And I have exactly the reverse problem on the horizontally polarized tranponders of Nilesat. From my location in the Netherlands, I only get a usable signal in late evening, and at certain times of the year.
I believe the problem is that the atmosphere contains more moisture at certain times. The more moisture, the greater the absorption of the microwave signal. Similarly with respect to dust particles.
Maybe a bigger dish, or lower-noise LNB will help, but since you're well outside the official footprint of the sat it's not guaranteed to help much. There are a few other tweaks you can try too:
- realign dish. If my dish is even 0.2 degrees off Nilesat, I get nothing at all. The bigger your dish, the more accurate must be its positioning
- consider a Gregorian type dish (they are 10% better for the size).
- if yours is a mesh dish, try a solid instead. They are typically 10% better than mesh. This is because of two things. First, the mesh presents a somewhat uneven surface to the incoming wavefront, resulting in more scattering away from the LNB. Second, large mesh dishes are often segmented which means they are not perfectly parabolic - again resulting in more scattering.
- get rid of any excess coax cable and make it a single unbroken length between LNB and receiver. Every in-line conector results in some signal loss. Make sure the cable is good quality satellite-grade cable, and that it has no breaks/lesions where water might have ingressed. Make sure the coax is not longer than about 25m. If it is, you may need an inline signal amplifier to counter signal loss across the length of the cable.
- try a different make of receiver (the ability of the tuner to pick up weak signals varies from receiver to receiver)
- move house/country
2old
