What Exactly Is Rain Fade?

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:06:50 +0000, Bert Hyman wrote:

Based on his IP address, the OP appears to be in Norway, so his
latitude is 60N or higher,

And I thought I had things bad here in Minnesota, at 45N!

While we here in Florida do not have your latitude problems, we get rather
severe rain-fade in the areas where we have massive afternoon T-Storms
every summer day. A good friend of mine routinely loses lock during these
storms so I tivo some of his shows for him!

I have a C-band dish that has served me very well in this regard. I was
the only one in my neighborhood who had any TV after the hurricanes came
through two years ago. With all the storm activity, the little dishes just
couldn't get a lock on anything.

I could only imagine some of the storms we get in Central florida
menacing you guys with all that air the satellites have to punch
through. Ohh well. Gotta love the rain!
Matt

Web Williams wrote:
I forgot to tell you this-

In most cases, if your dish is out of adjustment, the
up/down is not out of adjustment, it's probably OK. Do
NOT loosen the bolts that allow up/down adjustment at
first. ONLY loosen the bolts that allow you to move
your dish left/right. Move the dish VERY slightly left
or right, and I bet you'll see signal quality come back.
Once you see the signal quality go up you'll know what
you need to do from there. After getting everything
aligned, use a marker to draw hash marks on all the
adjustments to make reference points for future
realignments.
..
So just few minutes I went up to dry LNB(it is still raining
intermittantly). First I moved dish without any reason. I took LNB in
hand and wondered how to open it. There are no screw. So I put it back.
Cleaned dish with cloth, came down and saw frozen picture on tv. I went
up again, covered LNB with plastic, tied it, came down and saw that
signal is back!

Quality is just 34-35%.

Still wondering what was the problem.

"TRISHAAN" wrote in message
oups.com...

Bert Hyman wrote:
() wrote in
:

In rec.video.satellite.dbs TRISHAAN wrote:
I forgot to write. My reciever is showing strength of signal 58%
(earlier it was just 47%. It changed because i moved dish in
anger). But quality is 0%. This has happened 2-3 times before. And
it was automatically back without efforts.

What service is this, and what receiver?
My DirecTV receivers show signal of around 90 for most
transponders, and 100 for the local channels' transponder.
Somewhere around 40-50 doesn't leave much margin for loss.

You could try aligning for more signal, since you seem to have gone
from 47 to 58 by an accidental movement.

Heavy downpours (south of me, not directly over me, as someone else
noted), cause picture freezes, but in 12 years I can only recall
one outage of several minutes.

I suspect that you do have water in some component, either the LNB
or the cabling, maybe an outdoor distribution box.

Based on his IP address, the OP appears to be in Norway, so his
latitude is 60N or higher, which puts the satellites really close to
the horizon, meaning he's looking through a LOT of atmosphere, with
lots of opportunities for attenuation.

And I thought I had things bad here in Minnesota, at 45N!
.
Proxy server. I am in India.

How do you get a proxy server? I'm intersted in watching Dutch music TV
channel "The Box" via their internet stream but when I try to access it from
the UK I get "Access denied from outside the Netherlands". Could I get a
proxy server in the Netherlands (like your proxy server in Norway), and how
would I go about it?

Stephen wrote:
"TRISHAAN" wrote in message
oups.com...

Bert Hyman wrote:
() wrote in
:

In rec.video.satellite.dbs TRISHAAN wrote:
I forgot to write. My reciever is showing strength of signal 58%
(earlier it was just 47%. It changed because i moved dish in
anger). But quality is 0%. This has happened 2-3 times before. And
it was automatically back without efforts.

What service is this, and what receiver?
My DirecTV receivers show signal of around 90 for most
transponders, and 100 for the local channels' transponder.
Somewhere around 40-50 doesn't leave much margin for loss.

You could try aligning for more signal, since you seem to have gone
from 47 to 58 by an accidental movement.

Heavy downpours (south of me, not directly over me, as someone else
noted), cause picture freezes, but in 12 years I can only recall
one outage of several minutes.

I suspect that you do have water in some component, either the LNB
or the cabling, maybe an outdoor distribution box.

Based on his IP address, the OP appears to be in Norway, so his
latitude is 60N or higher, which puts the satellites really close to
the horizon, meaning he's looking through a LOT of atmosphere, with
lots of opportunities for attenuation.

And I thought I had things bad here in Minnesota, at 45N!
.
Proxy server. I am in India.

How do you get a proxy server? I'm intersted in watching Dutch music TV
channel "The Box" via their internet stream but when I try to access it from
the UK I get "Access denied from outside the Netherlands". Could I get a
proxy server in the Netherlands (like your proxy server in Norway), and how
would I go about it?

I am talking about opera mini web browser which I use to browse net on
my mobile nokia 6600. Opera server is in norway. When I send my post it
is routed through opera's norway server. It hides my true IP.

It is interesting when everybody on net think that I am in norway.

Anyway my TV is receiving broken pictures. I suspect that signal will
be dead again.

Web Williams writes:
OK, I install these things, so I'm going to give you
the lowdown. DTH is short for Direct To Home. It's
also used by several satellite companies as their
business name.
[snip]
Only mount your dish on metal or concrete.
Only mount your dish to wood as a last resort, and if you do,
expect to spend some time adjusting it from time to time.

My Dish antenna is mounted to my wood roof and has worked
for years without any need for realignment. It's even
survived the last two weeks of the "monsoon" (no rain,
just higher than normal humidity).

A pipe in the ground set in concrete works well.
Also make sure your dish pipe is absolutely as level
as you can possibly get it.

You probably mean plumb instead of level.

A dish pipe out of level makes the dish hard
to adjust. Not impossible, just harder to adjust.

Other than cross-coupling of axes, what difference does
the plumbness of the mounting make? Both axes have to
be adjusted for best signal strength.

In article ,
says...
Web Williams writes:
OK, I install these things, so I'm going to give you
the lowdown. DTH is short for Direct To Home. It's
also used by several satellite companies as their
business name.
[snip]
Only mount your dish on metal or concrete.
Only mount your dish to wood as a last resort, and if you do,
expect to spend some time adjusting it from time to time.

My Dish antenna is mounted to my wood roof and has worked
for years without any need for realignment. It's even
survived the last two weeks of the "monsoon" (no rain,
just higher than normal humidity).

You probably have a stable substrate. I've installed dishes
at the customer's request on top of a carport that had rafters
on 24 inch centers. I went back two years later and there were
valleys in between each rafter. Even though I got two dish
mount bolts in the rafters, the valley that formed shifted the
dish enough to cause loss of signal. Let's don't even get
involved in roof waiver forms- leaky roofs caused by service
techs who install dishes on a roof and cause roof leaks. It's
the place of "last resort" in mounting a dish.


A pipe in the ground set in concrete works well.
Also make sure your dish pipe is absolutely as level
as you can possibly get it.

You probably mean plumb instead of level.

Plumb, level, whatever. I'm not a carpenter, I'm a dish
installer/tech. You know what I was talking about.

A dish pipe out of level makes the dish hard
to adjust. Not impossible, just harder to adjust.

Other than cross-coupling of axes, what difference does
the plumbness of the mounting make? Both axes have to
be adjusted for best signal strength.

If you, like most folks, set the angle on the side of the
dish, then expect to be able to sweep the dish back and
forth to locate the signal, and your dish pipe is not level
(plumb in your terminology) when you cross the satellite
you're looking for, you could be several degrees above or
below where it actually is. Without a signal strength meter,
aiming a dish on an unlevel (unplumb) pipe is not impossible,
just more difficult than if the pipe were perfectly level
(plumb). On a weak satellite, it'll make you pull your hair
out!

Why so confrontational sounding? It's not necessary. I do
this for a living. I have experience at it. 8 years worth
in the field. I've done hundreds of installations. Trust me-
don't mount your dish on wood, and make sure your pipe is
level (plumb if that's what you want to call it). You'll have
a lot less trouble with it in the long run. I've had to go
back several times to realign dishes mounted on wood, but
zero times for dishes mounted on a steel pipe in concrete.
What possible motive would I have for giving out bad advice?

-Web Williams
Ethnic Satellite Service
Myrtle Beach, SC
(843) 655-5961
We install dish systems for all languages!

Like I said, you're just a little bit off of the satellite.
Your dish needs realignment.

-Web

In article . com,
says...

Web Williams wrote:
I forgot to tell you this-

In most cases, if your dish is out of adjustment, the
up/down is not out of adjustment, it's probably OK. Do
NOT loosen the bolts that allow up/down adjustment at
first. ONLY loosen the bolts that allow you to move
your dish left/right. Move the dish VERY slightly left
or right, and I bet you'll see signal quality come back.
Once you see the signal quality go up you'll know what
you need to do from there. After getting everything
aligned, use a marker to draw hash marks on all the
adjustments to make reference points for future
realignments.
.
So just few minutes I went up to dry LNB(it is still raining
intermittantly). First I moved dish without any reason. I took LNB in
hand and wondered how to open it. There are no screw. So I put it back.
Cleaned dish with cloth, came down and saw frozen picture on tv. I went
up again, covered LNB with plastic, tied it, came down and saw that
signal is back!

Quality is just 34-35%.

Still wondering what was the problem.

Web Williams wrote:
In article ,
says...

Web Williams writes:

OK, I install these things, so I'm going to give you
the lowdown. DTH is short for Direct To Home. It's
also used by several satellite companies as their
business name.

[snip]

Only mount your dish on metal or concrete.
Only mount your dish to wood as a last resort, and if you do,
expect to spend some time adjusting it from time to time.

My Dish antenna is mounted to my wood roof and has worked
for years without any need for realignment. It's even
survived the last two weeks of the "monsoon" (no rain,
just higher than normal humidity).


You probably have a stable substrate.

As do I and all of my customers.
Ten years and counting, and all of the mounts I installed either on
their roofs, or on the siding, are all still working fine.
And yes, here in NJ, we do get a lot of rain and some pretty high winds.

In rec.video.satellite.dbs TRISHAAN wrote:

I am talking about opera mini web browser which I use to browse net on
my mobile nokia 6600. Opera server is in norway. When I send my post it
is routed through opera's norway server. It hides my true IP.

I have used Opera Mini, but I can't imagine using it to post to a usenet
group on my Motorola v551.

It is interesting when everybody on net think that I am in norway.

Which is why I don't bother trying to guess where someone is by looking at
headers. I am not located near my usenet ISP.

Your elevation to the satellite is better than most of the USA for DISH
or DTV, the two satellite services that are most popular in the USA.

Anyway my TV is receiving broken pictures. I suspect that signal will
be dead again.

If it is water in the LNB, perhaps you can dry it out with some low heat,
like setting it above an incandescent lamp for a while.

You might be able to hear water by shaking the LNB, or if you blow with
mouth pressure into one of the holes that you discovered, you might expel
water from one of the other holes.

Maybe seal the holes on top, and leave one at a low point open for
temperature change relief and condensation drain.

If you are in the south of India, your angle might even be so high that the
LNB is at an angle where holes that should be drains are oriented
incorrectly, and taking in water.

Where are you? Lat/long? City? What is the angle of your dish?

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

In article , Web
Williams writes
In article ,
says...
Web Williams writes:
OK, I install these things, so I'm going to give you
the lowdown. DTH is short for Direct To Home. It's
also used by several satellite companies as their
business name.
[snip]
Only mount your dish on metal or concrete.
Only mount your dish to wood as a last resort, and if you do,
expect to spend some time adjusting it from time to time.

My Dish antenna is mounted to my wood roof and has worked
for years without any need for realignment. It's even
survived the last two weeks of the "monsoon" (no rain,
just higher than normal humidity).

You probably have a stable substrate. I've installed dishes
at the customer's request on top of a carport that had rafters
on 24 inch centers. I went back two years later and there were
valleys in between each rafter. Even though I got two dish
mount bolts in the rafters, the valley that formed shifted the
dish enough to cause loss of signal. Let's don't even get
involved in roof waiver forms- leaky roofs caused by service
techs who install dishes on a roof and cause roof leaks. It's
the place of "last resort" in mounting a dish.


A pipe in the ground set in concrete works well.
Also make sure your dish pipe is absolutely as level
as you can possibly get it.

You probably mean plumb instead of level.

Plumb, level, whatever. I'm not a carpenter, I'm a dish
installer/tech. You know what I was talking about.

A dish pipe out of level makes the dish hard
to adjust. Not impossible, just harder to adjust.

Other than cross-coupling of axes, what difference does
the plumbness of the mounting make? Both axes have to
be adjusted for best signal strength.

If you, like most folks, set the angle on the side of the
dish, then expect to be able to sweep the dish back and
forth to locate the signal, and your dish pipe is not level
(plumb in your terminology) when you cross the satellite
you're looking for, you could be several degrees above or
below where it actually is. Without a signal strength meter,
aiming a dish on an unlevel (unplumb) pipe is not impossible,
just more difficult than if the pipe were perfectly level
(plumb). On a weak satellite, it'll make you pull your hair
out!

Why so confrontational sounding? It's not necessary. I do
this for a living. I have experience at it. 8 years worth
in the field. I've done hundreds of installations. Trust me-
don't mount your dish on wood, and make sure your pipe is
level (plumb if that's what you want to call it). You'll have
a lot less trouble with it in the long run. I've had to go
back several times to realign dishes mounted on wood, but
zero times for dishes mounted on a steel pipe in concrete.
What possible motive would I have for giving out bad advice?

-Web Williams
Ethnic Satellite Service
Myrtle Beach, SC
(843) 655-5961
We install dish systems for all languages!


Interesting that debate. I've often advised people to do this and that
based on years of experience and they go and do the opposite and then
proudly claim it works fine but sometimes a bit later its "all gone
wrong can you come and have a look at it";!.

A wood mount provided that its "sufficiently" solid can work, but I'd go
for a steel one in a good lump of concrete anytime over much else unless
its a steel pole and brackets on a masonry wall........
--
Tony Sayer