legacy signal loss every few seconds

[r_pimpn]

I have a strange problem. I have a viewsat ultra and an ilink 9000+. When watching eco 119 with the ilink I will lose signal on the viewsat nimiq 91. The signal quality will bounce from 0 to 80 every few seconds. Using 2 diseqc switches port 1 is 119 port 2 is 110 port 3 is 91. Only having issues with that setting, 119 on viewsat and 91 on ilink no problems.
any ideas?
thanks!

[Pollypurabred]

My neighbors, legal subs, have had similar problems but of course not with same Stbs. They called Dish, repairs where made and everything worked okay for ~ 2 days but if started doing the same problems again. As they were to have a UFC party the next night and as they knew that I worked in electronics, they asked me for help.

After troubleshooting, what we found is that when we disconnecting one box entirely, the system worked great (either box, alternately) but with both boxes connected we have similar results as you have stated.

Using my multimeter I found one bad coax connection but upon repairing that, the problem remained. Switching cables/switches would work for an channel change or two but then it would revert to the old problem.

To the web, based on the specific Dish Stbs; no help. After about an hour of searching "Dish receiver problems" I ran across a blog on proper system grounding. This blog, sorry no link as it was about 3 years ago, suggested that Stb recievers do act differently based on the switch commands and since it may be (can be) a one time only command (pulse), switching to a different Sat may not happen.

Okay so what do we do? We try switching to a different Sat, banging on the Stb, shake the cables and then we eventually turn the Stb off.

When nothing else eventually work we continued acting on the blog mentioned above; to visited the actual installation site, yep outside. We noticed that we had two distinct dishes (local/HD) I would guess. Both had two cables coming from the dish and both terminated at a grounding block before entering the house.

However, the homeowner noticed that one dish had a separate ground wire connected to the existing house ground rod while the HD (new install) had none. Continuing with the blog and with myself being in electronics, I just happened to have a 40 foot jumper which I used to connect these two systems together.

And two weeks later it is still working.

My understanding is that Dish Stbs have a little more power and therefore are not as prone to switch malfunctions as are other 3rd party Stbs.

[WillDekkard]

I have a strange problem. I have a viewsat ultra and an ilink 9000+. When watching eco 119 with the ilink I will lose signal on the viewsat nimiq 91. The signal quality will bounce from 0 to 80 every few seconds. Using 2 diseqc switches port 1 is 119 port 2 is 110 port 3 is 91. Only having issues with that setting, 119 on viewsat and 91 on ilink no problems.
any ideas?
thanks!

Is your Dish System grounded ? Most switching problems stem from a lack of grounding, especially when that 2nd receiver is added to the system. All Dishes, Cables(using a 2.5GHz grounding block), and especially switches need to be grounded to an earth ground, using solid copper ground wire.

[Terryl]

Are you talking about the "S" signal or the "Q" signal?

The "S" signal is the level of the signal from the LNB, if that is bouncing around then it's a hardware problem in the coax, switch or LNB.

If the "Q" is bouncing around then it could be that the dish is out of alignment, there is some sort of interference to the signal from the LNB or a setting is wrong at the receiver.

You mentioned a "Legacy" system in your first post, then a Ariza LNB, what types of LNB's are you using? are they all the same brand? or are you mixing types?

Mixing different types of LNB's can cause problems, even mixing different manufactures of LNB's can cause problems.

If you can, please give us a list of the type of equipment you have installed, LNB's types and make, switch(s) type(s) and make, and the receivers involved.