wellinever

Anyone else getting freezing and interference today?
Wonder if its due to Solar Storm going on?

wellinever

oh well, looks like the problem has now gone

riv

Do you get subtitles on Intelsat 901 ?

wellinever

Never tried to be honest.i use an old Icecrypt S1600CHD decoder, which I dare not mess with !!!
I get all basic channels in HD, but C5 has no audio at all.
Also use it connected to another dish, which still works to give things like Bloomberg/CNBC/CNN etc
Interesting last night only those channels from Intel 901 were affected by the freezing

wellinever

Ermmmm......odd, just noticed that the freezing has started again on all channels. About the same time as yesterday
Must be something to do with the sun in a certain position I guess, so bugger all that can be done???

liveaboard

Check that your dish is clean.

wellinever

Yes done that, all is normal (no birds nesting on it). Its on huge flat roof so could be used by birds, I know my dish in UK sometimes has pigeons try to build a nest in the gantry, and sit on the LNB bar.
The odd thing is this has only happened in the last 3 days, and always starts abruptly during the evening.
I have seen a similar thing at certain times of year in the past, but at about lunchtime, and I am sure that is to do with the Sun, interfering with reception, as the Earth moves on its axis at a certain tilt..but never noticed this at night

liveaboard

That is the profile of a slightly weak signal. Maybe the difference is a change in atmosphere, or maybe it's your equipment (LNB, connections, etc.)
A larger dish would probably solve the problem if it persists.

I have a rather large dish so the signal is pretty strong; but we stopped using the sat receiver as there are so few channels on 901 now.

wellinever

maybe this is the answerSun Outage

A sun outage, sun transit or sun fade is an interruption in or distortion of geostationary satellite signals caused by interference from solar radiation. The effect is due to the sun’s radiation overwhelming the satellite signal.
In the northern hemisphere, sun outages occur before the March equinox (February, March) and after the September equinox (September and October).

At these times, the apparent path of the sun across the sky takes it directly behind the line of sight between an earth station and a satellite. The sun radiates strongly across the entire spectrum, including the microwave frequencies used to communicate with satellites (C-band, Ku band, and Ka-band), so the sun swamps the signal from the satellite.

The effects of a sun outage range from partial degradation (increase in the error rate) to a total destruction of the signal. The effect sweeps from north to south from approximately 20 February to 20 April, and from south to north from approximately 20 August to 20 October, affecting any specific location for less than 12 minutes a day for a few consecutive days.

Viewers within the central footprint in the British Isles and nearby Europe should not be affected, those in fringe areas will lose the signals from Astra 2E, Astra 2F and Eutelsat 28A.
At around 10.40 to 10.50 CET, signals from Astra satellites at 28.2º east will be lost completely as they move in front of the sun.

wellinever

Odd that this has started to pixellate again and freezing image, but sound continues as normal.
Dish is 90 cm and has been perfect for years using this system, no movement or new objects in the way.
This is using dish to get BBC1 etc.........................,anyone else with this problem?
Signal strength is L90/Q75

MrBife

Had similar experiences here and for me it turned out to be a spider returning to his nest deep inside the feed horn of the LNB each evening at about the same time !

wellinever

MrBife....thnks suggestion, its not beyond possibility, although in that case I suppose Mr Spider must have been out so far this morning.
So before I finally give up and bring in a TV bloke, i turned TV and decoder (Icecrypt 1600) on early and have left it on ITV.
Popping in to look at it periodically, so far (since 7am) and its now 9.20am, I have seen no indication of freezing, pixelating, nothing at all, but last night it was impossible to watch freezing every 10 seconds or so. But sound continues without stopping, while picture has frozen.
On the face of it, it would rule out anything that could have affected signal, and with signal at L90/Q75, I think that is more than good enough.
I still cant seem to get the idea of the Sun being the cause, because of the intermittent nature, but would be odd that it has same effect at night.

Ajmandon

I have also had a few more pixelation events than usual recently, 80cm dish and Enigma2 box. The box normally reports far lower signal SNR than your Icecrypt ...... I know these numbers tend to be box specific/not accurate but can be useful for tracking whether they go up or down. My experience is that these events usually occur in afternoon/early evening and mySNR only needs to drop by 1 or 2% ...... I´m starting to think this may be due to an increase in solar activity/ solar winds recently with those "northern lights" reports across N. Europe/UK.

wellinever

Ah well at least someone else is experiencing these fluctuations. I actually looked at the signal during the freezing and pixelation, and oddly it is the same as when running perfectly.
Double checked all connection yesterday and all perfectly OK, so unless the LNB is playing up then I too think it must be due to solar activity. Odd that no one else seems to be reporting interference, not just here, but in general.

1Steve

I used to get the picture failing about 17:15 to 18h most days about this time last year. I was using the standard size NOS dish which I think was 80 or 90cm. I switched to a 110cm dish and never had a problem since even on dark rainy days. Signal strength is L95 Q90 as I write this but that drops to about L92 Q82 early evening.