Oler 500 twin question ......

[AC Orange]

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I've got an older (maybe 12 years) 500 twin Dish that I've had in the same spot for the entire time. I have 2 receivers in the house. The only time I ever lost signal was in a bad storm. Now I've lost a large number of stations, while other ones are fine. The weather is very clear, so it can't be that. I don't understand why it's doing some of the things it's doing. For example, the downstairs receiver shows satellite 110, transponder 5 as having a good signal of 65. The upstairs receiver shows the same Sat/Trans as bad signal at a 3. Why are the 2 different ?

By the way, I'm kind of an old-timer (almost 70), but I used to be an electronics tech before I retired years ago. I want to try and fix this myself if it's something easy. I have a number of trees around the direction of the 2 satellites. I'm thinking maybe one of those branches finally grew into the signal path ?

Any help would be much appreciated.

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[hawker152]

Could be a cable issue or most likely a LNB or receiver issue. The last two options are user replaceable if u have the proper parts.

 

[TheKrell]

Since you get a good signal on one receiver and a bad signal (same transponder) on the 2nd receiver, then I don't think it's tree growth. There is a switch internal to all twin LNBs, and this may be going south. Or your 2nd receiver may be failing. To diagnose this yourself, the first thing you could try is swapping receivers. If the problem follows the receiver, then it's the receiver. If the problem stays on the same coax, then it's either the twin's switch, the cable itself, or the connectors. Swapping cables at the LNB will tell you whether it's the LNB or cable.

If it's the legacy twin, I would replace it with another legacy twin. Note that you can take off the twin and install a new one without disturbing the aim of your dish. Good luck!

 

[AC Orange]

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Thanks for your replies. I'm going to try the swaps you pointed out. I thought the different readings on the same Sat/Trans didn't seem right.

I have a funny feeling maybe it's the LNB because this started yesterday when the temps hit high 80's with a lot of sun (something we haven't seen around here in quite a while) and likely heated it up .
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[AC Orange]

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Well, thank you guys. I got her working again. One thing I guess I wasn't clear on was that the problem was occurring on both receivers the same way. In other words, the channels lost downstairs were the same channels lost upstairs. And I also had different signal strengths on each. Another thing I didn't realize was that I was actually not seeing several transponders at all. I tried the swaps first, pretty much the same thing. So I started looking around at the dish outside. I never noticed that one of the coax cables had a splice in it (within a foot of the actual dish). The splice consisted of 2 female conns joined by a double ended male connector. Dismantling that showed a bunch of semi wet green corrosion inside. Cleaned everything and sprayed an electrical cleaner/lube on it. Went back inside and all transponders show strong signal and it passed the switch test.

I'm a little confused about this though. If only 1 coax had a bad connector, how come both receivers were messed up ?

Once again, thanks for your help.

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