What is max cable run for HR20 installs with 5lnb?

[sgsmitty]

subject says it all

[HDTVsportsfan]

I beleive the rule of thumb is 125' total per run. Many here have posted having lengths longer than that. If you use a good quality cable you could probably get by w/ longer than 125. I'm not necessarily recommending longer than that, Your Mileage May Vary.

[techrep]

I beleive the rule of thumb is 125' total per run. Many here have posted having lengths longer than that. If you use a good quality cable you could probably get by w/ longer than 125. I'm not necessarily recommending longer than that, Your Mileage May Vary.

Signal lockers or powered multiswitches may extend that to 200' or so.

[veryoldschool]

and then there are amps to offset the cable losses for longer runs.
Here is what works for long cable runs: http://www.solidsignal.com/manuals/Sheet_HRPID1422_11.pdf

[HDTVsportsfan]

Signal lockers or powered multiswitches may extend that to 200' or so.


They will certainly help. Since I have never used those type of products I didn't even want to mention it. Thanks for the input.

[AntAltMike]

Most, if not all, arbitrary maximum length figures you see published are the limits that the DBS providers mandate for their standard installations. I have never had trouble with any unamplified distribution lines that were under 300 feet long.

The old rules of thumb used to be that signals left the typical LNB with a strength of about -30dBm, they lose no more than 10dB per 100 feet of RG-6 at their highest frequency, and that all receivers can reliably process signals with a signal strength of -60dBm. I haven't actually attempted to verify those signal levels and thresholds in years, however.

[veryoldschool]

Most, if not all, arbitrary maximum length figures you see published are the limits that the DBS providers mandate for their standard installations. I have never had trouble with any unamplified distribution lines that were under 300 feet long.

The old rules of thumb used to be that signals left the typical LNB with a strength of about -30dBm, they lose no more than 10dB per 100 feet of RG-6 at their highest frequency, and that all receivers can reliably process signals with a signal strength of -60dBm. I haven't actually attempted to verify those signal levels and thresholds in years, however.
From working in another thread, if there is a multi-switch in the system, the losses seem to need an amp for runs around 200'.

[techrep]

From working in another thread, if there is a multi-switch in the system, the losses seem to need an amp for runs around 200'.

I have seen some of these threads and remember the same conclusions also.

AntAltMike's info appears to be correct but; not all cable, connectors, tuners, or installers are created equal. Losses like multiple insertion points can increase the total impedence tally of the long cable runs beyond what is expected. A single cable run of 300' - 350' with one connector at the LNB and one connector at the receiver will probably work just fine but, add two connectors at the the grounding block, two connectors at a multiswitch plus the multiswitch, and two connectors at the wall plate plus the barrel, and you have a different animal.

[veryoldschool]

...and you have a different animal.
That animal is a squirrel. :lol:

[Milominderbinder2]

If the connect are tight...

If the connectors are good and well done...

If there are no splices...

If the cable is not crimped or cut...

If the cable does not have moisture in it...

If the center core is solid copper...

If the cable is good, newer RG6...

If you use RG11 instead of RG6...

You might be able to have longer runs. But the answer we should give is the one tech support would say: 125'.

- Craig

[techrep]

That animal is a squirrel. :lol:

Nice!:lol: I would classify that as a random element.

[veryoldschool]

Nice!:lol: I would classify that as a random element.
Well this is RF so that little sucker is running around all over the place. :)

[excalibur26]

RG-11 should take care of runs in excess of 125 feet. Not easy to work with and not cheap.

[AntAltMike]

Back in the late 1990s, Sonora Design bench tested a bunch of Sony receivers and they all performed reliably down to -66dBm. Around that same time, I went to a seminar at World Satellite Network's headequarters in which we padded one down to below -70dBmV before it failed, and even then, if it was padded down to about -75dBm but an inline amp was installed right at the receiver it could be recovered. DBS receivers only need an S/N ratio of about 8dB to still be processible, whereas analog signals begin to show visible degradation when the C/N drops below about 45dB, so you can more readily recover a DBS signal through post-loss amplification than you can an NTSC signal.

The practical advice I give is that while you should always try to minimize cable lengths, if you don't see any easy way to keep it under 300 feet, don't sweat it. I have successfully tested DISH DP receivers (2,150MHz) at nearly 400 feet from the LNBs with no amplification, I only use cheap RG-6 with steel center conductors and maybe 40% braid coverage, and like most people who have been around forever, there was no such thing as 2GHz F-81 barrels for the first decade of my C-band lifetime, and they weren't readiy available even when I started using stacked DirecTV trunklines in the late 1990s, but I never had any trouble with those F-81s that just touched the center conductor at two points.

As for multiswitch losses, I remember that a lot of the inexpensive 3x4 switches had insertion losses of three or four dB, but I thought that when I saw the specs on more modern, externally powered 5x4s that they were closer to zero loss. Does anyone have any links to the insertion loss or output port loss of any common (WB68, WB616) wideband switches?

[veryoldschool]

AntAltMike
This is all good "stuff" and I believe you, but also know or have worked with members who weren't as luckily as you and needed amps & Sonora locker at short lengths than what you've posted here.

[AntAltMike]

I would be concerned that the WB68 non-powered switches tmight be unable to sustain the voltages necessary cross the 18 volt evens threshold of about 15.5 volts at long lengths, but the last time I saw an admittedly small picture of a WB68 switch, I thought the picture had a power supply with it. Are the current production edition of WB68s externally powered?

[veryoldschool]

I would be concerned that the WB68 non-powered switches tmight be unable to sustain the voltages necessary cross the 18 volt evens threshold of about 15.5 volts at long lengths, but the last time I saw an admittedly small picture of a WB68 switch, I thought the picture had a power supply with it. Are the current production edition of WB68s externally powered?
Completely passive.

[AntAltMike]

If fairness to others who turn here for advice, I, of course, have test gear to tell me exactly what I am seeing for signal levels, so I am less concerned when I deal with systems that do not have structural surplusses engineered into them, since I know what I am getting for signal strength in absolute terms.

By the way, a few months ago, I noticed on some H20s that during the set-up regimen, you could choose between a 6x8 switch and a 4x4 switch, with the default setting being 6x8, and when the installer before me had left it in 6x8, it could not interface with the 4x4 switch. What that implied to me is that 6x8 switches and probably AU9 LNBs might be smart enough to recognize DiSEqC commands, even for the four "core" satellites, and if that is the case, then they just might be able to deliver "evens" when the voltage reaching the switch dips below 15.5 volts. I can't say that for sure, because I didn't experiment with it, but if you ever are pushing the limits on distance and failing to lock the evens, you just might want to make sure the receiver is on 6x8 switch mode, even if you don't have a 6x8 switch, because the AU9 just might connect you to the right transponders by recognizing a DiSEqC code for them.

[AntAltMike]

Completely passive.

I think I saw the picture on eBay. It wouldn't be the first time a seller attached the wrong picture...

[veryoldschool]

From what I've heard, that is used only for the 72.5 & 95 SAT dishes off the WB68 or WB616.

To add: my AU9 has a mounting for another LNB to receive the 95 SAT signals. This is either a future or still born planned upgrade.

[techrep]

Back in the late 1990s, Sonora Design bench tested a bunch of Sony receivers and they all performed reliably down to -66dBm. Around that same time, I went to a seminar at World Satellite Network's headequarters in which we padded one down to below -70dBmV before it failed, and even then, if it was padded down to about -75dBm but an inline amp was installed right at the receiver it could be recovered. DBS receivers only need an S/N ratio of about 8dB to still be processible, whereas analog signals begin to show visible degradation when the C/N drops below about 45dB, so you can more readily recover a DBS signal through post-loss amplification than you can an NTSC signal.

The practical advice I give is that while you should always try to minimize cable lengths, if you don't see any easy way to keep it under 300 feet, don't sweat it. I have successfully tested DISH DP receivers (2,150MHz) at nearly 400 feet from the LNBs with no amplification, I only use cheap RG-6 with steel center conductors and maybe 40% braid coverage, and like most people who have been around forever, there was no such thing as 2GHz F-81 barrels for the first decade of my C-band lifetime, and they weren't readiy available even when I started using stacked DirecTV trunklines in the late 1990s, but I never had any trouble with those F-81s that just touched the center conductor at two points.

As for multiswitch losses, I remember that a lot of the inexpensive 3x4 switches had insertion losses of three or four dB, but I thought that when I saw the specs on more modern, externally powered 5x4s that they were closer to zero loss. Does anyone have any links to the insertion loss or output port loss of any common (WB68, WB616) wideband switches?

Like VOS I accept that your intel is good. Many of the longer run problems have been with systems requiring a external multiswitch. The nonpowered multiswitches become unreliable after x amount of cable run and on most of these a signal locker or a powered multiswitch has cured the problem. Below is a link to the Sonora Signal Locker which some folks have used to cure there "long cable run" problems. Also there are some specs which you asked about.

http://www.solidsignal.com/manuals/Sheet_HRPID1422_11.pdf

[AntAltMike]

From what I've heard, that is used only for the 72.5 & 95 SAT dishes off the WB68 or WB616.

Here is why I think that when an H20 is in 6x8 mode, it is using DiSEqC for all five or six LNB selections rather than just for the two mongrel ones.

I have constructed a distribution system in a condo with two stacked Ku LNB trunklines, Sat A and Sat B/C. This building was prewired with just one coax and one phone wire, but the saving grace here is that each unit has its own communications conduit and in most cases, we can pull a second home run from the communications closets to the apartment's communications ceiling hatch.

A customer of mine bought three H20s. Since the H20s had internal destackers in them, the cheapest way for me to get this job done was to enable the internal destackers and to furnish three Hughes 2x1 tone switches. (Warning: Do not ever buy any of the chincy 2x1 tone switches that claim to go to 2.4GHz for use in stacked LNB systems, as they have almost no port-to-port isolation above about 1.5GHz!).

I am not a DirecTV dealer. I just do the advance work in large buildings in which I have designed and installed the distribution systems. When the installer arrived, he read my note, telling him that all the wallplates had been preconfigured and pre-tested, and all he had to do was connect the receivers, call up the service screen (depress "active" and "right arrow" buttons on the front panel at the same time) and select "stacked" for the LNB format, and to call me if there was a problem.

Like most residential installers, he connected the receivers, got no evens, opened the ceiling hatch, saw parts he had never seen before, yanked them all out, and then connected the receiver coax to each stacked input coax, not knowing that they were stacked.

When he put the receiver into test, he got solid signal strength readings on the odds, but the evens jumped off and on.

I came back and reinstalled the matrix as I had originally, but I, too, still got irregular readings on the evens, jumping from healthy to zero and back. I then put the receiver back into unstacked mode and installed an external 575 MHz destacker, but I still could not reliably get the evens, so I finally went through the guided set-up, saw the 6x8 versus switch 4x4 choice, which I don't think was there in the previous H20s I had installed, and when I put it back to 4x4, the receiver worked both in unstacked mode, through the external destacker, and in stacked, mode, toggling the one switch and unstacking the evens. I concluded that when the receiver was set up to see a 6x8 switch, it was using DiSEqC commands for all six satellites, not just for the fifth and sixth LNB selections.

Sounds like a happy ending, right? Wrong. A week later, this customer called me back, telling me that all three receivers had recently become inoperable. All were trying to get new software but couldn't get it or load it. It seems that when the routine software update was sent out, the new revision of the software had eliminated the internal destackers! I only know of one time when DirecTV had pulled this in the past, when they took the MFH-1 destacking capability out of some D10 or D11 receivers (is sattec reading this?), and the people operating MFH-1 systems had to then put external destackers on all of their receivers in those buildings. So for this customer, I installed a 5x4 switch with two 575 MHz destackers in their communications hatch and left their receiver in 4x4 switch mode and it works fine to this day. But I retail the destackers for $99 each and the powered 5x4 for $119, whereas I had billed them only $39 each for the three 2x1s, so basically, I was giving them $200 in retail parts and two hours of labor for free, yet they spent the entire two hours telling me over and over again how pissed they were that I had to visit them three times to keep this all running. Then they felt sorry for me and gave me a $20 tip for my time and effort.

...my AU9 has a mounting for another LNB to receive the 95 SAT signals. This is either a future or still born planned upgrade

Do you mean the AU9 LNB housing has one or two auxiliary input "F" connector ports on it? They may actually be functional and may work if you, A) connect a 95 degree dish there, and B) connect them directly to a receiver, rather than to a WB switch, and set the receivers switch mode to 6x8.

[veryoldschool]

Wow, you're way over my experience with D* systems, [but not with my experience in electronic warfare].
The H20 software is a bit behind the HR-20, & is still "a work in progress". I don't thing the HR-20 still as a multi-switch selection in the setup. Just the other SATs.
Are you stacking all five SATs or just the older Ku ones?
Stackers/destackers are giving way to the SWM [single wire multi-switch] system.
As for the AU-9, there is just a "blank" where the LNB would mount but no connectors visible [maybe under a plastic knockout]

[AntAltMike]

I would be concerned that the WB68 non-powered switches tmight be unable to sustain the voltages necessary cross the 18 volt evens threshold of about 15.5 volts at long lengths, but the last time I saw an admittedly small picture of a WB68 switch, I thought the picture had a power supply with it. Are the current production edition of WB68s externally powered?

Completely passive.

I just stumbled across the picture I knew I had seen somewhere recently of a powered 6x8 switch that is labeled as a WB68. It is in this weeks, "Weekly Specials" e-mail from NACE.

Edit: I found the NACE phote in the Zinwell website. NACE had mislabeled it. The current edition of the WB68 is still not powered.