On Tue, 19 Aug 2014, John Austin Basham wrote:
Gilbert,
Thanks for the great tips on this. Haven't gotten mine up and running yet
(new dish coming in), but your notes should same me some real headaches.
You are most welcome! On our LNB, I switched the polarity to
vertical/right as the NWS said, and the signal went straight to zero.
I switched it back to horizontal/left, and all was well. It might mean
that the LNB is turned incorrectly, but I doubt it. So, keep that in mind
if you find that your signal is zero.
I do find it odd that such an important feed would be so very sensitive to
minor changes. Seems as if NOAA would want a powerhouse of a feed rather than
a lower power signal. Since these are most important when conditions are at
their least optimal.
Well, it isn't minor. It's a big upgrade, actually. They're pushing the
limit as to how much they can pump through on one channel. And with a 3.8
meter dish (or larger near the coasts, southern U.S. and Alaska),
it's been determined that 99.9% of the time, at the power they run, the
feed will be there. Unfortunately, for many offices in rural areas,
high-speed fiber is too costly, so they cannot get it that way. As it is,
I was told that this new feed costs about as much to operate per year as
three WFO's; satellite time (especially for a data feed) is very
expensive. What broadcast networks do in this country is either have two
satellites to broadcast on, or one satellite and one fiber connection for
redunancy. While the NWS has multiple uplink sites (and for Sandy, they
rented an uplink in California to stay on the air, if I recall
correctly), they only have one satellite to go to. That's because they
don't own almost any of their own broadcast infrastructure. They do with
EMWIN, but the weather satellites weren't designed for a NOAAport feed,
and even the next generation satellites, while supporting a 56kb feed,
again are not designed to handle NOAAport. There's only so much money to
go around...
At any rate, I thank you in advance of our new install. PLEASE keep the tips
coming.
Thanks, John. I will say that, again, the feed is still in the testing
stages; we're seeing some packets being dropped and I am not sure if the
NWS or our receiver is having issues. With a C/N of 18, a VBER of zero,
a signal strength of 76...I'm not positive it's us. We do need to replace
one lower quality jumper cable on the dish to make sure the issue isn't on
our end.
Again, I stress; If you're planning on receiving this broadcast, you can't
go cheap. On anything. For "fun", OK. Otherwise, only the nearly very best
will do, down to the coaxial cable and connector quality, to the dish and
LNB, and the receiver. Finally, mad props to Novra for their excellent
customer service this week in handling our remote firmware upgrade issue.
They now have posted a warning that clearly states if you do the firmware
upgrade remotely, the default device IP address will be 192.168.0.1 after
it completes. Caveat emptor.
Gilbert
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Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
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