We have had expressvu at our island cottage since 2008. The dish was mounted on the roof, and has worked great. The cottage is on the north side of the island, and we were told the trees to the south would eventually be a problem as they grew. Sure enough, when the wind blows, or conditions aren't perfect now, our signal has degraded to the point of not being useful any more.
Bell technicians have been out, and short of cutting down 15 trees or so, the current location is no longer viable. We have moved the dish to the other side of the island where it has a perfect view of the sky unobstructed. The problem is that it is about 500' away and required a run of a pair of rg-6 cables to get there. (Oh, the receivers are a pair of 6400 HD units and they put in a new dish and LNB.)
It mostly works, but we get almost no signal on the even transponders most of the time. The odd transponders all have a 80+ signal strength, but the even ones, when they work, are in the low 50s. The odd ones work great most of the time, but they do go through phases where they break up and are not really watchable. then they are fine in a few hours. This is during "perfect" weather. We're use to what happens when something nasty goes thru the atmosphere, but it would seem this is probably due to attenuation of the signal over the 500' distance. However the even transponder thing bugs me.
So first, we intend to try a inline signal amplifier. My reading of the subject indicate we are probably seeing a 16-20db signal loss over that distance, and the inline boosters appear to perform a 20db boost, so maybe that will resolve it, but I have my doubts. And Im still worried about the even transponder thing Some of my reading has indicated this can be one of a number of things, but perhaps it is purely the distance.
The new cables run directly from the dish to the cottage, but there is a connector where they connect to the original cables coming out of the cottage walls for the last 3 feet or so.
My question is, it should be possible to operate a dish over this distance? whats the best way to do it? I'm willing to do what I need to do (within reason 🙂 , and if the inline amplifier doesn't work, is there a more powerful way to amplify the signal? I can arrange to get power over there too if need be. I also wondered about running a fiber cable instead of rg6 and have a converter at each end to convert from coax to fiber for the long run and back to coax for the receivers. Then there should be no loss of signal. I'm not sure if that is a good idea or what equipment I would even need.
Thoughts? Thanks!
