Shaw Direct, Signal loss

At about 16:30 this afternoon, I lost all of my HD channels, but not my SD channels. I went to the roof where the oversized circular antenna and two LNBs are located. I hand tightened several cables connected to RG-6 cable and tightened the slightly loose connectors, came down from the roof and everything is now working.

My question is did anyone else have this problem at the same time, or was it the very slightly loose cable that I tightened?

Whatever the problem, it sure did scare me, I need to be able to watch my home town stations, something Then Star Choice and now Shaw Direct have allowed me to do since February 21st 2001 when the old Anik-F1 went active.

Now do not laugh, but no one had any idea how well the signal would come in this far south and so I had already installed a flashlight LNB to my 2.4 meter or almost 8 foot in diameter dish when the then new satellite Anik-F1 went active. Today rather than a Shaw 75 E elliptical dish which works pretty well lakeside, I upsized to a 1.2 meter circular dish with 2 LNBs which gives me an even better signal.

Again, did anyone loose HD signals for a short period near 16:30 this afternoon, or was it me alone and it was simply a slightly loose cable?

My HD works fine. I have lost all my signal due to a loose connection and a degraded cable in the past. Sometimes there is even solar activity which messes with the signal for few minutes in the afternoons.

I am glad it appears to be my problem alone. I could look up toward about where the satellite is, and the weather was good. It was just that all of the signals from one of my two LNBs was zero. So it was either at my end which it appears to be or something that impacted everyone, which it apparently didn't during that brief outage.

No, mine quit at that time for maybe 15 minutes then came back and I had it on SD not HD.  It went out like it does when there is heavy rain or cloud cover even though the sky was clear.

That is likely solar activity (solar flares). Happens regularly at certain times of the year.

The sun goes directly behind Shaw satellites in the Spring and fall and usually occurs around 13:00 to 14:00 for maybe 15 minutes for each satellite for several days each time

I do not know about solar flares but if it were, then someone else would have had a problem too, and so far no one on either Board has responded saying they were having the same problem. So I am guessing I had better go up with a small wrench and tighten up the connectors a wee bit tighter. Because they were so loose that I was able, just with a hand, to tighten several of the cable connections.

Uh, read my post above Bob’s. It just went out again.

And now it’s back again after a loss of service for about the same length of time.

Here too. It went off again, I went to standard definition and then a couple of minutes ago I checked the HD and it was working again. Thanks for telling me that you had posted earlier, Somehow I missed your earlier post.

I am sad to hear that this problem is happening to others. I was hoping that it was only my problem which I would be able to fix rather rapidly.

What would cause it? It lasted longer than the afternoon sun spots used to.

I really do not know. But the sun spot problem occurs in the spring and fall around 13:30 or so not a 4:30 or 8 PM.

A storm high in the atmosphere and several miles away can also block the signal. My signal can drop out 15 or 20 minutes before a big storm actually arrives here.

Maybe that was it. Weird whatever it was.

The satellites are almost due south and the elevation almost exactly 60 degrees. And this time when the signal went out at 16:30, the sky was clear at that elevation. And now that I increased the size of my satellite dish to 1.2 meters, it has to be very very cloudy before I loose my signal.

Clouds never interfere with my signal, only heavy rains or solar activity.

CanuckBob wrote:Clouds never interfere with my signal, only heavy rains or solar activity.

Same here, cloudy interference would be a big time problem  being as much cloudy weather as there is now.