Lost our 129 Satellite completely. Mystery.

[SewFishy]

No HD for us.


We have a Winegard Travelr 1000 on the roof, a King tailgater 3 and use a VIP 211Z with a recorder. All this has been working fine for some time.


Back on the first of the month we moved to a new location and I went on chat and had a "tech" put in a new service address so we could get the new locals. Well she/he uploaded the new code to our receiver for the service address and also changed our billing address to the new service address and "saved" us $15 dollars for reason unknown. Immediately after we lost the 129 Satellite which as everyone knows carries almost all the HD channels which we are paying for.


Its programming disappeared, even though our check switch said it was present and accounted for. We tried our King Tailgater III and same result.
We put in a Wally we had and same result. 129 check switch good. No HD
from 129.



6 hours of working with Dish and getting elevated to high levels of technically challenged people we were told our SKY was obscured (NO. Perfectly open). Their excellent troubleshooting also managed to deselect the 129 sat from our check switch but they promised us the 129 sat. would come back miraculously when we had a "clear" view.



Err. I having a hard time getting my head around how we cannot get 129 after they messed with uploading our receiver with the new local transponders. They claim they have no control over check switch even though they managed to lead us through a procedure which made it disappear on our receiver from both antenna.


Any insight to this mystery would be helpful. Thank you in advance.


Ps: On Wednesday we move to a new location and I plan to park in a Walmart lot on the way, run my genny, extend my antenna and have it out with them
.

[mjeffrey]

If you check the signal strength for satellite 129 (try several transponders) do you get any signal?

Sounds suspicious to me. Unless you are northeast of Pennsylvania, you should get a signal with a clear sky.

[vsheetz]

Call your antenna manufacturers tech support. They are typically much smarter than Dish or Direct.

[Lt Dan]

Does your Trav'ler controller show it's locked onto all three satellites;*110 *119 *129? If so, the problem is not with the antenna reception but with Dish deactivating your HD channels. If you can get the check switch to show green on satellite 129, check the signal strength. Anything above about 20-25% should be adequate for reception.

[SewFishy]

LT_Dan. Tried to tell them this. They took us through a glorious high level troubleshooting routine ending with "Dish-Can you please remove the cable at the back of your receiver (Satellite in), Please select test in installation summary page. Us-(Test 1 thru 38 finished. Receiver says the configuration has changed, some satellites may be lost, do you want to save the new configuration? WARNING IT IS NOT RECOMENDED TO CHANGE CONFIGURATION. Dish rep. "Please save configuration".


Us: but its warning us to NOT do that? Dish Rep - "Please select save." : It says to never to remove satellite. How can we get 120 back? Allan_OPID_67P (00:52:42 GMT) : We're clearing the fewer satellite on your system and we will download the new one Allan_OPID_67P (00:52:56 GMT) :(Guy can barely speak English). Us- Selected SAVE: RECEPTION ERROR: (This was when 129 actually went away). Dish-Thanks. Reconnect the "Satellite In" coax cable into "Satellite In" port on the back of the receiver. Please select TEST. Wait for pop up to display. What do you see? Us-Connected to 119 and 121. Dish-I see. We can't get the satellite 129. I really wanted to resolve this issue under my assistance. Unfortunately, I've exhausted the troubleshooting resources at my disposal. You may go to this link to have someone out scheduled:Bla, Bla, Bla. Assume they want a technician to come fix/reset up our receiver. So here we are. No HD. I suppose I will need to go to a Dish place with my receiver to have to properly setup for 129 again, Since they seem to have disabled it from on high?

[SewFishy]

Any idea HOW we can get our check switch to see the 129 sat since they seem to have disabled it during troubleshooting?


Thank you in advance.

[creativepart]

When you do a check disk and it finds fewer SATs than has been memorized by the receiver it tells you that if you SAVE the results of the check desk process it will delete the missing SATs.

That's normal. And, it will happen any time your location can't actually receive that SAT.

So, when you started out your receiver said you had all three SATs (from the last check disk) and then you ran the Check Disk and it didn't find all three. When you didn't go back and retest but accepted the findings of the check disk it simply removed the missing SAT.

That's ok, no worries. It's not gone forever. BUT, you won't get it back until you go through a setup process where it actually finds all 3 SATs, with a good strong (+30) signal. That's what puts any missing SAT back on the setup menu.

You must have something blocking 129. A tree, a building, something. Have you tried any of the SAT pointer apps on your cell phone? You get the app, point it at the sky near your dish and it uses your camera to show you a live picture from the camera and it super imposes the SATs location on the screen. You'll also be able to see if there is anything blocking one of the SATs.

This is the one I used: DishPointer Pro. It costs $20 now, but is a life saver for a SAT Tv user. Wingard has one too I'm told. I only have experience with DishPointer.

[Lt Dan]

Originally Posted by creativepart

This is the one I used: DishPointer Pro. It costs $20 now, but is a life saver for a SAT Tv user. Wingard has one too I'm told. I only have experience with DishPointer.

WOW! Were you above the arctic circle? With 110 and 119 that low, 129 must have been below the horizon.

EDIT: Never mind, I went to their web site and see that is one of their photos.

[creativepart]

Yeah, I don't use SAT TV any more. So, I don't use the app now. We had Dish at home for 20 years. It kept going up and up and up in cost. The last 3 or 4 years it was over $200 a month. Since we had it at home we used it in the RV, too.

Then almost 2-years ago we got brave and dumped Dish completely and tested out going with streaming from the internet 100%. It's worked great and is vastly less expensive. It's about $45 a month for all of our services. We added an outdoor antenna and even stream that to our Roku devices via a Tablo device.

That left us with having to figure out how to do this in the RV. With luck and some info from other RVers we ended up with both unlimited ATT and Verizon accounts and MiFi devices in the RV - so we stream all our TV in the RV now as well.

[powderman]

If you have an Android phone, the play store has a free app called AR Sat that you can use to see all satellites. This will show you if there is an obstruction.

[SewFishy]

We use Satellite AR. There is imperatively nothing here but clear sky. But I have talked to the campground host and another local user and they report their DISH HD also does not work. They also have clear shot at the satellites. A guy a couple miles away says his works fine. Very weird, if not mysterious. There are a LOT of very high power plant smokestacks around us but none high enough to block our satellite view. It is also very hazy here all the time. Is it possible even remotely that particulates from the stacks could prevent satellite 129 reception above the required thresh hold. They are coal burners.



Thank you Creativepart for relieving my worries about 129 being gone forever:



"That's ok, no worries. It's not gone forever. BUT, you won't get it back until you go through a setup process where it actually finds all 3 SATs, with a good strong (+30) signal. That's what puts any missing SAT back on the setup menu. Can you outline this setup process or is it as simple as running a check switch? I can do that tomorrow at our new location, which will basically be in the middle of a corn field.


Thanks again.

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by SewFishy

Can you outline this setup process or is it as simple as running a check switch? I can do that tomorrow at our new location, which will basically be in the middle of a corn field.

Yeah, it's just as simple as running a Check Switch. It will add the SATs it finds and locks on to without any notice. It's just saving a Check Switch result that finds fewer SATs that gives you the warning and removes them from the setup screen.

It's really not a big deal to lose one SAT after a Check Switch especially if it's not 110 or 119.

PS. Just realized I kept writing "check disk" and not "check switch". Do'h! Too many years maintaining PC networks.

[SewFishy]

Found out from Winegard that the Trav'ler 1000 and pretty much all the portable
automatic units find two satellites with above thresh hold signals and use their little computer brains to calculate and more or less twerk and bore sight the location of the third one. Thus your Trav'ler 1000 control box may say 110, 119 and 129 "locked" when there may actually be no signal at all on any random one of them. Best two out of three are all "it" the antenna needs she told me. If the third one is 129 you may get low or no signal or a bad check switch. She also mentioned that very few "Dish" online or phone techs know or can explain this. Its easier for them to just make 129 or whatever go way on your receiver.



Interesting. LT_Dan I hope you see this.



She also confirmed that portables are especially prone to random signal fall out in area's with high levels of atmospheric particulates especially on low angle satellites. Just like a permanent rainstorm.



So we wait. As creativepart said: No worries. It will come back. Maybe.



I'll make a final entry when it does.

[Wayne M]

Use satellite 61.5 and get all channels.