Question about rain fade

[vtfan99]

I apologize if this is covered somewhere, but my searches did not turn up anything specific to my situation (my search abilities could just suck though). Currently, we here in Williamsburg, VA are in the middle of a pretty significant rain event. During this, I have lost most of my signal. My confusion lies with the distribution of said signal loss. I can get ESPN HD without problem, yet ESPN2 HD was completely gone. I thought these were on the same sat so I would lose them in tandem...so I'm not sure what the deal is there. Also, the remaining SD channels (for example USA) were completely gone. I had also assumed that the HD channels were harder to "get" (I've read of people having problems siting to this sat). I never expected to be able to get the HD stations yet no SD stations. Does this sound right to anyone?

I've already put it on my agenda to check my external wire tomorrow. I know for a fact that the installer (2 yrs ago) had to splice them, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if water is getting into my connections. That said, I don't think that would really explain the problem I am seeing.

Any thoughts for a noob here?

[Ext 721]

I apologize if this is covered somewhere, but my searches did not turn up anything specific to my situation (my search abilities could just suck though). Currently, we here in Williamsburg, VA are in the middle of a pretty significant rain event. During this, I have lost most of my signal. My confusion lies with the distribution of said signal loss. I can get ESPN HD without problem, yet ESPN2 HD was completely gone. I thought these were on the same sat so I would lose them in tandem...so I'm not sure what the deal is there. Also, the remaining SD channels (for example USA) were completely gone. I had also assumed that the HD channels were harder to "get" (I've read of people having problems siting to this sat). I never expected to be able to get the HD stations yet no SD stations. Does this sound right to anyone?

I've already put it on my agenda to check my external wire tomorrow. I know for a fact that the installer (2 yrs ago) had to splice them, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if water is getting into my connections. That said, I don't think that would really explain the problem I am seeing.

Any thoughts for a noob here?


the birds are in different directions, so if one is on the other side of a wall of 30 foot thick water, and the other is on the other side of a 10 foot thick wall of water, that may make the difference.

the 119 sat is lower in the sky, so if the storm system is greater in breadth than height, it will experience more loss on the east coast than the 110....considering that all other things are equal, which they are not. the direction the storm is at it's thickest also comes in to play, as well as dish alignment, and the fact that the 110 transponders are 28, 30, and 32 and therefore much higher in frequency. (no, they only APPEAR to be 8, 10, and 12)

so if it was a tall storm, centered at YOUR azimuth for the 101, you'd experience 101 loss first.

[HDTVFreak07]

the birds are in different directions, so if one is on the other side of a wall of 30 foot thick water, and the other is on the other side of a 10 foot thick wall of water, that may make the difference.

the 119 sat is lower in the sky, so if the storm system is greater in breadth than height, it will experience more loss on the east coast than the 110....considering that all other things are equal, which they are not. the direction the storm is at it's thickest also comes in to play, as well as dish alignment, and the fact that the 110 transponders are 28, 30, and 32 and therefore much higher in frequency. (no, they only APPEAR to be 8, 10, and 12)

so if it was a tall storm, centered at YOUR azimuth for the 101, you'd experience 101 loss first.

You're not explaining clearly. ESPN2HD is using sat 119 and ESPNH is using 110. 119 (where ESPN2HD) is actually lower in the sky than 110 and there might be heavy rainfall between you and sat 119.

[vtfan99]

You're not explaining clearly. ESPN2HD is using sat 119 and ESPNH is using 110. 119 (where ESPN2HD) is actually lower in the sky than 110 and there might be heavy rainfall between you and sat 119.

That does make more sense. The storm position at the time of the outage (according to radar) makes that logic very sound as the storm was nearly overhead versus off to the southwest.

Thanks for the explanations.