Short: Our NOAAport system was down between 14:25Z and 15:35Z for cable
replacement and checking. It is back online now...and you shouldn't have
seen any issues.
Long: We replaced the 120' length of RG-6 coax cable from the dish to
the Novra S-200 receiver with 120' of RG-11 dual-shielded cable from
Starcomm. By doing so, we also didn't need three inline barrel conectors
which added to the signal loss. Before we started this, our signal
strength at the dish was 92%, and 76% at the Novra S-200 receiver. After
the replacement, it was 92% at both the receiver and at the dish. Two
engineers and myself, based on the cable loss rating, believe we got an
additional 8 dB of signal gained to the receiver by this replacement.
Furthermore, checking/unchecking the "long line" option (long cable run,
adds 1 volt to the system) only slightly improved the carrier to noise
(C/N) ratio. Speaking of which, that increased from ~11.5 to around 12.5
after the cable replacement, until a fairly thick high cirrus shield came
over and dropped it down to around 10-11. I have no idea yet what's
supposed to be a "good" C/N with this setup.
*******************************************************************************
Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
*******************************************************************************
