Rainfade - worse on D* than whan I had E*

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duckydan

duckydan

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 31, 2005
818
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Philadelphia, PA
I'm hoping to get an answer to the title which is that I have had a lot more rainfade problems with D* than I had in the few years I was with E*. I live in a 2 story row home with no line of sight issues. I had E* for a few years and only in extremely severe weather would I lose signal (downpour, blizzard, etc.... really bad weather.) It seems that right now with D* if I'm experencing even a very light rain my reception is cut. Is this standard with D* or is there something I can do to prevent it? It's a pain in the butt to lose signal that frequently. I have about 6 programs on my DVR right now that all have the message "All or part of this program was not recorded due to loss of signal" all taped within the last three weeks.

I have the protection plan so if there is something that can be done I will get them out here but I don't want to waste their time or mine waiting around if this is the best it will get.
 
We've had moderate rain and mine goes out. My only gripe so far. Dish went out very few times even in heavy rain. Sat 110 was really good when raining.
 
Go to your receiver setup and look at the signal strengths. Post them here and we can tell you what the issue is. You probably need your dish realigned.
 
Mine in the mid to upper 90's all the way across on all sats. Mine is as good as it will get.
 
I also only have rain fade drops when the storms are at their heaviest or when there is hail. Many times when we are at that point I am not watching TV any more but in the safe area with the weather radio. My signal are also well in the mid-90's +


Would like to know what the OP's levels are?
 
duckydan & tigerfan33, what kind of dish are you using? do you have HD? are you losing all the channels or just some of them? if you have HD are you losing just the HD channels, or the SD channels as well.

If you are using a single LNB oval 18" dish, I myself had bad luck with these dishes concerning rainfade, even with perfect signal strength. I went to a 36" ex-primestar dish with a single LNB for the 101 sat for many years until I got a SL5 Slimline.

The Slimline is way better than the oval single LNB 18" dish where rainfade is concerned, but you can have a perfect signal on the 101 sat and if the 99 and 103 sats are not aligned right, these sats can be lost with a small rainfall.

Also if you have an SL3 or SL5 slimline, does the dish mount have the two support arms?
 
I don't know if there is a reason for this, but I find that I lose signal more often than before.
I went to the SWM set up about 2 months ago and think it's worse for the reception.
However, my signals are very good all in the 90's+.
 
takes some very heavy rain to make it go out.. but I've had to re-align the dish once before.. was getting 90's.. was able to push it to high 90's and rain fade disappeared..
 
VinceT3 said:
takes some very heavy rain to make it go out.. but I've had to re-align the dish once before.. was getting 90's.. was able to push it to high 90's and rain fade disappeared..
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Obviously the higher your number on a bright sunny day the more rain/snow it will take to knock out your signal. Whatever your problem even with perfect numbers you will lose HD's first, followed by the SD counterparts & then anything that is on the 101. That's why I'm so anal about having an OTA option on all my TV''s so I can watch & monitor for storms & the occasional show I like on the networks.

Maybe they have a bigger dish option or certainly the "brains" around here have experimented with converting larger dishes but I also use a large, 6ft radius dish for work that NEVER has lost signal regardless of the weather. One winter I noticed I was down in the 20's (100 being the best) & the damn dish looked like a Peanuts cartoon as it was a solid block of ice. I poured de-icer all over it along with some antifreeze (didn't really know if it was going to work or what kind of damage I might be doing but the equipment is leased & they replace everything for free so it didn't matter to me) & the signal quickly jumped back up. I wonder why DTV doesn't have an option for a larger dish as it's got to cut down on the rain fade problems. It would, however, create a whole new problem on where & how to mount the new beasts.
 
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jtwex said:
Obviously the higher your number on a bright sunny day the more rain/snow it will take to knock out your signal. Whatever your problem even with perfect numbers you will lose HD's first, followed by the SD counterparts & then anything that is on the 101. That's why I'm so anal about having an OTA option on all my TV''s so I can watch & monitor for storms & the occasional show I like on the networks.
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Exactly, I agree 100 % .
 
Rainfade is a fact of life with ku and ka bands. There is nothing you can do to prevent it totally. A larger dish properly peaked for maximum signal will help but it will still go out when the clouds are saturated with moisture. Multiple LNB dishes are a trade off and will give poorer performance than a single lnb dish. HD on ka with (S2 Mpeg4) modulation make problems worse. Direct and Dish are stretching the rubber band quite a bit to add all these channels. To try to make the picture better they are using modulation modes and FEC that perform poorly in the rain. Also Directs HD on ka performs worse than ku would. SD on 101 suffer from the 6/7 FEC and the ku frequency attenuation because of rain.

It's a bunch of trade offs and I doubt they will do anything to improve things. On the other hand my C band dish can have a typhoon happening and C band works perfect.
 
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tvropro said:
It's a bunch of trade offs and I doubt they will do anything to improve things. On the other hand my C band dish can have a typhoon happening and C band works perfect.
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It's been quite awhile since I had my C-Band set up, but when the weather got really bad I would get sparkles in the picture (obviously the wrong terminology).

Fwiw, your right on with the storm analogy, there ain't much you can do to prevent Rain Fade. People trying the stuff on the dish, really should have NOTHING to do with the rain fade (maybe a piece of mind thing) but like you said, it's all in the signal being blocked with the storm itself.

I don't really mind it when I do happen to lose signal as I know that I am about to get a really bad storm and can go out and get stuff in from the outside.
 
Jimbo said:
I don't really mind it when I do happen to lose signal as I know that I am about to get a really bad storm and can go out and get stuff in from the outside.
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I don't mind the occasional Saturday/Sunday morning dropouts as it means the Mrs. wont be requesting a nice walk along shopping row or for that matter anything to do with outside work. It's either an inside project that I have interest in doing or maybe a Blue Ray that I added to my collection. We used to call them lazy days. :up
 
tvropro said:
Rainfade is a fact of life with ku and ka bands. There is nothing you can do to prevent it totally. A larger dish properly peaked for maximum signal will help but it will still go out when the clouds are saturated with moisture. Multiple LNB dishes are a trade off and will give poorer performance than a single lnb dish. HD on ka with (S2 Mpeg4) modulation make problems worse. Direct and Dish are stretching the rubber band quite a bit to add all these channels. To try to make the picture better they are using modulation modes and FEC that perform poorly in the rain. Also Directs HD on ka performs worse than ku would. SD on 101 suffer from the 6/7 FEC and the ku frequency attenuation because of rain.

It's a bunch of trade offs and I doubt they will do anything to improve things. On the other hand my C band dish can have a typhoon happening and C band works perfect.
Click to expand...

Nice technical description of the actual facts; makes me proud your handle is also Chicago. :up
 
Sorry I didn't reply yesterday... by the time I got home my DVR was taping two shows and I didn't want to interrupt it.

Satellite 99c - 95% signal
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