Trees Causing A Problem?

[Papua]

A mate with sky+ started losing his signal badly a couple of weeks ago when we had a lot of rain. I had a quick look and the signal strength was about 50% and there was no signal quality. We changed the dish from a 40cm to 60cm, changed both cables to the sky+ box and put in a new quad lnb.

The signal strength has now increased 70% and the quality to 25% on some channels but zero on others. A lot of the channels break up. BBC2 & Sky Movies are not watchable along with some others.

We changed to box to a HD box and Sky movies HD1 and HD2 and Sky One HD can't be received yet the other channels are there.

There are a number of trees across the road from his house that are probably 25-30 feet high and this dish is able 10ft high on his house. Would the trees cause this sort of signal blockage? It seems surprising that we can get 70% signal strength yet no quality at all. I have now suggested getting a local installer in but he thinks that if it is the trees then there is nothing that he can do as they belong to a company 120 miles away that rents the ground to a group of shops.

[sbowler]

could he mount the dish higher up on the house, even on the chimney?

[Papua]

Hi, its on a ground floor flat so he can't move it up more than a couple of feet.

Do trees cause a loss of quality but the signal strength still remains high?

[961]

Yes, trees cause the problem you describe, especially when in full leaf during the summer

One answer is to negotiate with the building owner for permission to put a dish on the roof

However, the fact that the problem started after heavy rain leads to the conclusion that there may be a waterproofing problem.Ensure that the connections to the lnb are weatherproof, and since you now have a 70% signal on some channels ensure the dish/lnb alignment is spot on

[monkeyboykev]

I had this very same problem last week, we had terrible rain and thunder storms (monday/tuesday), all of a sudden we went from having fantastic signal strength (nearly 100%) and quality (about 75%) to next to nothing, signal strength 75%, but signal quality 25%.

Put it down to the thunder storm having fried my lmb (bugger i thought, costly sky repair bill!!). Spoke to a mate who works in the world of SKY/Ariels etc and he said the the thunder storm should not have fried the lmb (although not impossible) and did we have trees nearby.

To cut a long story short our next door neighbour has a tree which is pretty much in line with our sky dish so when the rain stopped i nipped out and cut back the branches (it's no great oak or anything) so that the line of the dish was better and hey presto we now have 100% signal strength back and 75-80% signal quality. Now this could be coinsidence (sp?) as i can't understand why all of a sudden it went but i'm praying it was the tree. Will have to keep an eye on things.

[SamRadford]

Wet leaves disperse the satellite signals in such a way that some frequencies may get through but others won't. They act like a diffraction grating.

[Papua]

Thanks for your replies, I sort of thought it would be the trees causing the problem. I just found it strange that the signal strength was high but no quality.

I've found on the sky+ box that if you set two recordings going on channels that you are having problems with and then look at the signal strength / quality meters you get the information directly from the faulty channels rather than the default transponder. I know you can change the default transponder in the installation menu but that it a bit of playing around.