Mercury II signal seems to be attenuated suddenly

[Das Hammer]

Recently picked up another MercII second hand and it was working great. Was. Now, I can not even get enough juice from it to power the signal meter out at the dish. The investigation begins:

The coax from the house to the dish area is good. Hooked up the DSR-922 to that same coax and locked onto G16/X4.

The coax from the dish area to the dish itself is not the problem. Tried two separate coax chunks between there which I know are good.

Hooked the signal meter up out at the dish area (I should have mentioned this is about 175 feet away from the receiver) and can't get the meter to even power up.

However, I hooked up the signal meter to the receiver with about 18" of coax, and it acted fine.

The Fortec's signal and quality meters both sit there at 5%....steadily, not like before where it would at least jump around a bit even at no signal.

I opened it up and didn't see anything obvious (no black burn marks, pieces missing, etc.).

Any tips?

 

[Anole]

test tips

Did you hook the signal meter at the dish-endof the 175' coax ALONG WITH THAT LNB, or without that LNB ?
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
(is the LNB et al, loading down the power too much?)

Next, you could check the voltage on the cable, at the receiver
I hate to suggest opening it, but if you're comfortable with that, go for it - just don't let the meter lead slip.
Check with both the 175 foot piece connected to the receiver, and with it not connected.
Next, go out and connect or disconnect the LNB at the far end, and go back inside and check the voltages again.


I was thinking about getting a cheap Merc II deal, so I have a personal interest in you succeeding!
...on top of the technical curiosity of the problem.

 

[Das Hammer]

Did you hook the signal meter at the dish-endof the 175' coax ALONG WITH THAT LNB, or without that LNB ?
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
(is the LNB et al, loading down the power too much?)

I tried both with and without at both locations. Same result at the dish end, nothing on the meter. On the recevier side, with and without LNB attached to the short piece of coax makes the ol' meter sing.

I forgot to mention that it still moves the motor around just fine. I can set up a sat for USALS and it will move the motor no problem. Sig and Qual meters just sit there at 5% (which is not normal behavior for this unit). Occasionally, they will jump up, but then it goes back down to 5%. Tuner problem?

I was thinking about getting a cheap Merc II deal, so I have a personal interest in you succeeding!
...on top of the technical curiosity of the problem.

Cool. I may have a cheap MercII for you.

 

[Anole]

code blue to room 101

... On the recevier side, with and without LNB attached to the short piece of coax makes the ol' meter sing.

I forgot to mention that it still moves the motor around just fine.
Tuner problem?

Cool. I may have a cheap MercII for you.

I have a feeling we're overlooking something obvious (not that I can put my finger on it).

Yes, it sounds sorta like the tuner has gone blind/dumb/deaf.
Hope that's not true.

As a last ditch effort, would you be willing to take the Merc out to the dish area, bypassing the 175' run, and hook it directly to the sig meter and LNB?
And of course, consider the sig meter (or connectors) could be at fault, too.

If you do totally fail to get this thing breathing again, I'll buy it and do a post-mortem.

 

[Das Hammer]

I have a feeling we're overlooking something obvious (not that I can put my finger on it).

Yes, it sounds sorta like the tuner has gone blind/dumb/deaf.
Hope that's not true.

As a last ditch effort, would you be willing to take the Merc out to the dish area, bypassing the 175' run, and hook it directly to the sig meter and LNB?
And of course, consider the sig meter (or connectors) could be at fault, too.

I've hooked up the receiver directly to the signal meter already with the 18" piece of coax with and without LNB attached to the meter. The meter acts like it is supposed to (high pitched whine, lights up) when connected in this fashion.
Oh, and I've tried two signal meters (the sf-95 style. One made in China and one made in Taiwan). Same result with both.

If you do totally fail to get this thing breathing again, I'll buy it and do a post-mortem.

But the receiver does still work. I hooked it up to another dish which is fixed at G16 (using the same 175' coax run) and did a blind scan. It did find quite a bit (not much happening in the clear), but it did find the data TP's and the couple of TP's with the scrambled channels. And they were not existing TP's, it found them on its own. However, I can't tell if I would be able to watch anything since they were all data or scrambled, but the quality numbers were pretty low.

 

[Das Hammer]

Quick note: I also hooked the mercII up to the 10 foot dish which was parked at AMC1 (utilizing a totally separate 175' run of coax). Couldn't get any of the channels which I had stored in there. Just sat there at 5%.

 

[SatelliteAV]

Check the voltage on the LNB INput: 17-19VDC on a Horizontal TP and 12-14VDC on a Vertical TP.

Factory Reset?

Could be a bad voltage IC on the LNB/ Tuner voltage circuit or low voltage on one of the power supply pins. Have very few tuner problems on the Mercury II, but it is possible.

Remember, we are a Factory Repair Facility for Fortec Star ... Hope you don't need our services!

 

[Das Hammer]

Check the voltage on the LNB INput: 17-19VDC on a Horizontal TP and 12-14VDC on a Vertical TP.

Will try that tonight and let you know (if I can find a 9 volt battery for my multimeter).

Factory Reset?

Did that a few times and since there was an update at Fortec's web site I went ahead and put that on there too. Still acting flaky.

Could be a bad voltage IC on the LNB/ Tuner voltage circuit or low voltage on one of the power supply pins. Have very few tuner problems on the Mercury II, but it is possible.

Remember, we are a Factory Repair Facility for Fortec Star ... Hope you don't need our services!

I'll keep that in mind. It still "kind of" works. Would probably be OK as a slaved unit.

 

[Das Hammer]

Seem to have misplaced my multimeter. Sorry for not getting back like I said I would.

 

[Das Hammer]

Ok, finally found the multimeter, installed new battery and checked the voltage at the Mercury2. Getting about 13.8V on vertical and 18.something on the horizontals. Everything seems to be in order that way.

I guess I can rule out the Fortec...but it seems that I've already ruled everything else out. Hmm.

Well, a Traxis 3500 is on the way, so we'll see how it acts when hooked up to the same line.

 

[Anole]

Well, just hooking the meter to the receiver doesn't tell the whole story.
If you can hook the volt meter to the coax, both at the receiver and at the LNB WHILE the LNB is connected, then you have even more to go on.

Possible problems include bad connectors anywhere along the path
Bad coax
LNB pulling too much power
flakey voltage regulator in the receiver
etc.

So for instance, if the coax has a lot of voltage drop (either due to physical damage or bad connectors), you might find 13/18 volts at the receiver end, but a lot less at the LNB
But the test must be done with the LNB loading down the voltage on the cable.

Given enough data, we can point a finger at the failing component.

And besides, I thought you were a big Traxis-supporter.
What are you doing without one?
Can you borrow a receiver to duplicate the tests with?

 

[Das Hammer]

Well, just hooking the meter to the receiver doesn't tell the whole story.
If you can hook the volt meter to the coax, both at the receiver and at the LNB WHILE the LNB is connected, then you have even more to go on.

Possible problems include bad connectors anywhere along the path
Bad coax
LNB pulling too much power
flakey voltage regulator in the receiver
etc.

You are correct, and you beat me to the solution. I removed an inline surge protector and BAM, we're back up and running full throttle. I don't know why the 4DTV was still able to work properly using the same coax and going through the same surge protector, but it all works good now. I haven't checked yet, but probably getting better quality numbers on the 4DTV.

And besides, I thought you were a big Traxis-supporter.
What are you doing without one?

I really like the receivers and usually recommend them, especially the 3500/4550. And at only $69.99, how can anyone go wrong with a 3500? But I was having my own little personal boycott against them until they fixed the AC3 pass-thru thing on Ku. To my knowledge it is still not fixed, but since I recently acquired a QualiTV1080IR this problem has become irrelevent. If I really need AC-3 on Ku, I'll just switch over to the QualiTV since it decodes as well as passes it through.

Thanks for all of your help. Sorry you didn't end up with a brain damaged MercII to play with after all. Maybe there will be others.

 

[Anole]

congrats !

I knew if you beat on it enough, you'd find the solution.

Yea, I held back my recommendation for the $70 Traxis, too, based on the guy wanting PBS.
Damned shame they won't fix the Ku AC3.

Luckily, I just ordered a (new) Mercury II for $70
It was too good a deal, so I figured I'd better leap while the lilly pad was near.

 

[Das Hammer]

I was hoping if we beat on them enough that they would fix it...but eventually I gave up on that too since the new firmware came out and it did not address that issue.

You made a great deal and won't be disappointed with the Mercury II. Lots of good options in there.