Lost my signal thanks to the snow...

[ducttape38]

Well I've had dish network for about 4 months now, and today is the first time my signal is out. There's a few inches of snow on the ground where I live in Charlotte, NC, and my signals been gone for about 20 minutes with an Eastern Arc dish, right in the middle of the Apprentice.

Being that this is the first time I have lost my signal, how long until I should expect it to be back? Is there anything that I could do from inside to help my dish find the satellites? I'm really not comfortable with getting up on top of the roof during a pitch black snowstorm.

Any help is appreciated, and any people in the same boat as me are appreciated

 

[goaliebob99]

I recon untill the snow melts off the dish. You have to brush the snow off the dish to get signal. Usally I install mine close to the ground or somewhere I have access to the dish so that way if snow was to accumulate on the dish, I can brush it off.

 

[HIFI]

get yourself a supersoaker water gun and go out hunting for your dish

 

[Bob Haller]

mine got ice and snow 6 times this year, one day i had to clean it every hour.

this is highly unusual normally its once every other year max..

my dishes live on my deck for easy access

 

[boavista]

'My dish is mounted on my roof, and only way to reach it is with a 40 foot ladder. A good tip i learned over the years was just before snow came down in winter ( or when the weathers good one day during winter) ill go up to the dish and give it a coat of ""rainex" or some non stick cooking spray. This does the trick and lets any snow that lands on it just slide right off. Only time i ever had to throw water on the dish was last year when we had an ice storm.. Just to give you and idea of how bad it was.. a the tree close to were i park my car was entirely covered in ice and a branch fell on my car roof and dented it. But that's another story. Point is in the last 5+ years of having satellite television that's the only time I've had to get water on the dish to melt off snow/ice and get it working and that's because i had not put any coating on the dish before that winter. I've learned since.

Another thing is since your on eastern arc, the elevation is higher for the sats so it provides the right angle for the snow to sit and possibly collect blocking out the signal. Just give it some time.. it will fix it self. But my advice is spray a little Non stick cooking spray or some rainex. Good luck!

 

[thomasjk]

I'm in Charlotte also but not on the eastern arc. I lost the signal for about 15 minutes. I just switched to my 40 year old OTA antenna for the locals. Its not unusual during heavy weather to loose the signal. It mostly happens during the spring and summer thunderstorms.

 

[dodge]

silicone spray tends to last a little longer on the dish reflector than non stick cooking spray.

 

[mike123abc]

Is there not a Dish jacket? It seems like a properly shaped cover could keep most the snow off yet not block any of the signal.

 

[lazydogmot]

Non-stick cooking spray will leave a sticky residue after a while. Use Silicone spray.

Check here for dish covers: Satellite Dish Covers - WedgieCovers.com - Satellite Dish Cover
They are $40 and under.

Tom

 

[lineman20109]

On the EA here in Northern Virginia with about 6 inches of snow. Still going strong with no dropouts and I haven't touched the dish!

 

[boomerang]

It's a hit or miss thing for me. Quite often, there will be show on the dishes and I'll have no issues. I think that sometimes, it's not the snow on the dish itself, it's the severity of the storm.

 

[Fiachra]

I live in south central NH. I have had Dish since October '08 and love it. The snow does not bother unless it is freezing rain/snow. I've gotten a lot of snow and the like and only lost signal twice. Once about 2 hours before the whole state went off the grid in December due to the ice storm, and one more time when the storm started out as a freezing mix. I only lost it for a couple of hours that time. I would have thought I would have many more outages with all the weather we have had and will get over the years.

Anyway when the state went under during that ice storm we had bigger issues than TV and no power to run anything anyhow. Now, I had thought ahead a little -for what it is worth. I'll explain.

I get my broadband from Comcast. When I dropped cable I kept the internet and basic cable. Why? Well, they would have upped my internet by $15 dollars if I completely dropped cable TV. Basic cable was about $15 dollars so I kept it with my internet service from them. I figured that way I could watch the morning news on my SDTV in my home office downstairs. Sounded like a good idea and it works great.

Now the cool thing is this, I got a couple of splitters ('Diplexers') and fed the cable and sat to my HDTV in the living room. This was using the one existing coax already in place. At the TV end, one coax feeds the Sat Reciever and one feeds the ant connection on my tv. I use HDMI from the Sat receiver to the TV. If dish goes out (that one time when I still had power this year) I can switch to the cable feed by selecting the source on my TV remote. With basic cable to my HDTV I get a bunch of OTA locals out of Boston and most of them also have HD too. Some are not in HD from Dish so it gives me more options for locals too!

Below is a link to an eBay item just like I purchased. I am not affiliated with them what so ever but for the cost I figured what the heck. It worked out for me.

Regards,
Fiachra

Here is the link for those who may be interested:
2 SATELLITE DIPLEXER SPLITTER COMBINE CABLE & SATELLITE - eBay (item 130286175568 end time Mar-07-09 21:11:56 PST)

 

[Pakbackr]

We only have a couple inches here in Raleigh, but we lost power for an hour or so during the night. Now my 622 is going through this repeating cycle of trying to turn on, but I get no picture (not even the typical blue connection screen) at all. Not sure if I have a little snow on the dish, or the dish signal can't connect through the snow and clouds (its still lightly snowing here). Royal pain!

 

[MrDogDad]

Here in South Carolina near Greenville, we got about 4 inches of snow yesterday. I was able to broom off the snow from my 1000.2 through the bedroom window and I could reach the 61.5 wing dish from the front porch. I am really glad I did not have them roof mounted.

Three of the local stations went off the air for some portion of the day. A couple of them lost their DTV signal and the CBS affiliate lost everything. There have been massive power outages around here, ours was out for about 7 hours last night. We were finally able to justify the big bucks we spent on our standby generator.

 

[pfan1981]

i live in the frozen tundra of wisconsin and never had a problem (see my post). We had a blizzard when I couldn't see past my patio and the dish signal was fantastic.

The installer put the spray on both dishes.

pfan