storms and lost signals

[vikefan]

I've had a hr21-100 for just over a year now with the slimline dish upgrade. One thing that I have noticed is that the signal rarely if ever goes out. My old setup would almost always go out when there was a thunder storm not for long but it would be out until the lighting moved away. I think that the slimline must be able to handle storms much better. Anyone else notice this also?

[CCarncross]

The larger dishes when aligned well are pretty forgiving for SD programming. But the newer MPEG4 signals from 99 and 103 are actually slightly more sensitive to water between you and your view of the sats. I would say in your situation you probably have a better aligned dish this time around as well which may be helping.

[GenTso]

I wish mine was that way! It gets tough sometimes at this time of year along the Gulf Coast when thundershowers are like clockwork around 3 p.m. I'm not complaining ... whenever I lose my signal due to intermittent rain outside, at least I know the reason and I know that I'll get the signal back when the rain subsides.

I had comcast up until last year and the all-too-frequent emergency broadcast system tests and random service interruptions for an unknown period of time for unknown reasons on a sunny day were much more annoying and frustrating than loss of signal with D*.

[vikefan]

maybe i do have a better tweek than my previous dish. i'm glad it works well. I do know that i had corrosion on some cable ends and i had the installer redo all of them. so maybe that had something to do with the old dish.

[BattleZone]

The larger size of the Slimline reflector allows it to gather more signal and thus have higher gain at the LNB. This is necessary to get the Ka-band signals (where the HD channels are) close to the performance of a standard 18" Ku dish in wet weather. And as long as the Slimline is aimed properly, it works pretty well.

But since that same larger reflector is also gathering Ku signals (which carries the SD channels), the Ku signals perform much better in bad weather. The Slimline is roughly the same dimensions as the old "Gain Master" dish, and performs about the same for the Ku band.