Satellite > HughesNet Satellite > [HN7000S] Any HN7000S users losing signal @ same time every day?

reply to suceress

Re: [HN7000S] Any HN7000S users losing signal @ same time every

So this is something I could posssibly fix myself by repointing? Does this have to be done by adjusting the dish itself or can I somehow do it with the software?

I didn't realize it was necessary to include my satellite and transponder. I'm not actually sure which transponder I'm on because every time I was being guided through the process, none of the techs could figure out which one I was on and couldn't tell me which one to select so the inputs had to be done manually. All I can remember now is 99W.

I am considering switching over to Exede, but I'm trying to figure out if the "unlimited" bonus period really is unlimited.

I think I saw the COB situation mentioned in another thread earlier and I was trying to load more info when my connection went off so I had to go to a backup. It came back and I'm amazed that it is still connected right now. I probably just jinxed myself.

Does anyone have a link to something with instructions on the PUSH-PULL TEST thing? I keep getting DNS errors and timeouts when trying to load.

You can point it yourself with patience using the modems OPI interface. It is located in the installation settings menu and is call dish pointing I think it was.

I am wondering if you need to check your cable and the connections. This sounds like a poorly insulated, corroded, shorted or grounded cable issue. I have see exactly this issue. And since speed is not related to signal, a lock is a lock. In some places 52 might be the darn highest you can get. But it is worth tinkering around with if you have a few tools and can loosen the dish slight enough to be able to rotate it.

What are you using for a polarity setting? I was supposed to be on 32 degrees for example, but my system performed so much better at around 36.

Once you get the highest you can get rotating the dish, try then the elevation to see if you can get it stronger. You will see the indicator bars go up as you get a stronger signal, and down if you are going the wrong way, think of the process like the game you played as a kid, your getting hotter/colder.

Something is not right in your connection there on your property. I would not have Hughes come out and charge you, unless you are upgrading to the GEN 4. Or you could consider Exede, ha ha. I did. And now, email is my biggest concern. But service and consistent performance have been no issues now.

Hit me up if you cannot figure it out, I can probably do up some kind of detailed instructions if you cannot get it. But check the condition of those cables. They must be dry, tight connections, and free of any corrosion and not damaged any where. This hit and miss signal thing, could really be related to something wrong in your connection to the transmitter/receiver. No water intrusion in the feed horn is there?

reply to suceress
Push-Pull test is dead simple. It helps to have two people - one at the computer, one at the dish - but you can also do it yourself with a wireless laptop.
Open a browser to »192.168.0.1/fs/advanced/advanced.html
Select Installation
Select Setup
Select Antenna Pointing
Do not check OPI
Click Next
Do not check ACP
Click Check Signal Strength
A small window will then open. That's your receive signal strength.

Stand behind the dish, watch the signal strength. Assuming you're right handed, you'll likely be holding the laptop on your right side. Push on the left side of the dish. Pull on the left side of the dish. If you can reach the top of the dish, pull - then push. If not, do it from the bottom of the dish. If any of those 4 motions increased your signal, you have a pointing error. From there it should be easy enough to figure out which way to make the correction.

Make sure you Exit the pointing utility and close the browser when you're done. Your satellite/transponder/gateway by the way, can be found with a browser as well. Go to 192.168.0.1 and click the System Info button. The info is in the Satellite box, under Longitude/Receive Frequency/Router Address.

//greg//
--
HN7000S - 98cm Prodelin/2w "pure" Osiris - ProPlus - G16/1001H - NOC:GTN - NAT 67.142.115.130 - Gateway 66.82.25.10 - DNS 66.82.4.12 and 66.82.4.8 - Firefox 15/MSIE9 - AV/Firewalled by NIS2012

reply to suceress

Thanks. My system has no warranty anymore. I had to replace the dish in 2007. I'd had the same dish since 2002 up until then and they told me that when the radio transmitter died that I needed a whole new dish. We bought the equipment then. The previous dish had 80 signal strength but this one was at 60 and the installer actually quit his job that day. He said I was the last customer he would be helping in that job.

Kman, I'll have to check the feed horn. There used to be a protective casing on it for snow, but we don't get snow here (usually anyway) and wasps had built a next inside of it so the last time we had the satellite serviced, the technician removed it and said we didn't need one.

I have a pole mounted satellite so fortunately I won't have to climb up on the roof, but I do worry about breaking something.

Do you currently have Exede? I am seriously thinking of ordering it, but will have to order before the 31st if I want to get the discounted price on the installation or whatever. There is a way to pay the lease fee up front for 24 months (with a reduced price), but I'm wondering if the lease fee would kick in again after that-- and/or how much it would cost to buy the equipment instead. I'll have to talk to the Exede people. The fact that it has unlimited free periods at night (like I currently have with ProPlus plan) is appealing.

Grohgreg, thank you. I think I can probably bring something out on which to set a laptop for the testing. Or can open a window and have someone with a laptop nearby. As useless as HN techs are, I wonder if I was doing the tweaking while on the phone with one of them if it would make any difference. Like if I pretended I was letting them walk me through the reregistering process-- which I know how to do from having had to run that multiple times since I started having the problem. One of the times they told me to select something from the dropdown menu (under transponders to point to) that did not exist.

For the info from System Info:
Satellite
Transmit Path: Satellite
Outroute: Primary
Longitude: 99 West
Receive Frequency: 990 MHz
Receive Symbol Rate: 30 Msps
Receive Polarization: Vertical
Transmit Polarization: Horizontal
22KHz Tone: Off

I tried changing the frequency and such but there was absolutely no change in the signal strength whatsoever no matter which one.

I've also been getting a lot of uplink queueing problem messages even when the usage has been very light.

Thank you to everyone for the replies.

reply to LucasLee
If you are going to try to touch up the pointing yourself, you might find a utility developed by dbirdman to be quite helpful. It will give you, not only a visual indication on the screen of your signal level and cross pol, but it will also give an audible indication. Thus, you can install it on a laptop and take the laptop outside and, then, make adjustments in the dish's pointing without having to be watching the screen as you are working with the dish. A description of the utility and a link to its download can be found here.

»www.datastormusers.com/pc-opi.cfm

reply to suceress

reply to LucasLee
Not going to happen. If you are representing Hughes, identify yourself as such and we can have a conversation. Other than that, nope, that will not happen, no way. If it was under warranty, Hughes would have sent someone out for free, but they are not. Even if it was under warranty, you can align your dish, I even have official Hughes instructions for doing it. How did I get that? There are so many reasons a dish can be aligned when installed, but over time can lose the signal, due to environmental, geological, weather changes, system changes, and more. You can absolutely align your own dish. And it does not void anything. You will not be disabled by the NOC for aligning your own dish. Good grief. I suppose when I power down my system for vacations, the NOC disables me huh? Give me a break, this is really ridiculous and it is misinformation.

reply to suceress
The wasps got inside your feed horn? Really. That is a first for me. It is sealed up pretty good. Darn, I hate wasps. I am not sure what protective casing you mean. Do you mean the transparent plastic shielding? Does yours not have that any longer? If it does not, you might be having a terrible time with your signal, your wide open to the moisture I should think.

I do have Exede now yes. Right now, the lease fee does indeed kick in once your 24 month contract expires. I am working on it. I have time right now to work towards some kind of negotiation. And if it fails, then I will cross that bridge when I get there. I am not going to pay the lease fee regardless. I simply had to switch. I was so tired of Hughes customer service/technical support and those horrible troubleshooting games I could not take it any more. And I think the way they handled that roll over allowance was a disaster. They put the screws to anyone that never got that rollover. For me the free night period was the over the tip point. I wanted that. I knew that if I had the speed, I would like to use it. And with Hughes, I likely would not have used the 10 /10 or 15 /15 but I did not want to shackle myself to that. And I know that when I do exceed my limit, my speeds return at night. So sort of a safety net or sorts. But tired eyes would not like that. So far, I have been on Exede about a month and have not used my limit. I wish they would offer a one month rollover, that would be so great. I used to be on Pro Plus too.

I used to just put my laptop right on the ground in a place I could see it, as late as last summer, when everything on my setup came down to redo the area with landscaping and new underground larger through conduit meant to handle future runs and so forth. It worked for me. You will be able to change settings, but as soon as the modem locks with the satellite, the NOC will change all those settings back automatically. So your kind of stuck there fiddling with the settings in the installation I think. You can experiment with your polarity a bit though when you do align the dish. And I noticed a difference when I set mine from 32 degrees to 36. Beyond that in about either direction there were speed issues and signal loss experienced.

reply to grohgreg
Agreed, do something about that feed horn part. You should be able to get higher than 60. I was also on the larger dish and two watt radio.

I know that there is supposed to be a benefit to checking the boxes as grohgreg suggests and that disconnecting the transmit cable is suggested, and I know it does discuss this on various forums, but I did look back at the field directions for aiming the Hughes dishes, and it does not reference this as a requirement. I would mention that I tried both ways to see if there was a difference last summer and I did not see any difference with the cable TX disconnected or connected. In the end I aligned my dish with all cables connected and achieved a signal was as high as 80, but not higher.

In the instructions it notes to get a compass, point the dish to that azimuth, then conduct elevation, (you can make a meter to do this out of paper and cardboard, or buy a cheap inclinometer, but I never found either of these really necessary), then to adjust the azimuth by finer tuning it. And in the end to do the polarization, and again you could use a magnetic inclinometer but I did not find necessary. All are simple to do. If you do decide to use a magnetic inclinometer, stick on the BUC (transmitter) and not somewhere else.

Patience, move the dish slowly and take your time, you will get it right on.

My thoughts....

reply to Kman08
After reading my post, I should have noted to you, that as a user, I do not think you will be able to change those settings for polarity either. You can do it manually, but the old setting of 32 degrees; which may not be yours, but is common, will still be there in the settings. I am not talking about changing that, but changing it at the dish. You will just have to experiment with it. I have installed many systems in Afghanistan, and saw improvements with polarity changes, but some set ups, were stubborn and needed to stay right on the 32 degrees. So I just suggest it to try it, not to promote it or say that it will do anything to make things better for you in your case.

Re: [HN7000S] Any HN7000S users losing signal @ same time every

reply to dbirdman

Re: [HN7000S] Any HN7000S users losing signal @ same time every

It was a sort of beige (or possibly gray-- I can't remember anymore) hard plastic cover that snapped over the feed horn. I was told it was to protect it from snow. There is no cover over the feed horn now. Wasps get in to everything here and humidity is usually 100%. I inspected the cables on both ends and they show no signs of damage, rust, or even age.

Kman, is the satellite for Exede in the southern sky? I'm torn between taking advantage of the discount of $100 off the setup fee before Oct. 31 or waiting awhile and for the monthly lease fee to go away. Perhaps it will eventually go away. I asked about buying the equipment outright and they said it wasn't possible at this time (but they want that lease fee). I wonder if I could get them to pull off my Hughesnet dish and put the Exede dish on the existing pole.

Which plan did you go with. I'm thinking of trying the lowest plan and seeing if I really need more than 10Gb during regular hours. Some days I barely use the internet at all. From what I understand, the capped speeds of going over are actually still faster than what I frequently get from Hughesnet.

I tried to do the push-pull test but I didn't have any other volunteers to watch the signal strength and my laptop didn't get signal from the router all the way out by the dish so I had to abort. I may try later when someone is around to help and it isn't so cold.

Millenicom works nicely sometimes, but the amp and antenna never worked for it. I've listened to heavy thunder outside while gleefully loading webpages and noting that Hughesnet was down. Unfortunately it doesn't lend itself well to multiple computers and doesn't always seem to work. Sometimes it is just unbearably slow. But it is good for those times when Hughesnet is completely out. One day my Latency in WoW was under 300 and I was overjoyed. Too bad it only lasted about 15 minutes.

Thank you for all of the replies!

Thanks for your description on the cover. I was not familiar with that. It clears it up for me though. Thank you.

I am not sure where you are located. For me, yes, southern sky. In fact very close to the same position that my Hughes HN7000 set up was. The dish still points to the general direction that Syracuse is located. The azimuth for my dish to point to get on to the beam from VIASAT-1 was at (true) 229.5 degrees, (magnetic 242.7 degrees. I use the site www.dishpointer.com to locate my azimuth from my address. There are others. But I like their set up. Of course the satellite itself is located a 115.1 W. You can put in your address and obtain the information you need.

I wish there was something that would be done with the lease fee too. I find that distasteful. And I wish the LNFZ period would extend one hour in both directions as well. Other than that, I have enjoyed the service so far. It has been, again I am compelled to say this, (so far), worked fairly well for us/better than Hughes was.

I think Hughes, will at some point have to figure out how to handle their customers in the residential market. It likely just boils down to making a determination whether those customers are worth retaining or not and if so getting very serious about it. Because they definitely have some work to do, especially in technical support and customer service, this is my own personal perspective. I hated the way they handled issues, concerns, or problems that came up over the years with them. And I really hated my feeling that they botched up the rollover bank plan. And then I did have an install for the GEN 4, but that got so confused, messed up, and I just felt like they really did not have their act together so I dropped them. I called Exede on a Friday, and I was in service by Monday morning. And so far, so good. I went with the 15Gb plan with 12Mbps down/3Mbps up. Me too, sometimes I use the net, not at all, and other days heavy.

I am not sure I catch what your saying about the capped speeds? I have not gone over our cap yet. When I did make the decision to hit the 15 plan, it was based on our consumption rates over the years with Hughes. And the 15 plan worked out to be a bit higher than our old Pro Plus did. And although we are not paying anymore for this service than we did for Hughes, because we did pay for Hughes equipment up front too. But if Exede continues the path now, and hits for a lease at the end of our contract, then we might at that point be faced with termination of service, or something else. If Hughes fails to recognize that they need to treat customers better, then maybe I would jump there. But I hope I can work it out with Exede. We shall see. From what I can read over my plan, my speeds return to normal during the late night free zone periods, but I have been able to experience that yet. Maybe I could push things a bit hard right now and push it into the FAP to find out what really happens, but some on the Wild Blue/Exede forum are saying it works. When we were FAP'd with Hughes, I don't think there was any return of speeds during the late night free time. I cannot remember, but we had to use a token. Those tokens, I will say, was a great morale boost when I was with Hughes. I would have dropped them back last summer, when I could have been up on Exede then, but that token was a huge step in the right direction. As long as I am being so long winded here. I also wish Exede would allow for a rollover of unused data to the next month. Even if that had a limitation to that, it would be really nice.

That sucks that your wifi did not reach out to your dish. I use a range extender here because of the size of our property and I like streaming music or whatever, while I work outside or cut the grass. Where are you? I am not familiar with Millenicom.

Oh yeah, I just saw what you said about your pole. I had the large Hughes dish, .98 and the installer for Exede did not have a problem at all adapting the smaller dish to our pole. I could get a few pics of it maybe today to show you how they did that.

reply to suceress