Probably it was the sun?

[7mdish]

Today I experienced a strange situation for which I would like to know your opinion.
I was receiving at 10E (2.4m CM dish). Suddenly the signal went down near disappearing (SNR under 3 d.
I had no enough time to check my setup. After just 2 or 3 minutes the signal came back strong (SNR more than 12 dB, perfectly locked) and this issue was not repeated until now. It was only a single event.
At first I had no idea what could be happened, then I thought the following:
It was about 1pm in Milan, 11am GMT but 12pm (noon) not considering summer time, so probably the sun was at its higher position in the sky.
Milan is at 9 degrees East of longitude, the dish is almost at 0 degrees AZ pointing 10E satellite, so it could be possible that the sun was exactly in the same direction as the satellite in that moment, considering that the sun follows the Clarke belt in this period.
What do you think? Is it a correct thought? Anyway, it was a very interesting situation that I never experienced before in more than 30 years.
After the event I checked carefully my new setup, and I'm sure that I have no problem here, so it was a situation not concerning my reception station.

 

[Captain Jack]

Yes, we are right in the middle of the outage period. This is a good site to check for outages.

Sun Outage / Sun Interference Prediction for Geostationary Orbit Satellites - Jens T. Sætre - https://www.satellite-calculations.com

Sun Outage / Sun Interference Calculator for Geostationary Orbit Satellites

www.satellite-calculations.com

 

[dmaavrigdo]

Today I experienced a strange situation for which I would like to know your opinion.
I was receiving at 10E (2.4m CM dish). Suddenly the signal went down near disappearing (SNR under 3 d.
I had no enough time to check my setup. After just 2 or 3 minutes the signal came back strong (SNR more than 12 dB, perfectly locked) and this issue was not repeated until now. It was only a single event.
At first I had no idea what could be happened, then I thought the following:
It was about 1pm in Milan, 11am GMT but 12pm (noon) not considering summer time, so probably the sun was at its higher position in the sky.
Milan is at 9 degrees East of longitude, the dish is almost at 0 degrees AZ pointing 10E satellite, so it could be possible that the sun was exactly in the same direction as the satellite in that moment, considering that the sun follows the Clarke belt in this period.
What do you think? Is it a correct thought? Anyway, it was a very interesting situation that I never experienced before in more than 30 years.
After the event I checked carefully my new setup, and I'm sure that I have no problem here, so it was a situation not concerning my reception station.

Select satellites for the Sun Outage Visualizer Simulator - Jens T. Sætre - https://www.satellite-calculations.com

Select satellites for the Sun Outage Visualizer Simulator

www.satellite-calculations.com

 

[7mdish]

Very interesting! Thank you.

 

[astra19]

Am I going crazy or do I remember seeing that BSB sponsored its solar outages when they happened? I feel like I remember seeing a video of a sponsorship message explaining what solar outages were (since they were a new concept)

 

[7mdish]

What was the reason for that?

 

[astra19]

I suppose to make up for the fact that they lost 10 minutes of broadcasting for several days... And since the concept of a solar outage was completely new for people they had to explain it. So why not sponsor it?

 

[scopus]

That time of year again for solar outage..just lost the snooker on 3W..

 

[mapperuo]

Saw a BBC feed on 16e go from 11db down to 2.5db, amusingly it was actually on air at the time and had no issues - shows how big the BBC receive dishes must be!

 

[nashman123]

You could calculate the next outage for your position and satellite to verify. Calculator was mentioned above. Made use of it these days too. And there are several days left with sun outage happening in Europe.

 

[moonbase]

Saw a BBC feed on 16e go from 11db down to 2.5db, amusingly it was actually on air at the time and had no issues - shows how big the BBC receive dishes must be!

I think broadcasters operate on at least a 6.0db margin and purchase dishes sized accordingly.
As they control the power of the uplink signal they can have their cake and eat it.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Many broadcasters will have more than one groundstation in different regions, so outage does not occur.

 

[Terryl]

We have several dishes pointing at different satellites, if one bird drops out the the auto-change overs kick in and we only loose a few seconds of programming.