New to the forum guys but been viewing from afar and a lot of good information here. I'm a Technician for a Dish retailer and I have a customer having some minor issues on the Hopper. The install was done a few months ago, Pole mount in the backyard with no trees in the vicinity. They previously had PTCI cable for tv and the existing cable was all RG6 3Ghz so I used the majority of the existing cable. I ran two new lines from the dish to the solo node(each line about 50ft)which is in a home run box with the splitter. They have a Hopper 2 and two Joey 1s with WA antenna 1000.2 LNB. Everything was fine until about 2 months ago he called me a few days ago saying at about 6am to 7am his local channels 4,5,9 would sometimes be in letterbox and an error code 004 would pop up saying to switch to a different channel. He switches to History channel(all is fine there) and switches back and it's typically normal. But this may happen ten times within the hour. He also said it has happened at night as well. I'm not sure if it's happening during the day I assume he works during the day and mostly watches in the morning and at night. He has also had an error 005 come up but typically switching to a different channel and back would resolve it for the time being. He's done hard resets on both the hopper and tv and I also had him do a check switch on a clear day and still having the same issues. I'm going back out there tomorrow to do some diagnosing but I'm open to any ideas as it's a hour and a half round trip and I can't afford to go back and forth so I will be taking equipment out with me. Retail services summed it up to possibly the dish being out of alignment(the customer checked the pole to make sure it was still plumb and level and he said it was) so I'm unsure about that but they said the Hopper could have an issue as well. I agree that those could be the possible causes although I've never encountered these errors before in the three years I've been doing this. The node and splitter in the home run box are a bit squeezed in there to fit and the coax jumpers do have some bend to them so I'm not ruling that out as an issue but I'm open to any ideas. Thanks in advance.
Hopper 2 Error code 004/005
- Thread starter Shafers: Marshall
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 12
- Views 3K
Definitely sounds like signal loss. I'd guess the pole has shifted a bit, causing the dish to be out of alignment. Or, he hit it with the lawnmower and doesn't want to admit it! Good luck..
I'm wondering that as well. He insisted on not having concrete in the yard(he said his last dish pole mount was fine without concrete) so I attached the bottom part of a regular mast to the bottom of the pole to keep it from turning and it's enclosed well in the backyard(Completely fenced in so hard for wind to get in) and it was sturdy enough and everything checked out fine when I left. I've been doing a lot of research but haven't found any definite fixes for this issue so far. Seems like almost half of my Hopper 2 installs have issues whether it be software downloading or communication with joeys but the Hopper 3s I rarely have issues with them. But something new to learn so not all bad. Thanks for the reply amigo.
Do you have access to the tech portal? There's tons of known issues and fixes on the hopper 2's...
If it's the Dish technician portal I'd say probably not since we're a Retailer. But I do have access to https://dishportal.dish.com/
As far as I know you have to be a Retailer but I'm not a %100 certain. I've just always had access since I started working here. If you're looking for specific info I may be able to save it or snapshot it and post it here.
-Update- Went out there and everything was working fine of course but the first thing I looked at was the satellite readings on the hopper and the 129 was very low on transponder 9 like around a reading of 16 or so(even though I just see those readings as more of a rough estimate, I really only trust what my Birddog has to say, that's still much lower than it should be) and that transponder 9 is the spotbeam for the channel he had been having trouble with so I go outside check alignment and sure enough 129 and 119 are much lower then they should be. What's odd is the pole was still level but he said his grandson had been mowing his lawn and the dish at a certain angle blends in with the fence so I wouldn't be surprised if he ran into it head first. All it required was an adjustment of the azimuth and a check switch. Customer still declined a concrete mount he had mentioned he had a heck of a time removing the last one when he canceled with Dish before. But looks like that's all it was. As long as I don't get another phone call in the next few days that is. Thanks for the suggestions amigos. I sometimes tend to overthink things but this guy is my favorite customer(helped me trench and dig the hole for the pole mount he had a shovel in hand as soon as I got there) so I wanted to make sure I had all my bases covered. Thus coming to you guys. Again thanks for the help.
Feel like sneaking by when he’s not around and pouring a below grade concrete base and cover it with grass? Carefully.
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
We'll have to catapult the bag of cement over the fence. It's been a long time since I've needed to use my catapult.
If that pole's not in concrete, it's going to move
