sattelite signals

My problem is with the home sattelite during moderate to heavy rain I lose the signal.The sattelite has a clear view.On the camper I have The winegard carryout which worked well on my recent trip.Just wondering if the home sattelite needs adjusting.Hate to pay for a service call if what I'm experience is normal.

Jeff,
Guess I am really confused now. "Predicted rain fade?" I have no idea how you want them to predict the weather. (That's a joke I know that's not what you meant.) If you are saying that the DirecTV or Dish signal is not as strong in various parts of the Country that kind of info is pretty well documented. It's up to the antenna owner to see what their signal strength numbers are and if they are dropping a call to DirecTV or Dish would be in order. The auto pointing dishes take care of that automatically every time they deploy but a home installation or a manual portable setup can change with time.
Assuming I am completely off-base, please let me know what you are referring to.

I use a portable dish while on the road. Only time I ever lost a signal was because when I set it up....I was just on the fringe of a good signal. Moved it and never had a problem with the heavy rain on the coast. At my house...have Dish also there and only time I have lost a signal was due to heavy snow on the dish.....brushed it off and signal was back. Used windshield de-icer on the dish and snow just slides right off now.

There was never anything said about an issue for them to address. As one of the largest reflector manufacturers in the world I am sure they have data about predicted rain fade outages in any given part of the country. Something I would have thought would have been of interest to you as well as many here on what in general to expect.

GTO66 wrote:
The lowest number is 77 on the 9-16 line. To me it seems to be getting worse.At first heavy rain would knock it out. Now steady moderate rain does.

The fact that you think the situation is getting worse is indicative of either your alignment being a bit askew or maybe there's a tree in the way that has gotten a bit larger. If there's a tree in the way then when it rains the water on the leaves will be a far greater signal block than are the dry leaves. For example, at the CG where I am currently at my dish is looking through a pine tree and I can get HD signals on most of my channels without an issue. However, this morning it is raining lightly and the HD channels are impossible to receive, but the SD is still coming in OK.

I was talking about rain/weather related events. The only times I am aware of that would effect satellite reception outside of weather are the solar outages that can happen twice a year during the Equinox's where the sun lines up directly behind the satellites and can overwhelm the signal. These were much worse with satellite internet and and loss of signal was expected and predicable. It only lasted 10-30 minutes each day but it absolutely was going to happen.
As to Winegard, I don't see any issue for them to address.

Bill is correct about the loss of service. There are programs that precisely calculate loss of service, in time, per year (and its usually minutes) based on the size of the reflector, the satellite and transponder, and most important, the location of the user. There are very complex algorithms that add all this up, and based on where the user is located, factor in typical and averaged weather to spit out that loss of service time.

I have programs to do this terrestrially, but not with satellites. It would be interesting if the engineering folks at Winegard had this data to share. Then you would really know what to expect.

Got any friends over there Bill?

A well pointed, open faced, satellite TV antenna will very rarely ever lose satellite signal. I have been full-timing with satellite since 2000 and I lost reception a lot until I started using a household DirecTV open faced antenna. Since then (5 years ago) I have lost satellite TV reception maybe 10 times in all of those years and even then it never lasted for more than 20-30 minutes.
I can live with that.

I'm thinking the problem is something you just live with when you have sattelite. I was hoping there was some type of booster available.I've been in sport bars with directv and rain was heavy I don't recall them having a loss of signal. Not many around here have sattelite tv,but I'll try and ask the few I see to see if its a common problem.Thanks

it the clouds or rain or both which cause the loss in sattelite signal?

Both, and trees, and buildings and even a bird in the right place.

Which is why I have a tripod for my satellite so I can move the tripod if my RV site is located around tree branches etc etc etc.