How big is big enough to 99.9% eliminate rain fade

[whatchel1]

Perception?

While there is true rain fade that is far less a problem today because of reflector size, power, and FEC, once again Iceberg is correct: it is often the density of the cloud that most often can result in a loss of signal. This was also confirmed on a recent Tech Forum where both Mark and Dan made this very clear regarding how most Dish customers experience rain fade. I have experienced and seen this myself and I did notice the really, really dark clouds, wasn't raining at downlink, nor could I see perception within line-of-sight, that did cause brief loss of signal until the really dark cloud moved on past.

And what did you perceive to be the problem when you had the Perception issue. Could you see that it was precipitation between you and the sat?