Shortage of Dish 1000's?!

I knew the two dish solution was better too... I've been reading about issues getting a good signal at the 129 (?) degree satellite through the Dish 1000.

He originally thought I wasn't going to go for it... He said "We're out of the Dish 1000's, but I can install two small ones instead."

I asked him how he was going to do it, and he said he would have two dishes side by side.

I said "Okay that sounds all right"

And he said "Oh, but you're not going to get a good signal, your picture's going to be breaking up a lot because the Dish 1000 is a bigger dish"

I said "Are you sure?"

And his whole demeanor was, "You should wait for the 1000, the two dishes they're not going to provide a good picture" and was ready to rush out the door. I could tell he didn't think I was going to go for the two dish option.

The guy didn't want to bother, was what I got out of it.

I think I'm going to call them up and tell them to come install it with the two dishes. This is silly, they want me to wait 2 weeks for an install.

For what it's worth:

I am in the Pacific Northwest. After having had a 1000 installed, noticing 129 dropping out, and after the Charlie Chat in which he suggested that a 24" dish be installed where 129 did drop out, I attempted to do just that. However the local installation firm stated that they did not install 24" inch dishes and that I would have to buy one from another local vendor, who didn't carry them either.

I then sent a rather strongly worded email to the QA dept of Echostar and within a day or so received a phone call from a nice gentleman from Colorado. He indicated that, in fact, he would have the 24" dish installed and in the meantime, Echostar would boost the power on certain transponders on 129. (I had also started video-taping the "point dish' function when signals were lost as proof).

The 24" dish was ordered and installed and I reported back my findings to the rep from Echostar with whom I was now regularly communicating. The combination of the dish and the boost appeared to make a major difference since I have not seen a dropout since.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I noticed that channels on 110 were now dropping out. This hadn't happened for over a year. Transponders 3, 17, 30 were the culprits. They would go down to zero or hover at around 30 for long periods of time.

I emailed my friend in Colorado and he arranged for a visit by the local tech to check things out. To solve the problem, the tech built up a 500 system and put back that portion of the system back to what it was originally when I had no problems with 110. Now I had a 24" for 129, and a 500 for 110/119.

The result was that the signals on the 110 transponders came up by at least 25. Transponder 3 is now a minimum of 55 instead of 30. And, there have been no further excursions into the 30's by any channel since.

The tech told me that they were now installling separate 24" dishes in this area of the country and moving away from the oblong 1000. As a side result I have a neighbor who received a 24" which greatly improved his 129 reception.

It now appears that they are rethinking the 1000 approach to receiving all 3 birds, at least in this geographic area.

What dishes you get may now start to depend upon where you are located in a further attempt to mitigate the marginal reception that may be experienced in certain parts of the country. Also I might add that I received nothing but courteous treatment from the gentleman at Echostar as well as the local installation company..