Troubleshooting help - HITS

[nhulst]

My wife and I have been enjoying the DSR-410 I bought this summer, but I've run into problems and I'm curious if anyone has any troubleshooting ideas. I think it isn't looking very good for the receiver, but it's at least worth asking.

My system has been in good working order for several months. I've got an actuator on the dish but no motor to drive it, so it's stayed fixed on 105. The signal on the 410 has been really good (70's) until trouble started about 2 or 3 days ago. The DigiCipher light (satellite dish light) started blinking on and off, and the signal meter would drop down to 5 and then spike back up to full strength. For most of today, I have hardly been getting any reception at all. Here's what I tried:

• Swapped coax; no change
• Unplugged power overnight and re-powered in the morning; no change
• Added a splitter and slaved my TBS 5922. I found that the 5922 can continuously receive the DVB muxes on 105 even when the 410 is getting "no signal". I also found that the 410 is putting out the correct voltages and switching correctly.
• Feeling I had nothing to lose, I did a master reset followed by a manual tune to 3720. This took it from totally dead to receiving some of the time but still dropping out. I'm guessing it's a coincidence and not because of the reset.

Any other suggestions? The fact that the 5922 works ok even when the 410 misbehaves doesn't have me feeling very good about where this is going to end.

 

[Lak7]

Try having the 5922 as the Master and the 410 as the Slave.
It's just something to try, then ebay.com.

 

[nhulst]

Good idea, will give it a shot. That's an easy one to try, and besides, nothing to lose at this point...

 

[FaT Air]

Is the dish absolutely, right on, peaked?

 

[nhulst]

Is the dish absolutely, right on, peaked?

I'll mess around with it a bit this weekend and find out. I'm not optimistic. I don't see why the HITS muxes would drop so sharply over the course of a day or two, with no change in the Q on the DVB muxes, and have it be a pointing problem. I will try, though.

 

[skysurfer]

I wouldn't doubt dish-peaking or thermal cycling might be an issue. If you had a really good windy day/night, wind loads on the dish could take some slop out of the actuator arm and affect the azimuth pointing of the dish just enough to lower digicipher signal levels. Bolts could also be loosened ever so slightly by the wind (or bolts become slightly loosened from thermal cycling over time) to the point even a light wind at some point might move the dish's position just enough to decrease signal level.

 

[nhulst]

I sat outside and played around with the dish pointing for a little while. The longer I stared at the DVB muxes, I could see that the weaker ones of those were dropping out, too. I'm leaning toward saying that there's nothing wrong with the receiver. There's two main options I'm considering:

1. Could be that my cheap LNBF isn't cutting the mustard. I'm planning to buy one of the new Titanium PLL LNBFs when they go on the market. The worst thing that could happen would be that I get no improvement but I supported a major supporter of our hobby.

2. I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this one, but I'll say it because it's the truth: Could be that another broadcaster has opened up shop or cranked up power on an adjacent sat and my 6' dish isn't going to cut it anymore. Enough said on that one.

Guess we'll find out at the end of November!

 

[trinidex]

My gut says LNB