mogulman said:
With the new 99c wondering if my dish is lined up ok. I'm in Parker, CO. We get a decent amount of snow in the winter and want to minimize the amount of fade for this coming winter. Wondering if my signal levels warrant any kind of adjustment?
You got a lot of 'very slightly' type answers, and they are essentially correct.
However, think about what you are trying to avoid. Snow/Rain fade, that you can do something about (obviously, the 'space' loss between your dish and the clouds is not going to be changeable) is basically two areas:
First, the dish reflector. As snow (esp. the sticky type) will 'deform' the reflector including RF absorption, of course.
Second, the throat of the LNB getting iced over (the 'white' or clear plastic over the feed horns).
You need to start looking for a cover, of which several are made for the Slimline (AU9). If you have an AT9 ('Sidecar'), you're about out of luck as I've never seen any made for that type.
I do, however, have a couple old (originally installed in early 2006 feeding MDU plants) that are completely enclosed by fiberglass radomes that were originally used for shipboard radar units. They were found quite literally in 'dumps' as junk. Being around tons of shipping/fishing fleets does have it's rewards upon occasion!
So, protecting those two areas (reflector and feed horns) are paramount. You may get some snow load on the 'cover' itself (depends on your area and snow load), but going out and whacking the cover to shake the snow off is something you may have to do occasionally.
Some folks have used heating strips back in the early days of singleLNB types, and I've seen a couple folks with the AU9 use such. But that only gets the sticky snow on the reflector, NOT the icing of the LNB throat.
