Signal in and out

[kevinkevin]

HI,

I cannot seem to figure out what is causing a problem I am having with the system.
traxis 3500, winegard, 2100 motor with adapter.
Before you get all worried about the setup, everything has been working flawlessly for a long while now.

I haven't watched the satellite for a few weeks and when I turned on the receiver it was locked (wouldn't turn on from remote or buttons on the receiver). I ended up unplugging and replugging it in and it became responsive.

SO here is the bulk of the problem.
I wasn't getting much of anything so figured maybe dish was a bit off from wind or earthquake or something.

SO I went to the menu and used the motor to turn left or right (e/w) a bit and mostly no matter what sat I point to I get only 1-2 transponders weakly instead of the 3-4-5-6+ that I was getting.

Watching the signal quality, I got the ladder out and put a gentle little push on the dish - up - down, left, right, twist and signal does not improve. Usually it WOULD improve if the dish was misaligned a bit.

But here is the weird part. For many transponders that have a weak signal, watching the meter while doing NOTHING, the quality will jump all over the place (0-19 or 28-40) back and forth.

Now occassionally I have a really strong signal on a transponder and I get great reception. Later nothing. I had all the PBS in, now I do not.

NOTHING on the system has changed. Cables are fine, don't see how dish would warp suddenly, especially when sometimes I get perfect reception on some transponders.

I do not know if it is the LNB, dish, receiver?
Anyone have experience with this??
Please help, I am losing my mind...

Thank you all in advance!
Kevin
Southern Cal
traxis 3500
winegard, 2100 motor w/ adapter

 

[Anole]

Well, how about changing out the cable?
Big jumps in signal level like that suggest a loose connection or a very flaky receiver (or LNB).
I doubt your receiver suddenly went bad... but it's always possible.

I'd proceed in this order:
- verify you have a clear line of sight - no trees or bushes in the way ...
- move the motor to any satellite you can get a signal on
- take receiver out near dish
- run a short NEW cable directly from the LNB to the receiver and seee how it works.
- if it's still intermittent, then consider the receiver (and lastly the LNB)

That would be my guess.
Perhaps someone will have a better one. -


edit: oh, and what does "motor with adapter" mean?

 

[gabshere]

i tell you i went through changing out & making up new cables last week

my problem turned out to be several cables. so swapping out cables kept leading down the road that the cables were good tried replacing all the coax connectors no help...

i had enough cable on hand to run one piece ( removing everything else from the equation) and add them back one at a time till i found the two bad cables.

oh and by the way one section ( its buried) is going bad and with it hooked up could sometime get threshold levels on my coolsat only to jump back and forth and mostly staying in the 20's & 30's for Quality and signal would jump from the low 50's to high 50's low 60's for signal levels

so thats where i would look first coax

edit: oh, and what does "motor with adapter" mean?

i took it to mean larger tube added ( 50 mm as opposed to the standard 43mm motor tube)

 

[Anole]

motor & adapter

i took it to mean larger tube added ( 50 mm as opposed to the standard 43mm motor tube)

Oh, good call! I guess I was asleep. Thanks. - :up

 

[kevinkevin]

OK, I will check cable, but it does seem odd as when I get a good signal I get good picture. It seems that I am just not getting as many transponders as I usually do.

Cables all run under eaves or through garage so shouldn't be much possibility for exposure or rot.

I was leaning toward the receiver or LNB. (LNB is invacom universal - and that is put in the setup).
We had a power outage recently and figured maybe recvr is going bad since it was unresponsive.
I have to order a new one to test that.

as for adapter - I have a stab 120 with a winegard 76 - they are incompatible without a bracket adapter on the motor arm. Else the dish can't get the proper elevation.

Thanks for the help.

anyone have any other experience similar you were able to solve.

 

[turbosat]

Wild fluctuations sounds like water in the cable or in a connector, C-band dishes I've had do the same thing if you get moisture in the wrong places! Try a hair dryer and dry everything out close to your connectors, if possible, see if it helps. May have to replace a connection or two.

 

[kevinkevin]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I probably wont get time to check all the cables until this weekend.

I am still puzzled by this though.

I was going through the recvr a few minutes ago and found this:

- 1 t/p on G10R at ~60% quality, a few others flux between 0-20,
- nothing on G25 but a few flucuations,
- absolutely nothing on amc3,
- 1 really strong t/p on G26
- but I have 70% quality on several t/p's for amc1 (feeds, etc)

I have no dish obstructions, again nothing in the system has changed (except for signal/quality).
I reset the lnb to normal ku and back to universal as I saw somewhere else - no changes.

anyway, just curious while waiting for time to get out to the system again if there were any other thoughts.

thanks again.
Kevin