Just an alternative opinion
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When the satellite gets replaced this problem should go away. The only difference from last year is the signal is weaker when it should be strong here. I repointed at AMC-4 a couple months ago and was surprised History and Bio were working well in the evening. Then I noticed that the signal was dropping some at night then come back up. Now it's back to doing what it did last year. Last time I got fed up and pointed at AMC 1 since every night was useless when you wanted to watch them. Since they are free you really can't complain though. If I watched them allot I could get the sub on the 4DTV for them.
Since the satellite swap is right around the corner I want to see what happens when it changes. I believe the problem lies in the solar batteries run down when the solar panels receive no sunlight. They need some new energizer bunnies on the old bird
I really have a hard time believing that any reception problems here are due to the uplink or the satellite. I've read thousands of posts over the years from people saying that the power is down on certain transponders, and when I look at the spectrum, almost always, it's not the case. The only times I've seen signal levels drop have been when there is weather at the uplink, or when uplinkers intentionally drop power because their intended recipients are off line.
And it certainly has nothing to do with the solar panels not receiving sunlight, at least not now. The only time that these sats go into eclipse and lose sunlight are when it's within a couple weeks of the equinoxes. I just checked, and it looks like the last time AMC4 lost sunlight for more than a couple minutes was back on April 11, and even at the equinox, it only lost sunlight for about 67 minutes, around 3AM, when not too many people would be watching. Since 4/12, it's been in full sunlight 24/7. Switching to a new satellite may bring a more powerful signal, but if it does, it will end up hurting our reception on other signals, and I doubt that it will stop people from complaining about sub-powered transponders.
RTN has been a mess from as far back as I can remember. They had issues way back on G-10 and to this day has some issues. ...
People have been complaining about RTN seemingly forever too, but again I'm convinced that the problem was not with the RTN signal, but with our receivers. Some people have never had issues with these signals, or only when there was weather involved.
Anyway, I am of the opinion that 99.9% of the reception problems we observe, ( and yes, I see these things too) are due to our marginal consumer grade equipment, dishes that are too small and/or too poor a quality to resolve interference from adjacent sats, lnbs that drift or are noisy, receivers that can't resolve signals that are close together, etc, etc. These sat signals we watch wouldn't be up there if they weren't getting their signals to the intended viewers, so it's not the fault of the signal, it's the fault of our equipment. The vast majority of these uplinkers are not concerned about getting their signal to us, they are only concerned about getting their signal to the people they are aiming the signal at.
I just looked at both the 12060 signal and the RTN signal, and both are very nice strong clean signals that no-one should have a problem with, but if there is a problem, I still say that it's not the signal's fault, it's the fault of our equipment.
Just my opinion.
