Shaw direct dies every evening

[Shiles]

Hi all. Cant figure this one out.

600 series has worked flawlessly for years. All of a sudden every evening i loose sat signal.

Mornings are fine. Readjust for sig strength. Green and 95 on both 299 and 700.

Any help appreciated.

 

[harshness]

Morning and evening are relative terms. Hours/minutes from sunrise and sunset are more useful.

Sounds like an issue with the LNB assembly or a bad connection. Depending on the times, this problem is sometimes an issue with condensation on the LNB lens. May also be an issue with a compromised cable or a loose connection causing you to LOSE signal because there's no power to the LNB.

I'd start with a careful inspection of the cable. You can check for continuity -- see if there is a DC voltage between the connector and the center conductor at the dish when the signal is lost. A satellite system should always have more than 10VDC on the cable.

 

[Shiles]

Thanks. Signal loss comes about 2 hours before sunset and comes back a half hour after sunrise. Temp.and humidity seem to be non factors.

 

[catamount]

There was a guy on digitalhome that had a similar issue . He lost his service during daytime. It ended up being his multiswitch, which in the thread he never mentioned having one. So, I would guess a bad cable or cable end. Also could be a failing port on the lnb.

Process of elimination. Switch one thing at a time.

Catamount

 

[harshness]

Temp.and humidity seem to be non factors.

There have been problems that stemmed from cable that only poked into the female connector when sun was shining on the cable. This would mean that you would need to make sure the center conductor at both ends isn't too short. A proper f-connector termination should have the center conductor protruding beyond the nut of the connector.

Otherwise, most things work better in the cool and dark of night.

Reasoning is convenient but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty. Once the cable is ruled out by careful inspection, then the condition of the dish and LNB assembly is probably the next step.

 

[Shiles]

Thanks all. Turned out to be wasps. Plastic cover was partially broken. Wasps seeking warmth overnight blocked lnb strip.

 

[harshness]

Thanks all. Turned out to be wasps. Plastic cover was partially broken. Wasps seeking warmth overnight blocked lnb strip.

I have heard of this and it makes sense but I'm surprised nonetheless.

Glad you identified the problem.

 

[raoul5788]

I had bees in my c-band lnb years ago so it's no surprise to me. Getting rid of them was no fun since the dish was on a 45 ft Rohn tower.

 

[VE7ETI]

The likely problem is with Shaw (Bell has this problem too). To make a VERY complex answer to it's most least common denominators, it could be 1: Over compression to the bird. 2: Buffer under-run at the bird. Buffer Under-run is when more data than the buffers on the sat can handle during the transponder inversion process so that the NAK packet to the ground station to halt xmission until the buffer being used has room to take more data, so that the NAK packet received and processed after the ground buffer's resend cache has been flushed so that the desired resend of the data packet is no longer available to be resent to the bird.
Buffer under-run happens more often during Prime Time, in each time zone. i.e. 1900hrs~2300hrs EST is 1600hrs~2000hrs in the West but affects BOTH times zones simultaneously. West Prime Time is from 1900hrs~2300hrs PST. Prime Time programming is usually more high resolution, high def programming which means MORE datum trying to transit the transponders. Buffer under-run exhibits as data noise, or also known as data artifacts. Usually display on your TV as lots of little squares and/or screen lock. As long as these entertainment providers, like Shaw, Bell and the Big Networks, continue to try to force more datum through the Transponders than the buffers can handle, this situation will continue.

 

[harshness]

The likely problem is with Shaw (Bell has this problem too).

As the TS made clear, the problem was with wasps in the feed horn. How Shaw processes or multiplexes their video doesn't impact the strength of the satellite signal.

If the complaint was about the picture breaking up, it might have something to do with not enough FEC or insufficient bandwidth, but that's clearly not the case here.