Rain Fade
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Personally I think that if the strength of the signal was jacked up to the point that rain, trees, and all that other good stuff didn't matter; it would give everyone in the country brain cancer all at once. It is a microwave signal after all right.
Actually, too much signal is as bad as too little. When the signal reaching the front of receiver is too 'hot', distortion products are created which increase the bit error rate almost the same as too little signal introduces noise which increases the bit error rate. In both situations one winds up with an unuseable signal.
In other words, there is a practical limit to the size of the receive antenna, transmit antenna and transmit power of the transponder. The System from satellite to receiver is designed for optimum performance taking a number of factors into consideration.
In other words, there is a practical limit to the size of the receive antenna, transmit antenna and transmit power of the transponder. The System from satellite to receiver is designed for optimum performance taking a number of factors into consideration.
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2,548 Posts
I got tropical storm and "feeder band fade" for a week almost from Faye. Combine that with the HR20 DVR tuner 1 problem of recovering after a rain-fade, I was getting pretty irritated.
Paul A said:
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414 Posts
Luckily I live in So Cal where bad weather is really not that big of a problem, but from what I see in these threads I dont know how DirecTV implemented the KA band knowing that the rain fade would be so much worse than on the KU band. If I lived in Minnesota I would be pretty pissed....
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I'm not knocking DirecTV and its rain-fade resistance. You have to admit a hurricane or slow moving tropical storm is not an everyday event. Outside these events, I have had very little trouble at all, even during the S. Florida rainy season. Even at that, none of my fade events lasted very long. My biggest beef is the current bug in the HR20 firmware that seems to disallow one of the two tuners to recover after a fade event.
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247 Posts
I too was concerned about it here in CFL but I can tell you in almost 10 months of service we have lost our signal once and only for about 10 minutes. The other night was really interesting though, I was watching the Olympics in HD on Friday night and the rain from the recent storm started coming down like I have never seen. Now here is the weird thing, the searching for sat display came on but the HD olympics picture stayed as if it was a bright sunny day. I mean it was clear as a bell.
So of course I tried to get rid of the searching for sat signal but no go. So I switched to another channel and boom, picture gone. Came back to the Olympics and it was gone as well. But for 5 minutes in the heaviest rain I have seen for a long time the picture was crystal clear when watch the Olympics segment..... Odd
So of course I tried to get rid of the searching for sat signal but no go. So I switched to another channel and boom, picture gone. Came back to the Olympics and it was gone as well. But for 5 minutes in the heaviest rain I have seen for a long time the picture was crystal clear when watch the Olympics segment..... Odd
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In engineering, the forces of nature are managed not defeated.
Satellite systems are usually statistically specified to provide service over a large percentage of a coverage area for a large percentage of the time .. numbers such as 99% of the coverage area 99.5% of the time for example.
A rainfall rate at 20 millimeters per hour is a common rate I remember in the statistical analysis. That's about 2 inches in a day .. a lot of rain! There are few areas on the planet where that rate is exceeded for any extended period of time. Hurricanes and monsoons that often exceed that can account for the half of percent that eludes perfection.
--- CHAS
Satellite systems are usually statistically specified to provide service over a large percentage of a coverage area for a large percentage of the time .. numbers such as 99% of the coverage area 99.5% of the time for example.
A rainfall rate at 20 millimeters per hour is a common rate I remember in the statistical analysis. That's about 2 inches in a day .. a lot of rain! There are few areas on the planet where that rate is exceeded for any extended period of time. Hurricanes and monsoons that often exceed that can account for the half of percent that eludes perfection.
--- CHAS
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