Signal strength

[IndyMichael]

On the last clear and sunny day, mine was 116, today it is cloudy, dreary and rainy, and it's 92. I can't tell any difference in the quality of the picture at 92 or 116.

They came out to install the 2nd dish today, and couldn't get any signal for it. Not sure what satellite(s) it points to, but you'd think even on a rainy day, it would get a signal strength close to the 92 my other dish receives. Since it was raining, and the roof was quite wet, they decided to reschedule for Monday, which made sense to me, I wouldn't want to get up on a wet and potentially slippery roof either.

[PSB]

With digital TV you get a great picture or no picture, no matter the SS. They could not get the other satellite signal for one of three reasons......
1. They dont know what they are doing!
2. There is no line of site from the location they tried!
3. Faulty LNB or Box!

[IndyMichael]

The installer was looking through a "small metering device" (for lack of not knowing what it's called.) He said it should turn yellow when there was a signal, but it stayed black the entire time. The Dish itself wasn't hooked up. We have a clear line of sight, so who knows why it couldn't pick up a signal.

[Steve Mehs]

As long as the signal strength is over 40 you'll maintain a lock, ss has no effect on pq. The higher the signal strength the more immune your system will be to rain fade. Transponders 1,3,5,7,9 on 119 and 2,4,6,8,10 on 110 may be unusually high or low or zero since those tps on the the spot beam satellites.

[Jacob S]

Isn't there a way they could make the lnbf's to where it will gain more of the signal inside the lnbf? I know they make bigger dishes but what about making bigger lnbf's or making the lnbf different as well? Or do they already make better gain lnbf's? Or is it that they would have to make the lnbf bigger than what they could of the dish to gain the same signal strength?

[dbronstein]

The second dish points in a different direction, so you might not have as clear sight line as you think. When I got my second dish installed, he had to do it in a totally different spot on the house than the main dish to get the line of sight on it.

Dennis

[waydwolf]

Originally posted by Jacob S
Isn't there a way they could make the lnbf's to where it will gain more of the signal inside the lnbf? I know they make bigger dishes but what about making bigger lnbf's or making the lnbf different as well? Or do they already make better gain lnbf's? Or is it that they would have to make the lnbf bigger than what they could of the dish to gain the same signal strength?

    Making the LNB bigger wouldn't do anything since you're using the dish to focus the microwaves to the LNB and the LNB could in fact be smaller. The controlling factor is the relation between frequency and wavelength. It isn't for nothing that longwave antennas are long while shortwave antennas are short.

    You could chase diminishing returns by cryogenically cooling the reception device, the LNB, but you're only going to increase reception of all signal including background noise. Why increase the noise?

    Making the dish larger increases the accuracy in pointing required. As a larger telescope can focus on a smaller area, so too are you focusing on a smaller target spot as your dish gets larger.

    If you had a system for phase and timing correction, you could combine multiple dishes as an interferometer but you're not SETI or NASA.

 

[Jacob S]

Doesn't the array work like multiple dishes in a small area and all combined bounce back enough signal to receive the signal in a smaller area? Could something similar be done with multiple dishes for those that have a hard time getting in a signal? That would probably be difficult and a little different than the array though.