Line loss or defective meter?

[Mitch71]

Hi all, I recently joined the ranks of fta fans by purchasing a Traxis dbs2550, hotdish75, and sf95 signal finder. I was in a hurry to see what it would do so instead of waiting for my cable order to arrive I used an old
100 foot hunk of rg59 that had the ends already attached. I tried all day long to hit any satellite to no avail. I would get multiple hits with the SF95, but no signal quality. The next day my rg6 arrived. I tried it and same results. I finally took the meter out of line and drug a portabe tv
out to the dish site and watched the quality bar. Bang! I hit IA5 ! Peaked to 75 % . Question, meter causing signal loss? Also next night we had a torrential downpour, is it normal to loose signal quality completly during hard rain??

[rainman]

yes during hard rain you will loose signal on a small dish the sf 95 signal meter not much good at alignment of dish.

[Admin]

What type of LNBFs you have (Standard or Universal)?

If you have a UNIVERSAL LNBF, then it could be that the SF95 meter is not passing the 22KHz tone to the LNBF.

Did you buy the meter from us? Our SF95 meters should pass the 22KHz tone fine.

[wejones]

Re the rain outages, I've found it interesting that at least up north, the outages typically don't occur when the rain is heaviest, ie directly overhead, but I usually experience outages when the rainstorms are passing just south of us. Often the outages occur when it isn't even raining at my house, and often when it's raining cats and dogs we don't have an outage.
I've concluded that it's because my line of sight to the sats is typically lower than 45 degrees, and what causes the outage is not the actual "rain" but the big storm clouds, which might be 15-20,000' high, so the best angle to the storm clouds is when the storms are passing south of us. Not an important fact, but I thought it was interesting.

Re to the signal meter, I've been fed up with mine at times, but I've found it very useful. My guess that what happened above, is that the meter was responding to a sat different to what you were trying to hit, so you won't get quality unless you have the freq/SR set right for the sat you're aimed at. Particularly if your meter led you to a DBS sat. I've found the meters quite handy, but I think it helps to be pretty close on your aim before you start using the meter. Like at least be set at the right azimuth so you're just changing one parameter that would only get you to one satellite. If you are just searching at random, no telling what sat you'll peak on. When you were searching using the receiver, you were searching for a specific freq/SR value, so that will only respond if you are at the right sat. Using the receiver, however, requires a LOT more patience, however, as your changes have to be very slow with pauses between.

Re to the question about the meter causing signal loss, in my experience this should be negligeable. You get much more signal loss from the RG59, but even that shouldn't keep you from getting a lock on strong signals.

[Mitch71]

Thanks for the feedback, I have a standard lnbf (BSC321S) so no problem there. As far as the meter goes it's no biggie, got it off of ebay for 3.50 ! Ya get what ya pay for! LOL I do wonder if a microwave tower about two miles (as the crow flies) might be giving me some weird results on the meter.!?!

[boroda1]

I am thinking of those power lines south of my house, do they give me weird results? When i got the best signal on SF95, dish alignment vent off completely, took hours to bring it back. Power lines?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by boroda1

I am thinking of those power lines south of my house, do they give me weird results? When i got the best signal on SF95, dish alignment vent off completely, took hours to bring it back. Power lines?

I don't think a normal power line will affect anything. One of the sats I used to look at a lot before the shift to digital is right in line with a power line transformer, which I thought might give me problems, but it never did.
However, a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about sending video and data and stuff over power lines, ie something like cable without a cable. I don't know if that system ever came to pass anywhere (not here), but I remember the HAM community was kind of upset about the potential rf interferrence that would result from this.
Also, it is quite common for power lines transformers to go beserk and emit all sorts of RF. HAMs used to (probably still do, but I don't keep up with that stuff anymore) drive around finding the source of RF interferrence, and when they'd find the offending transformer, report it to the power company. So maybe you have a bad transformer nearby?

[boroda1]

Originally Posted by wejones

Also, it is quite common for power lines transformers to go beserk and emit all sorts of RF. HAMs used to (probably still do, but I don't keep up with that stuff anymore) drive around finding the source of RF interferrence, and when they'd find the offending transformer, report it to the power company. So maybe you have a bad transformer nearby?

My receiption on KU band does not seem suffering from any noise, these power lines could make.
But what about SF95?
These are the specs:

• 950-2050 MHz bandwidth
• Pocket size and lightweight
• 11dB Gain
• -25 to -75dBm Input Level
• High sensitivity
  

Do power lines or microwave towers emit something in that range,
950-2050 MHz?