Signal is 0 after storm... what should I check first?

[JDS]

My husband is at work, having a long hard day. I'd like to get some ideas of what to try first before I even tell him what happened.

We live in E TN and we've had less rain than normal. Last night we got a good soaking rain but our power went off. This morning, 0 signal on either receiver, all satellites are 0.

Our setup, as best as I can remember:

Two 508 DVR receivers... we have a larger Dish that picks up 119, 110, and 105 (I think) for our locals. We have a separate dish pointing to 61.5 for our lifetime Sky Angel (which I just read here is going to be canceled). It's hooked into a DPP44, with a power inserter. I have unplugged the receiver, waited, and it's still 0. I tried resetting the power inserter (unplugged the power inserter, unplugged the receivers, unscrewed the Sat In lines, waited, then plugged back up). This setup has been working fine since Dec 2005.

A Dish installer came to install the DPP44 and he did a fine job. It's grounded. Good RG6 wire. He said if my husband didn't have the dish antenna installed, he would have walked away, saying it couldn't be done. It's aimed very well, between the trees.

But.. the power inserter was plugged directly into the wall outlet... it was not run through a power strip/surge protector, which I thought it was. The green light on the black box is on when plugged in.

Both receivers were plugged into a power strip/surge protector. I heard a little bit of thunder. When the power was off last night, it came on and off again a few times, then stayed on an hour, then went back off for 4 more hours.

There were no high winds last night, and I see no evidence of anything (branch) hitting it. It's been well aligned for years. It was extremely rare that it quit working even in hard downpours.

I would think if it were trees blocking it, we would have had intermittent signals for a while, instead of it working fine yday then 0 today.

So... do you have any ideas of where to start?

Would it be the dish antenna needing to be re-aimed? Could the power inserter be zapped? or the DPP44?

Thanks very much!
Amy

 

[Dgenx321]

Your power inseter may have gotten fried.

 

[dishcomm]

My husband is at work, having a long hard day. I'd like to get some ideas of what to try first before I even tell him what happened.

We live in E TN and we've had less rain than normal. Last night we got a good soaking rain but our power went off. This morning, 0 signal on either receiver, all satellites are 0.

Our setup, as best as I can remember:

Two 508 DVR receivers... we have a larger Dish that picks up 119, 110, and 105 (I think) for our locals. We have a separate dish pointing to 61.5 for our lifetime Sky Angel (which I just read here is going to be canceled). It's hooked into a DPP44, with a power inserter. I have unplugged the receiver, waited, and it's still 0. I tried resetting the power inserter (unplugged the power inserter, unplugged the receivers, unscrewed the Sat In lines, waited, then plugged back up). This setup has been working fine since Dec 2005.

A Dish installer came to install the DPP44 and he did a fine job. It's grounded. Good RG6 wire. He said if my husband didn't have the dish antenna installed, he would have walked away, saying it couldn't be done. It's aimed very well, between the trees.

But.. the power inserter was plugged directly into the wall outlet... it was not run through a power strip/surge protector, which I thought it was. The green light on the black box is on when plugged in.

Both receivers were plugged into a power strip/surge protector. I heard a little bit of thunder. When the power was off last night, it came on and off again a few times, then stayed on an hour, then went back off for 4 more hours.

There were no high winds last night, and I see no evidence of anything (branch) hitting it. It's been well aligned for years. It was extremely rare that it quit working even in hard downpours.

I would think if it were trees blocking it, we would have had intermittent signals for a while, instead of it working fine yday then 0 today.

So... do you have any ideas of where to start?

Would it be the dish antenna needing to be re-aimed? Could the power inserter be zapped? or the DPP44?

Thanks very much!
Amy

How handy are you?..>I could have you go to the switch and bypass it ,connecting one of your receivers by inserting a barrell connector. Then go inside and see if that receiver is working. If so the switch may be the casulty..
If you are DHPP or have the"In Home Service Plan" do yourself and the tech a favor..Call th pros and let them handle it. This is what we get paid for. Please let us do our job and help you..
One thing I must ask....How is that the install tech told you "He said if my husband didn't have the dish antenna installed, he would have walked away, saying it couldn't be done."
That's not logical given the fact that the the dish was installed...Now unless you A) bought the house with the dish there or B) used the ACME Dish antenna grower ( Just add water) the way I see is the tech that bestowed his wisdom upon you is full of kaa kaa...

 

[Pepper]

Try bypassing the power inserter and let the receiver power the switch.

If it works, you need a new power inserter. You don't want to leave it that way for long though because the receiver really isn't meant to provide that much power.

What locals are you getting? Likely they aren't on 105 anymore, you could disconnect that LNBF and replace the switch with a DP34 if necessary.

 

[JDS]

We're getting Tri-Cities TN/VA locals. I have no idea if they're still on 105 or not. I just assumed they were.

Long story....here it is if you're interested...We became DISH customers over 10 years ago, and the place we bought it from told us we could install it ourselves. We did fine. They didn't have the free install packages back then, and we paid full price for our equipment. We moved before the Dishmover plan was in place. One installer came out here and said No way, and he left. My husband installed it on the side of our boat house on the lake. Later, we wanted a larger dish to get 110 and 105, so my husband thought he could site it (with his caving compass!) on land by the house in between some trees, and we bought a superdish off ebay and got it working fine. Except the DP34 we got somehow got fried. Another installer came and said he did a great job siting it in without a meter, and if it'd been him, he wouldn't have tried it. He told us to get another DP34, and the DPP44s were unavailable then. DP34 worked fine. After some time without 61.5, I wrote the Dish network and explained why we needed a 44 to get Sky Angel, and they came for free and installed the DPP44 (we agreed to keep service a yr) and he did a great job running the wires and put the switch up. This installer also agreed with the previous one that he wouldn't have tried it. Others around us have DirecTv and said Dish won't work.

Back to the problem at hand... my husband checked the dish antenna and he said it's still very solid; he doesn't believe it's moved. After the power outage, the power kept flickering off and on, he thinks that might have done something.

I just now unplugged the power inserter and unscrewed the sat line in to it. Then I unplugged the main receiver and turned it back on. Now it's cycling through the transponders. Instead of a satellite number, it says:

Satellite: Default (*this is with the pwr inserter off and disconnected*)
Transponder: cycles through: 1,3,5,7,9,12,14,16,18,20,11,13,15,17,19,21,2,4,6,8,10,1,3,5,7,9,12
Progress 0 of 5 (it never gets to 1)

I found our old DP34 and I'll see if I can figure out how to hook that up myself. As I recall the DP34 needs no power inserter at all. I wonder if it would damage it if I accidentally hooked it up with it on? I'll make sure it's not. And I'll unplug both receivers when I'm hooking up the DP34, just in case.

Thanks a bunch!

 

[RandallA]

Now that you bypassed the power inserter, run check switch and see if it detects anything. Menu, 6, 1, 1, Check Switch. If not just connect the DP34 switch and run check switch again. The DP34 doesn't need the power inserter.

 

[JDS]

Thanks! I did it myself!! I now know the DPP44 is bad. Not good. But at least I know what it is. And I'm so glad we don't have to re-aim the beast.

I hooked up one sat line into the DP34, out to one receiver, and it has a 114 signal strength. I will temporarily hook up the other lines and receiver. After Sky Angel quits their satellite service (next yr?) having a DPP44 won't matter anyway. So I might run 61.5 to one room, the main lines to the other receiver.

And I figured something else out. Hmm it STILL could be the power inserter. When my husband came home last night, he ran check switch on it, even though there was 0 signal strength, so *that's* why it has Default as the satellite number. I did NOT run check switch after I disconnected the power inserter.

 

[RandallA]

I would just disconnect 105 and run check switch on all receivers. If your locals are not there, then connect 105 back but as far as I know only a few markets (maybe none) have locals on 105.

Here's is the list for 105:

EKB: Dish Network Channels at 105°

 

[JDS]

Thanks so much, Randall! Our locals were moved to 110, so this solves our problem of the zapped DPP44.

I ran a check switch on the DPP44 again after unplugging the power inserter and it still doesn't work, so I assume either the switch is bad, or else it doesn't have enough power w/o the power inserter to carry it. Either way, the DP34 will work for us now, since we can unhook 105.

Thanks!

 

[RandallA]

Thanks so much, Randall! Our locals were moved to 110, so this solves our problem of the zapped DPP44.

I ran a check switch on the DPP44 again after unplugging the power inserter and it still doesn't work, so I assume either the switch is bad, or else it doesn't have enough power w/o the power inserter to carry it. Either way, the DP34 will work for us now, since we can unhook 105.

Thanks!

Glad you got it working.

 

[eastside]

One thing about running a check switch...

After going Main Menu - 6 - 1 -1 - Check Switch, you'll notice near the bottom of the Installation Summary screen two options: SuperDish and Alternate. If you are using a LNBF for SuperDish, D500+, D1000 or D1000+, you need to have SuperDish checked before running the test. (Alternate is only for PR/VI customers.)

Running a check switch with a 44 hooked up but unplugged from power will not work - that switch has to have power to be detected.

You are correct about the 34 switch not being powered. So, you might want to hook that up and then re-run the test.

My (somewhat) educated guess is that your power inserter (and possibly your 44) is toast.

 

[Andrewwski]

Quite often a DPP44 will work without the inserter...especially with multiple receivers connected.

 

[RandallA]

Quite often a DPP44 will work without the inserter...especially with multiple receivers connected.

Exactly. As long as a receiver is connected to port 1 of the DPP44 switch, the switch will have power.

 

[eastside]

Exactly. As long as a receiver is connected to port 1 of the DPP44 switch, the switch will have power.

I've seen a number of high-end installations live, including two with trunked DPP44 switches. I've seen issues where the whole switch is toast, where a particular input or output is bad, and where the power inserter is bad. I have yet to run across one where the DPP44 *doesn't* need an inserter.

Also, it's certainly nowhere in the specifications that the DPP44 doesn't require its own power. So, if you try to run one without the inserter and have signal issues, E* will not consider a solution that doesn't involve an inserter.

 

[RandallA]

"it's certainly nowhere in the specifications that the DPP44 doesn't require its own power."

I never said that. I know the DPP44 switch needs the power inserter in the long run. What I said was that if you remove the power inserter and connect a receiver to port 1, the switch works. Yes, it's not recommended and it was a suggestion for troubleshooting the problem.

Try it, the DPP44 switch works with a DP receiver on port 1. The receiver could eventually fail for drawing more power that specifications but the switch works without the power inserter.

 

[mdwatt]

I've also had some cases where the power goes off and comes back on, that the LNB (usually a plus twin or some other type of LNB with an internal switch) gets "froze" up. You have to remove all the power from the LNB and put it back on. Sometimes that will fix that issue as well. That doesn't apply to your setup, I know, but just for everyone's referrence....