Satellite dish check-up

Jun 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By John Landry, CSRE

The warmer weather almost always brings satellite reception problems. Some problems are unavoidable (such as the sun outage periods in early spring). Others are preventable with some routine maintenance. Regardless of the location (city or rural) wildlife often set up housekeeping in or around a satellite dish. It is a good idea to inspect the dish as early in spring as you can, and evict any birds nesting near the feedhorns. Later in spring, wasps may build a nest, and most of the time they do it directly inside the feed horn, eventually cutting off all RF. Be sure to also check the back and underside of the dish (I once had a very large hornet’s nest on the rear of a 4.5 meter dish that was all but invisible from the front — those hornets weren’t happy with us climbing on that dish).

Landry is an audio maintenance engineer at CBS Radio/Westwood One, New York.

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