jimvm
Member
I hate the new signalsaver feature !
Jimvm
Jimvm
Directv transponder 99cb is out.
- Thread starter jimvm
- Start date
prcguy
Member
Is it just a signal meter showing that or are actual channels missing? If its an SD transponder there will be around 15 channels missing and if its HD about 5. There should be spare transponders in the spacecraft that can be configured and brought online in some cases. I just remembered, the 99deg slot is all HD being Ka band and 36Mhz transponders so 5 channels would be affected.
jimvm
Member
Tnx prcguy. Looks like 99 deg cb is out . I read it is a position problem.
73 jimvm
73 jimvm
prcguy
Member
Turns out the entire DirecTV D11 spacecraft at 99deg W is out affecting 84 national channels and a couple hundred local channels on spot beams.
jhooten
Member
I'm missing all the locals and several of the HD channels. For some reason I can only get one receiver to revert to streaming.
RFI-EMI-GUY
Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2013
- Messages
- 7,670
Not saying it is a solar flare, but is a solar flare.
prcguy
Member
Probably not. There are several other satellites at the same 99deg W slot and DirecTV along with most other satellite operators will turn solar panels on edge to the solar wind and other precautions during a flare. I don't find any other satellites that failed around the same time as D11.
I don't believe there is an in orbit spare for D11 and when ATT bought DirecTV 10 or so years ago they canceled all satellite orders for spares, etc. The push at that time was to build up terrestrial delivery via broad band, 5G, etc, and eventually pull the plug on satellites. That was a bad idea and they were not able to build out enough broad band to pull it off. So if D11 is truly broken, I don't see a good way to completely recover.
Many years ago I lived through a major satellite failure and was part of a crew that migrated what we could to the other satellite that shared the same direct to home service. It took over a year of limping along until the replacement was launched and the service got back to normal and was able to expand.
jhooten
Member
Local channels are back for me this morning.
prcguy
Member
Aah, but are they back on 99deg D11 or have they been remapped to another satellite slot? You might check your signal metering for 99deg and see if it shows a bunch of transponder levels or if its dead.
prcguy
Member
Update, the D11 (actually T11) satellite is back on line.
The satellite is over 16 years old spending all that time in the harshness of space no wonder it had issues. It was a solar storm due to Cycle 25 that took the satellite out. Directv engineers were able to switch to a backup bus and repostion the solar panels for more power. The spotbeam transponders take a lot of power to focus their signals. Also Directv can remotely tune a customer's satellite dish for the best signal as I believe there are motors in the dish like Starlink to dial in the signal better. They want to get the SNR to the lowest value possible to overcome solar rays that screw with the signal. I believe Direct tv is building new satellites that will be launched later this year to replace the aging fleet.
prcguy
Member
Did you read this on some satellite forum or are you just guessing? The cause of the outage has not been announced and it probably was not a solar storm. There was a solar storm several days before the outage but it had long passed when the outage happened. Its possible that the solar panels were commanded to turn on edge to the solar storm many days prior and it is possible that station keeping instructions sent to right the panels had incorrect info and send the satellite into a spin or miss aligned the antennas. This has happened before.
The spot beams don't take any more power than any other transponder on the spacecraft, its the antennas that form the narrow beam (spot beam) that only covers a small area and if anything those require less power due to the higher antenna gain. DirecTV has no control over any customer antenna and there are no motors in the antenna (except a few mobile and marine versions). "Solar rays" can affect a satellite signal but only higher gain dishes twice a year for a few minutes a day for a few days when the sun is borsight with where the dish is pointing. It generally doesn't affect a DirecTV customer dish. When ATT purchased DirecTV about 10yrs ago all new satellite purchases were canceled and no replacements were to be built and as far as I know that is still true. ATT was counting on building out its terrestrial broad band services and migrating all customers off the satellites at some point that has already passed, so who knows what they are doing now.
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jhooten
Member
Getting 94 to 96 on all the 99 (ca) (cb). 99(s) is all over the place from 0 to 100.
prcguy
Member
D11 has both spot beams and CONUS coverage. Spot beams for your area will be higher numbers as will CONUS, spot beams for other areas will be weaker or not there. Bottom line is its back and making pictures again.
