Is something on its way out?

joddle

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For many many years I have had my 2,4 PF dish in Valencia and been using a variety of boxes over the years from venerable Pace 2600 Humax Foxsat HD and Manhatten Plaza. We mainly watch Freesat and when the newer sats came on line several years ago found everything came in with ease - even in heavy rain. However in the past few months we have noticed we are losing a few channels on some nights. I know the onboard diagnostics are not the best but an example is the on the old Sony channel (Great) which at night shows 100% SQ which suggests the angle and skew are pretty well bang on but the SS is only from 45 to 60% and does drop out sometimes. Some other channels drop out occasionally as well but I cannot recall exactly which ones. The dish is extremely well anchored and all fixings absolutely tight and even the strongest winds do not appear to deflect it so Is this likely to be due to an aging LNB? - it was last replaced about 12-15 years ago and is an Invacom quad. I have no truck with replacing it but with what? - they seem not to exist any more!
 

scopus

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For many many years I have had my 2,4 PF dish in Valencia and been using a variety of boxes over the years from venerable Pace 2600 Humax Foxsat HD and Manhatten Plaza. We mainly watch Freesat and when the newer sats came on line several years ago found everything came in with ease - even in heavy rain. However in the past few months we have noticed we are losing a few channels on some nights. I know the onboard diagnostics are not the best but an example is the on the old Sony channel (Great) which at night shows 100% SQ which suggests the angle and skew are pretty well bang on but the SS is only from 45 to 60% and does drop out sometimes. Some other channels drop out occasionally as well but I cannot recall exactly which ones. The dish is extremely well anchored and all fixings absolutely tight and even the strongest winds do not appear to deflect it so Is this likely to be due to an aging LNB? - it was last replaced about 12-15 years ago and is an Invacom quad. I have no truck with replacing it but with what? - they seem not to exist any more!
I would say the LNB would be a good place to start..
 

joddle

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scopus

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Yes, Inverto have a good name. You Invacom has probably gone noisy after being exposed to 15 years of weather
 

jeallen01

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Yes, Inverto have a good name. You Invacom has probably gone noisy after being exposed to 15 years of weather
And all the coaxial cables that have been exposed to "Spanish Sun and Heat" for the last 15 years might also have been degraded or damaged as that sort of problem in Spain is quite often reported on the forum - thus take a look at those and replace if necessary.
 

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If this is a ""Night time problem"" only then something new may have been added to the landscape out in front of the dish.

Any large metal roofs? any new buildings with large open parking lots? New tall buildings or trees?(maybe not trees or it would happen all the time) A farmer may have changed his crop layout and plowed it under, this has caused a large landscape change.(new large flat open field)

What is the elevation of the satellite your looking at? If low to the horizon then the for-mentioned items may be the problem. (or not)

Can you get to a safe position behind the dish? If so then take a good pair of binoculars along with you and have a good look out in front of the dish, anything tall or new out there could cause this.

And as Jeallen mentioned, the coax could be at fault, it being 15 years old, but why does this happen only at night time????

I've only had to replace an Invacom LNB once, this due to woodpecker damage, they pecked the front weather shield out to put acorns in it, I sent a photo to Invacom, they replaced the 10 year old LNB for free.
 

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Yes, Inverto have a good name. You Invacom has probably gone noisy after being exposed to 15 years of weather
I suspect a replacement Inverto may not last as long as the Invacom.
 

a33

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but an example is the on the old Sony channel (Great) which at night shows 100% SQ which suggests the angle and skew are pretty well bang on but the SS is only from 45 to 60% and does drop out sometimes.

So are you saying that Signal Quality is still high as ever, but Signal Strength is not stable anymore?
I'd check the cable first, I think.

Greetz,
A33
 

joddle

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The dish is on our roof with no obstructions at all to the sky so interference or blocking is not the issue - 2.4m should be way overkill here for any channel and was only installed when the signals were very low before the new sats went up. I had thought the Invacoms were almost indestructible but am still inclined to think it could still be the reason. Cables are all relatively recent and not cracked. I do have an invacom twin hanging around so may swap the LNB to see if that make a differnce.
 

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The lnb getting cooked is an obvious culprit for suspicion here too. Start there & see if things improve, if not we can collectively have a think.
 

joddle

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So are you saying that Signal Quality is still high as ever, but Signal Strength is not stable anymore?
I'd check the cable first, I think.

Greetz,
A33
Thanks - I will do that - maybe the last load of cable I got was not as good as the previous reel. I have one Freesat box on a very short lead which will be very easy to replace without affecting anything else. If that make no difference I will try swapping the 4 outputs around to see if any are outputting lower than others.
 

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Alignement check ? Can have moved some mm's or cm's, not more needed before trouble with uk transponders.
 

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Some coax is not rated for satellite work,(TV and CATV signals) I always use stuff rated to 2.5 GHz,(in some cases 3 GHz) less signal loss that way.

And something to try out on the next fade out, go squirt the LNB with some cold water using a garden hose, about a 5 minute bath should do, if things get better then the LNB may be on it's way out.
 

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1) More likely alignment than anything else (however well you think the dish is fixed).

2) I work on these dishes everyday and everyone is convinced their dish hasn't moved.

3) 11307 V (GREAT!) is an easy transponder on the Costa Blanca (200km south) of you so it should be booming in on your setup.

4) Check the blue line on my attachment for that transponder. Anything over 7dB will give error free reception.

5) IMO, any really good LNBF (such as Technomate TM-4 Gold Quad) will out perform any of the current C120 offerings on that dish.

6) So the LNBF fits your dish you would 3x M5 x 60 bolt, or 5 x 60 wood screws. This allows for the 40mm collar of the LNBF.

last-24-hours-graph.php.png
 

joddle

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Wow - After a visit and testing by one of our distinguished and respected contributors he discovered the LNB was in fact just fine as was the dish alignment. The problem I have been having is in fact due to either too much or corrupted signal! The solution was in fact easy! - a small in-line attenuator and now everything is back to normal again with a slightly reduced SS readings but the SQ readings on the difficult channels gong from around 40% to 95-100%. Now all I have to do is get a couple more attenuators for the other affected boxes which is so much cheaper than a new LNB and has been well worth the call out charge. Sometimes its the little things that catch you out!
 

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Yes tuner getting flooded by a 2.4m dish. What do you expect? Happens on boxes with a crap frontend.
 

joddle

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Hmm - I was not aware the Humax boxes had a crap front end - They seem pretty good to me! Anyway a 2.4m dish in Valencia may be a bit of an overkill but no-one else seems to get the same issues even a short distance away so maybe there is some local interference as well. The overkill is an issue I had come across before but had completely forgotten about and in fact already had an attenuator in one of the only occasionally looked at feeds - and of course that one remained fine but as we did not use it much failed to realise! It was only when testing we came across this and thought that may be answering the problem. Without the attenuator some HD channels and the "Dave" and "Yesterday" group failed or broke up regularly with very high SS but very low SQ readings, or at worst simply stated a bad signal and revealed nothing at all! Now with the attenuator all is restored with moderate to very good SS readings and very high SQ readings. Even the old not so good Manhatten boxes are all working fine now! Still unsure why this all only happened quite recently as for many years all was OK!
 

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The overloading of the Humax ( and others) would be down to a combination of the tuner and the LNB, which you said was changed a while ago.

Additionally the satellites have become populated with more channels, leading to swamping of the IF band that the receiver has to sift through.
 

joddle

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"more channels, leading to swamping of the IF band that the receiver has to sift through" . That sounds more like the reason why the problem has come on more recently- Interesting!
 
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