Direct TV and Rain

[Pogo]

Signal deterioration is worse when you're further North. A dish pointing straight up is looking through very little atmosphere (where weather lives). A dish approaching horizontal is looking through hundreds of miles. If rain fades are a big problem then just move South. Hey, if you're paying for satellite TV you can afford a new house and a move.

and Maine, so so far north and east, Satellite TV and internet is worse than ever!!! My hubby's cell doesn't get good service either! It's all darn depressing, moving here from Massachusetts which is basically the silicone valley of the East.... every thing Rocked and Rolled....internet with fiber optics, cable, cells!!!!

Here in the sticks of Appalachia we have finally had fiberoptic run, even out here to the woods. It wasn't so much to get us better service as it was that the cable was always crapping out. So now they ran a fiberoptic to my house -- and they just coiled it on the side. Then they came back and put a box up for the fiber to feed into --- which is connected to nothing. Some day.... For now I'm still internetting via a coax cable --- and paying twelve bucks a month extra to NOT watch TV.

Cell signals though don't depend on latitude but on where the nearest tower is. I have no cell signal here, or barely enough to text but if I want to talk I've pretty much got to go drive somewhere, such as to call the cable company because my internet (and therefore my landline) is down. I can get lucky though on a cloudy day, as all that moisture in the air bends radio waves at certain frequencies and I get better signal. On a clear day, faggetaboudit.

I offered to Verizon to put up a tower on my land to serve this area but I got no response.

 

[Care4all]

Signal deterioration is worse when you're further North. A dish pointing straight up is looking through very little atmosphere (where weather lives). A dish approaching horizontal is looking through hundreds of miles. If rain fades are a big problem then just move South. Hey, if you're paying for satellite TV you can afford a new house and a move.

and Maine, so so far north and east, Satellite TV and internet is worse than ever!!! My hubby's cell doesn't get good service either! It's all darn depressing, moving here from Massachusetts which is basically the silicone valley of the East.... every thing Rocked and Rolled....internet with fiber optics, cable, cells!!!!

Here in the sticks of Appalachia we have finally had fiberoptic run, even out here to the woods. It wasn't so much to get us better service as it was that the cable was always crapping out. So now they ran a fiberoptic to my house -- and they just coiled it on the side. Then they came back and put a box up for the fiber to feed into --- which is connected to nothing. Some day.... For now I'm still internetting via a coax cable --- and paying twelve bucks a month extra to NOT watch TV.

Cell signals though don't depend on latitude but on where the nearest tower is. I have no cell signal here, or barely enough to text but if I want to talk I've pretty much got to go drive somewhere, such as to call the cable company because my internet (and therefore my landline) is down. I can get lucky though on a cloudy day, as all that moisture in the air bends radio waves at certain frequencies and I get better signal. On a clear day, faggetaboudit.

I offered to Verizon to put up a tower on my land to serve this area but I got no response.

Down on the main road with the telephone poles, they attached this foot and a half long black tube like thingy....I think time Warner Cable put them in down my whole main road and then on to city road which has cable....nothing attached to the house, but we have the telephone and electric run already to our own pole on our own property and then it goes underground about 30 yards in to the house......we could have the cable or fiber optics or whatever is in those black tubes to our house....easily.

And Time Warner was offering my street for the first time in the 11 years of being here, CABLE and internet and phone packages.... we finally went to order it, and Time Warner had sold off to spectrum....and for the past year, when we call, spectrum says it is not available on our street! It is so frustrating! in the town center of my town, they have had cable for 7 or 8 years now.....but still not here....and I am only 3 miles from town center!

 

[blastoff]

Snow/ice in Michigan killed the signal often in winter. Fortunately due to lots of oaks and maples on our lot they couldn't locate the dish on the roof or attached up on the side of the house so had to sink a pole in the ground for it where it had a line of sight opening between tree limbs, thank God. When the signal was lost I could clean the dish off with a car window brush/scraper and be back in business in two minutes because it was only less than 6 feet off the ground. Had it been too high up to reach I'd have been at the mercy of waiting for Mother Nature to warm up and melt the problem. One winter only with a dish.

For the seriously TV addicted there are relatively inexpensive radomes available that will shed snow most of the time. They don't have much impact on wind resistance. But when the addiction reaches Stage 4, one can consider electrically radomes. Of course neither will do much with falling snow, particularly large flakes that act little mirrors to the signal. But once the snowfall stops they're magic.

Thank you. I’ll find someone to interpret for me.

A radome is a cover that fits over a parabolic dish for the purpose of keeping off that ice and snow and rain that may affect it. It's supposed to be transparent to the signal. You've seen them out in the world, they look like this:

--- you'd put it on like a cap:

​

The idea of a parabolic dish is that it's perfectly shaped to reflect any signal that hits any part of the dish, into that center element, and thus concentrate the signal strength.

Consequently any change to the shape of that dish --- especially snow or ice -- disrupts that angle and you get less signal. That's why your signal will crap out in the snow or, especially, during icing. Icing is the mortal enemy of an antenna.

Rain has less of an effect directly on the shape of the dish but will disrupt the smooth surface by virtue of water running on it. The radome protects it from those elements.

Theoretically you could put heating element de-icers on it to keep ice off (like broadcast antennas have) but it wouldn't help with the rain.

Look around your world when you see a tower and you'll notice these peculiar lookinng caps on microwave antennas and you'll notice them. Then you can say to your date, "see that? That's a radome" and explain all of this. She will then give you sex on the spot. It works, believe me. And yes, I get a commission for that.

Thanks but I’m done with dish service and anyway I sense the addition of a radome would be perceived by the bride as exaggerating the eyesore that ruined her pretty landscaping. Lose the battles, win the wars.