dxsat
Regular Member
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2005
- Messages
- 745
- Reaction score
- 70
- Points
- 28
- Age
- 69
- Website
- skyinmadrid.com
- My Satellite Setup
- Snap's setup: (In Spain) Humax HDR, Prodelin 1.8m dish + Invacom QDF-031 + CM feed, (In UK) CallFlow VDSL + EE 4G, Sky Q, YouView HD, Mac OSX, iOS
- My Location
- UK: Tonbridge, Kent. Spain: Madrid.
Looking at the beautiful lunar eclipse recently, I wondered whether there would be a solar eclipse two weeks later, as I remembered that one often follows the other, when the sun, earth and moon are in a straight line. I suddenly realised that this might be the explanation of the strange phenomenon in fringe 2D reception: the odd behaviour around the solstices. The first week in March saw sun outage, where the Astra 2d passes very close to the sun, which happens twice yearly. If 2D, the earth and the sun are in a straight line, then the satellite must be going into eclipse at this time of year.
As it is positioned above central Africa, roughly two hours ahead of the Greenwich meridian, you would expect sun outage and eclipse to be about 10am and 10pm UTC respectively. This is exactly what can be observed from my location in Madrid. Local times in your location may be different.
What happens at night is instead of of a marked dip in signal late evening, which is the normal pattern for most of the year, there is a very sudden jump around 10pm UTC, which lasts around 40 minutes. During this time, even small dishes can receive 2D horizontal channels such as BBC2 and Disney Channel. The jump up in signal level lasts about three weeks either side of the spring and autumn equinoxes, then disappears.
Is anyone else outside of Spain seeing this? I have had reports from others in Iberia which confirm what I've seen.
I collected readings in the first week in March, which can be seen in the graphic attached. (The green line is the clear picture threshold on a Pace 2600) Times are local, UTC+1. Frequency monitored: 10773 H, transponder 45. Wolsey/Lacuna Mk3 meter.
I assume the same must apply to Astra 2A and B, in that they were built with eclipse protection.
As it is positioned above central Africa, roughly two hours ahead of the Greenwich meridian, you would expect sun outage and eclipse to be about 10am and 10pm UTC respectively. This is exactly what can be observed from my location in Madrid. Local times in your location may be different.
What happens at night is instead of of a marked dip in signal late evening, which is the normal pattern for most of the year, there is a very sudden jump around 10pm UTC, which lasts around 40 minutes. During this time, even small dishes can receive 2D horizontal channels such as BBC2 and Disney Channel. The jump up in signal level lasts about three weeks either side of the spring and autumn equinoxes, then disappears.
Is anyone else outside of Spain seeing this? I have had reports from others in Iberia which confirm what I've seen.
I collected readings in the first week in March, which can be seen in the graphic attached. (The green line is the clear picture threshold on a Pace 2600) Times are local, UTC+1. Frequency monitored: 10773 H, transponder 45. Wolsey/Lacuna Mk3 meter.
I assume the same must apply to Astra 2A and B, in that they were built with eclipse protection.
