Since being activated on June 29th I have had 4 times when I lost my signal during a rain storm, 3 of the occasions for over 30 minutes. I understand that sometimes heavy moisture clouds can cause signal loss but I would hope that this is an excessive amount of down time???? On a normal day here are my signal numbers from my 522:
Sat 110- Trans 11: 93, Trans 12: 90
Sat 119- Trans 11: 100, Trans 12: 99
My 311 has numbers that are all in the 100's to 110's. I have some trees below where the dish is pointed that might cause problems in about 10 years but otherwise my LOS is fine.

I have checked all of my connections and had to redo some of them, as I had a less than stellar install. I actually found a compression fitting that wasn't compressed on my grounding block! Also, I repeaked my dish to get my signal numbers higher by about 4 numbers.

I have called SBC/Dish Network CS and they just keep telling me that my signal numbers are good and sometimes weather causes you to lose your signal. Can anybody offer any help that will keep me as a Dish customer?

Right now I will try to get by with this setup for 90 days until I can get a dump the dish promotion from Comcast cable. I had service with them for 5 years prior to this and received great service. I switched to try to save a little $$, I guess sometimes it is money well spent!

 

[Dish Dude]

Have you had a service call yet? You are within 90 days and they will come out for free and replace it, could be bad fittings, unrated cable, ground block, bad lnb etc. Have them come back out and fix it

 

[j25a]

SBC/Dish is saying everything is fine since my signal strength is good and that this is just a weather issue so there is no need for a service call. Could these symptoms be caused by a improperly connected ground?

 

[bcshields]

Weather has been funky lately because of dennis. We've had rainfall so heavy, I'm looking out the window for an ark to float by. If it was normal rainfall.. then check your outdoor connectors for leaks, otherwise.. wait it out until this storm passes.

 

[andrewe77]

Mine goes out just about every thunderstorm. I'm in Missouri so we get some doozies. My signal levels are routinely over 120 when it's clear.

If it's a problem for you then, yes you did make a mistake getting Dish.

I'm in the same boat as you. I had Comcast for years and dumped them for a lower price. I'm getting Comcast reinstalled this Friday using their dish buyback promo. After 16 months, I'll switch again hopefully to SBC if they have their service rolled out or back to Dish with a 942 receiver.

 

[boba]

Personal feelings are: Directv is BETTER, DISH NOTWERK has lousy software. SBC is not my preferred phone company their service was lousy. No I don't like Comcast either. You asked for opinions you got them.

 

[j25a]

Personal feelings are: Directv is BETTER, DISH NOTWERK has lousy software. SBC is not my preferred phone company their service was lousy. No I don't like Comcast either. You asked for opinions you got them.

So are you saying that D* holds its signal better or that you just like the service(programming, hardware/software) better? Thanks for the input everyone!

 

[MikeD-C05]

No, Directv isn't any better. When I had both Directv and Dish , Directv went out first and then Dish would follow. They are both about the same. It helps to have the dish peaked the best you can to avoid some of the rain fade. For now , rain fade is unavoidable for either provider in strong downfalls. Although when the rain settles down to a steady rate , I get all my channels back ,except the Voom channels at 61.5.

Supposedly a company that I can't remember right now, will be releasing to the public for sale , a spray that you can coat your dish and lnb with to prevent any rain fade. Scott talked about it recently at one of the shows he attended and it was supposed to last for a year. It sells for like $29.99 a can. I will be getting myself a can as soon as it is available for sale.

 

[andrewe77]

Snake oil...

 

[TNGTony]

One thing to check is your line of sight. There are times a Dish is installed to have clear line of sight, but it is next to, under a tree or other foliage. If the tree gets moisture-laiden and a branch bows in the line of sight, even a drizzle will seem to cause a rain fade event. Remember that the signal approaches the dish from 22° ABOVE where the dish appears to point.

Also remember that there doesn't have to be a lot of rain falling to cause a rain fade event. It's the 5 mile deep clouds that cause the "rain fade", not the rain itself. I usually get a five-minute warning that it's going to rain. When I get a rain fade event on my receiver, I have enough time to make sure my converible top is up on my Jeep and the windows are down. (Yes I mean down. In Jeeps you litterally roll the windows UP to open them)

On average here in Cinci, 5-10 rain fade events lasting 2 to 5 minutes each. The longest rain fade event I had was 15 minutes. When the storm passed, cable was out for an additional 20-30 hours. Some parts didn't get cable back for 3 days.

See ya
Tony

 

[j25a]

On average here in Cinci, 5-10 rain fade events lasting 2 to 5 minutes each. The longest rain fade event I had was 15 minutes. When the storm passed, cable was out for an additional 20-30 hours. Some parts didn't get cable back for 3 days.

See ya
Tony

I guess that is what I am getting at, I have had 3 rain fade events in less than a month of having the service that have lasted over 20 minutes(one for 45 minutes) According to my research on this forum this is the part that seems a bit extreme considering the type and duration of rain events that have occured to cause the outages. At this point if I see any rain coming my way on the radar, I am expecting to lose my signal for at least 15 minutes. If this is the experience of the majority of DBS users I don't see how people can stand it!

 

[Pils]

Another thing, if your connectors are bad, water will get in them and drop the signal even more. So you may get occasional storm drop outs, but the fittings might be causing more of a problem too.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

The tip about the tree limbs is a good one. I've had to trim limbs three times for this very reason, that when wet, they dipped down and interferred with my signal.

Here are readings from a 510 receiver in Wisconsin using a Dish 500:

110 Trans 11: 104 Trans 12: 104
119 Trans 11: 109 Trans 12: 101

I've had 20-30 minute outages, during massive thunderstorms. But these are rare. Over the last 9 months, I've had one rain outage. But last summer there were more.

I may have more actual outages than what I'm reporting, as I tend to power everything down when nasty thunderstorms roll in. But signal loss from a typical rain is very rare.

 

[j25a]

Another thing, if your connectors are bad, water will get in them and drop the signal even more. So you may get occasional storm drop outs, but the fittings might be causing more of a problem too.

I thought of that, and did change the connectors out on the dish today. Now if it can only rain again to check it out!
Shouldn't I be able to spray water on it with the hose to check out how it holds a signal and see how long it takes for the signal to get back to normal strength after I quit spraying it?

Also, I have no tree limbs above or R / L of the LOS for the dish so it is not a sagging limb.

 

[NOHDjunkie]

Rain fade is not caused by rain on the dish itself.

It is caused by the signal having to pass tens of thousands of miles through the earths atmosphere. (including rainstorms) When it rains it blocks/interferes with the signal. The same way visiblity is reduced when it rains. (ie. you can see further on a clear day)

The cumulative effect of the billions of raindrops and the associated heavy cloud cover, in essence, "thickens" the atmosphere to a point where the signal is lost.

Additionally, the lower elevation the sat is, the more atmosphere it has to "look" through. This is why you are more prone to rain fade on 61.5 than 119/110

 

[Charise]

I'm in La Crosse. I had rain fade only once this summer a few weeks ago (we're practically in drought mode here now). I can't remember when exactly, as I wasn't watching TV at the time. I got a few "acquiring satellite signal" screens on a recording on DVR. Twice the message would be on the screen for about 15 seconds, then clear signal, then it was out for about 5-10 minutes. Got to see the end of the show anyway.

My outages were always longer when I had cable, sometimes lasting a couple of hours, and usually 30 minutes at the least.

Generally, I lose my local signals first--not peaked well--and usually that's all I lost last summer, for about 5 minutes a time.

Good luck with your situation, but mine has been excellent, and I have never lost signal during the winter, no matter how much snow we've had!

 

[r8d]

Happened to me for the first time this weekend. It did give a couple minutes warning of a downpour. I'm not thrilled with Dish so far - I've had it for almost 3 months. I know when I go from the free 180 channels to 60, it's going to be even worse. I figured it would be cool to get HDTV - but in reality there is never any good content on except on ESPN sometimes. I'm not paying $10 for something I rarely watch. I really like the channle guide interface and ability to DVR and auto tune the shows I want. I thought I was missing out on something when I had cable, but now I realize I wasn't missing much. I'll be switching back after my 1 year.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Rain fade is not caused by rain on the dish itself.

It is caused by the signal having to pass tens of thousands of miles through the earths atmosphere. (including rainstorms) When it rains it blocks/interferes with the signal. The same way visiblity is reduced when it rains. (ie. you can see further on a clear day)

The cumulative effect of the billions of raindrops and the associated heavy cloud cover, in essence, "thickens" the atmosphere to a point where the signal is lost.

Additionally, the lower elevation the sat is, the more atmosphere it has to "look" through. This is why you are more prone to rain fade on 61.5 than 119/110

Actually, while it is a total of over 22K miles total distance, VERY little of that is atmosphere - but that sure can be enough to hurt.

Depending on how you define it, 100 miles (give or take), or 12 miles (highest clouds). That of course is for an elevation of 90 - which (almost) none of us have.

Here where I am in Colorado, it's more like 16.7 miles of "clouded" air for 110 (EL=45), 15.5 miles for 119 (EL=41), and 30.5 miles for 61.5 (EL=23). All distances are approximate, and yes, I accounted for being 8600' MSL.

Do the math for your own area.