[BC] Dish life (was: Sat dishes vs snow)

[Sherrod Munday]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 23:09, SHAFFER, RANDY L wrote:
> over the expected life of the dishes. Of course we are
> way past that with the original dishes nearly 25 years old.

On a tangential note:

Frankly, I'm surprised that dishes that are ~25 years old are still in 
service ... 2-degree spacing went into effect around 1986, and many dishes 
that were installed up until the late 80's were not 2-degree compliant, so 
they suffer quite a bit of adjacent-satellite interference and are not nearly 
as good at cross-polarity interference rejection as the current 
2-degree-compliant dishes.  In our experience, for the digital DVB-type 
signals out there (like those the Starguide III and Unity receivers use), 
those older dishes just don't work reliably.  We had lots of affiliates need 
to replace their non-2-degree-compliant dishes when we moved from SCPC and 
FM-Squared signals to the DVB signals back about 6 years ago.  There was 
enough power in those analog and fully-saturated transponder signals to 
overcome the interference, but not so any more in the "leaner, meaner" world 
of digital.

This of course is not even to mention the issue of the physical condition of a 
25-year-old dish (hurricanes, snow load, wind, ice, hail, etc.) -- just the 
original design spec (4-degree spacing was prevalent at that time) versus 
what the FCC authorized (2-degree spacing) later.

I'd be interested to hear if you're using that ~25-year-old dish to receive 
digital carriers, and if so, which ones...
-- 
Sherrod Munday <smunday at srnradio.com>
Technical Director
Salem Radio Network    (972) 831-1920