I'd rather post this here than starting a new thread for 1 question.
I had realized today that I had not looked at the signal for the Rainbow Odd Transponders vs the Echostar Even Transponders since the software in the STB was updated to allow you to see Odd Transponders.
To my surprise, the Rainbow transponders were roughly 25-30 lower in signal strength than the Echostar Transponders.
Before I go out to screw with my dish/lnb alignment, I wanted to find out the difference between the 2 from others as well - or if Rainbow just has weaker transponders even though in the same orbital position.
As a side note, looking at the signal meter of both during the Sun Outage, it seemed clear that the Rainbow Bird is slightly East of the Echostar Bird as the signal drop started sooner and the recovery began faster.