This is why I want/need a Slimline 3 dish.

1925 Views 14 Replies 9 Participants Last post by harsh, Aug 19, 2008

tkrandall

Discussion Starter · Aug 18, 2008

Overnight last night was a moon event where the moon's track across the sky was essentially along the ecliptic path where the satellites "lay" in the sky.

http://gjullien.fr/satellite.htm

The crazy that I am, I was out like a cat off and on several times checking out two things: 1) line of site to the positions for Dish's eastern arc service (in case I ever need to switch is I ever lose my LOS to 99w/101w/103w, and 2) checking out LOS to 119w, confirming what I already thought - I am about to lose LOS due to trees probably next year.

Check out the attached photo. It is a bit blurred as it was taken at 5 am with an pocket digital camera with lmited low light sensitivity. Picture is taken from in front of my slimeline 5 dish on porch roof and looking at the moon at the time (or a couple minutes past) it was in the 119w location. As you can see, the oak tree on the left and hickory tree on the right have almost closed the gap I used to have. The oak has already largely blocked 110 signal.

This is why I want a slimline 3 dish.

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1 - 15 of 15 Posts

jdspencer

· #2 · Aug 18, 2008

You already have a Slimline dish?

Once the 110 and 119 sats no longer are needed it will continue to work just fine. No real need to get the newer dish.

tkrandall

Discussion Starter · #3 · Aug 18, 2008

Slimeline 3 gets guide data off of 101w 100% of the time. Slimeline 5 needs LOS to 119w to get guide data whenever 103w is tuned in, which is a lot of the time in my case as my HD locals are on 103w. I'm probably good for through the winter, but next spring will be interesting.

Tom Robertson

· #4 · Aug 18, 2008

If all your receivers are SWM compatible, you can use a SWM with your current dish.

Otherwise, the SL3 rollout is expected later this month, meaning you should be able to find the SL3 LNB head on our favorite online retail sites soon.

Cheers,
Tom

houskamp

· #5 · Aug 18, 2008

wouldn't running sat setup an selecting the SL3 do the same thing?

tkrandall

Discussion Starter · #6 · Aug 18, 2008

houskamp said:
wouldn't running sat setup an selecting the SL3 do the same thing?

Nope, differnet multiswitches in the LNB housing. SL5's built in multiswitch passes 99/101 together (no tone), and 103/110/119 (tone) together. SL3 passes 99/101 (no tone), or 103/101 (tone) so that guide data from 101 is available all the time.

igator99

· #7 · Aug 18, 2008

tkrandall said:
Nope, differnet multiswitches in the LNB housing. SL5's built in multiswitch passes 99/101 together (no tone), and 103/110/119 (tone) together. SL3 passes 99/101 (no tone), or 103/101 (tone) so that guide data from 101 is available all the time.

Will they ever have the tech to send a signal through leafs and branches? How is it satellite radio can hit a moving car just about anyplace?

houskamp

· #8 · Aug 18, 2008

tkrandall said:
Nope, differnet multiswitches in the LNB housing. SL5's built in multiswitch passes 99/101 together (no tone), and 103/110/119 (tone) together. SL3 passes 99/101 (no tone), or 103/101 (tone) so that guide data from 101 is available all the time.

Still learn something new every day..
Maybe Directv could tell the recievers to check 101 every so often (using background tuner) when they see a signal loss..

flipptyfloppity

· #9 · Aug 18, 2008

igator99 said:
Will they ever have the tech to send a signal through leafs and branches? How is it satellite radio can hit a moving car just about anyplace?

First of all, every time I listen to satellite radio in a car, I get to hear it drop out over and over, so I'm not overly impressed with the reception.

Satellite radio uses far more transmit power and sends far less data, so it needs less signal to noise to work and thus is less sensitive to dropouts. Satellite radio also sends everything redundantly and uses lower-frequency repeaters in urban areas to penetrate buildings and such.

harsh

· #10 · Aug 18, 2008

igator99 said:
Will they ever have the tech to send a signal through leafs and branches?

No.

How is it satellite radio can hit a moving car just about anyplace?

Satellite radio uses much lower frequencies at very high power. DBS can't get away with that as they have so much more bandwidth to broadcast and you can only put satellites like that so close together.

We've seen what using Ka band does and it will likely get worse as they try to cram more programming into the sky.

Satellite radio uses about 12.5MHz of bandwidth while DIRECTV is pumping out almost 2000MHz.

Davenlr

· #11 · Aug 19, 2008

Tom Robertson said:
If all your receivers are SWM compatible, you can use a SWM with your current dish.

Otherwise, the SL3 rollout is expected later this month, meaning you should be able to find the SL3 LNB head on our favorite online retail sites soon.

Cheers,
Tom

Tom, do you know if the new LNB will fit the AT9 sans sidecar, or would one need the whole dish?

Tom Robertson

· #12 · Aug 19, 2008

Davenlr,

You'll need the whole slimline dish to work with any of the slimline or SWMline LNB head units: SL3, SL5, SL5SWMline, etc.

Cheers,
Tom

Tom Robertson

· #13 · Aug 19, 2008

igator99 said:
Will they ever have the tech to send a signal through leafs and branches? How is it satellite radio can hit a moving car just about anyplace?

Yes and no. The technology exists in two forms: 1) different frequencies that are less affected by leaves--alas they are affected by other interference and already in use; 2) much, much higher power which also has two problems--the satellites can't send that much power yet except on perhaps a very few transponders per satellite and the microwaves would start to cook the leaves, branches, people...

So I don't expect any sudden breakthru in satellite to home technology. At least not without 5 years or more of warning.

Cheers,
Tom

NCMAT

· #14 · Aug 19, 2008

XM Satellite radio uses two satellites, one east and one west, so your chances of seeing one or the other as you drive under trees and bridges is better. They also use a buffering scheme to get you through short outages.

harsh

· #15 · Aug 19, 2008

NCMAT said:
XM Satellite radio uses two satellites, one east and one west, so your chances of seeing one or the other as you drive under trees and bridges is better. They also use a buffering scheme to get you through short outages.

Actually, three of the four XM satellites (Rock, Roll and Rhythm) are at 85W while the fourth (Blues) is at 115W. My recollection is that Rock and Roll both suffer from tin whiskers.

The three Sirius satellites run kind of figure eight pattern centered around 96W.

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