No Sat. Signal is being received!!

Four eyes

I've been subscribing to sky digital for 11 months now and I'm not a happy camper!
When the (extremely) grumpy man installed my dish (replacing the old analogue system I had for 8 years), he seemed in a bit of a rush to get off home. Anyway , 2 days after he left I noticed I got the "No Sat..y'know the rest). I discover when I went outdoors that my dish was after doing a well approx 240 degree spin and was facing the ground!, I had (stupidly) already paid up a 12 month digital subscription by this stage. I rang Sky to tell them to get it sorted and 2 weeks came and went and no sign of anyone. So I charged up the ladder and got a picture. However, there were slight horizontal lines of interference accross the screen and in my opinion the picture was never as clear as the old analogue system. Everything was reasonably ok , except that after any half decent shower of rain, all pictures disappeared , I got the "no sat. signal" message and in the system signal section the signal strength section was not too bad but Signal quality was zero. Now we face winter and (yes heavy rain most days) and it's getting VERY annoying. I'd like to keep the digital, but I reckon if Sky wouldn't fix it 12 months ago they won't come out now. I'm a bit desperate folks, is there anything I can do myself to try and sort this out?

chernobyl

Aligning a dish is no probs if you have patience, but you have lost yours i think....
call a local installer and he can align it in a minte flat.
Signal strength is not really a huge issue with Digital but rather Signal lock but both are relative.


If you have a small tv, hook it up to the decoder in a position where you can see if from the dish and move the dish to a level position (vertically speaking) and move it towards the south (on the horizontal), but move slowly, both the sky digital "decoder" and a digital signal are not quick to lock.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Another good one to get the dish aligned properly (I hear) is to get a small damp tea towel and cover part of the dish (to block the signal) and then align the dish until you get the best signal, then cover it a bit more and align it etc etc.

byte

I have heard that it was handy for setting analogue sat dishes though I have never tried it. Dunno bout digital satellite though.

Four eyes

I actually have a picture 97% of the time, it's just the weather that messes things up for me.

Do you think it's definately the alignment that is causing the problem?

Could it be anything else?

ps. I'm patient, honest! I've put up with it for 11 months!

Tony

Originally posted by Four eyes
I actually have a picture 97% of the time, it's just the weather that messes things up for me.

Do you think it's definately the alignment that is causing the problem?

Could it be anything else?

ps. I'm patient, honest! I've put up with it for 11 months!

Its probably alignment although it could also be cheap cable or a join in the cable. Are there any high trees in the direction the dish is pointing?

REgards Tony

Mountjoy Mugger

I remember from time to time it used happen me. It was just a matter of fiddling around with the STB and the Scart lead though - no problems with alignment.

Mountjoy Mugger

Soz - double post.

Four eyes

No trees around, but there is a phone wire not a million miles away that waves about a bit in the breeze, but I don't think that should be causing too much of a problem.

I checked the Lock indicator in the signal test a while ago and it said "Ok"

So I'm still a bit confused .

All suggestions so far and in the future greatly appreciated!

Nero

I lose my signal whenever it rains very heavy. Again patience prevails and it comes back when the rain eases down ..

chernobyl

Four eyes a phone line moving about will not make any difference, possibly if it was waving infront of the LNb but otherwise..no.


As for Rain Fade, this is normal, but no matter how hard it rains your dish should never loose its signal lock, best thing to do is to realign this dish, because the dish is obviously not aligned correctly a the moment.

[i am assuming that there are no land based obstructions].

Four eyes

No land based obstructions

So, if the signal is lost, the lock indicator box would be reading "not locked" rather than ok, is that right?

Have to say this -but THERE seems to be NO excuse in your case,for to be losing signal,and for that matter I have big trees in the way and in Monsoon conditions I never lose anything even tv3 praha!
The problem here is definitely the fact that the grumpy man you talked about just fired it up, took the lolly and ran
you should complain bigtime to both Sky and him.
You can fiddle around with the dish as often as you like , but unless you are really good, you wont fix the problem.
I know of a similar case down the road from me with that problem, and it was sorted when the technician came back - FREE OF CHARGE.
MM