Transponder Help

[jredmond66]

Tried figuring this out myself via Lyngsat and these admirable threads, but cannot. Weird thing - my 8-year old ExpressVu dish started acting up, my signal strength's ok for the most part given all the freezing rain and sticky snow we've been getting in the Twin Cities lately.

Problem is a few of the xponders simply quit working. 1,5,11,15, 19, 21 and 29 stopped working, no signal whatsoever. Can't be that I'm too far south, I live in St Paul, MN. Switch text gives me x's on everything but 2B, which shows up "odd". Wish I could call Bell to figure that out, and my broker seems to be on holiday, not reurning calls alas...

Suspect this is from my son banking the basketball off the dish on the roof to dislodge snow so he could finish watching Scoobie Doo at Zombie Island on Teletoon.

I was thinking maybe replace the coax, but wouldn't all the odds be out if that was the case? This being winter and me having a 3-story house with scary access to the roof, I would prefer not to have to climb up there if coax is an unlikely culprit.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mr Tony]

WELCOME from another Minnesnowtan (SW suburbs of Minneapolis)

No we aren’t too far south : ) All transponders work fine here and the Nimiq3 (3, 7, 9, 11, 17, 21, 23, 25) are STRONGER than the others.

Its not the coax because all transponders would go out, not just some

What signal do you get on the following transponders?

13, 14, 21

Menu 6-1-1 and you can change the transponder…they should be at least 70 signal. Weird becasue you have a mix of Nimiq1 & Nimiq3 TP's in the bunch with a zero

What is your setup? Dish 500 and 2 LNB’s with a switch? or can you see just 91?

3 story roof in MN? Uh, no thanks…I don’t even do those in summer

 

[jredmond66]

Thanks for the reply, and so fast!

Actually, I know the 14 is pretty low, I got around 60 this AM, I know this because one of the mission critical channels for the 2-year old - TFO - is one of the first to get sketchy with bad weather pretty easily and Oui Oui cutting out at 7:15 AM is a problem, so I check that one all the time, it's on 14.

I suspect the basketball mighta screwed the azimut up or knocked the alignment off a bit, but the weird thing is I'm getting 0 signal from these.

Could I be getting 75 from transponder 8 (another one I am sure of this AM) and 0 from transponder 1 if it's an alignment issue?

And given the height of my damn house, I was hoping to narrow things down before getting the ladder out, heheh...

BTW, given you are in SW 'burbs of Mpls, what's your signal strength roughly in this freezing rain? (I had my dish put up more or less professionally by a former colleague/engineer at Hubbard Broadcasting, and I know at one point I was pulling low 90's in clear skies on the better xponders, but now I'm best at mid 70's...

Thanks again for you input!

 

[jredmond66]

oops, forgot to add, only single lnb, only got 91, I have the old receiver from the mid-sized dish/elliptical lnb days, swapped out an old sony DTV dish from Hubbard (my USSB days) when they went high powered. and I may not exactly have the xponders @ 0 perfectly down. I know 1,5, 15 and 29 definitely are at zero, the other ones I tried to figure out from the channels I recall not working but I don't watch the english ones all that much so not sure about these, just guessing off the partout au canada networks that weren't workinglast night (memory perhaps not so good).

Actually, seeing your post on nimiq 3, it seems to me it may be that I don't have the odd-xponders that are NOT on nimiq 3. Maybe that's it. The ones I'm aure are at zero are That would speak to probably alignment issue (though 0 is kinda weird), but then again, why would all the evens be working okay...

hmmm, too bad I don't work at Hubbard anymore.

 

[jredmond66]

ok by way of follow up, the xponders @ zero are:

1,5,11,13,15,19,27,29,31.

So I get 0 at 13, but I get 60 at 14 and 55 at 21.

Thank again for your help!!

 

[Mr Tony]

its the alignment...I don't have ExpressVu anymore (switched to StarChoice) but on average with a 18" dish I was pulling 75 on most transponders and 90 on Nimiq3 ones

When I cancelled I had a 24" and had 99-100% on 28 of 32 transponders...so it sounds like the dish is out of whack.