SatSig topic:

Technical knowledge needed re Xplornet

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Apr 23^rd, 2007 at 4:10am

There appear to be a number of very knowlegeable techs on this forum, so I thought I'd throw out my problem to see if anyone has any suggestions.

Had Xplornet KaZam service installed a week ago. It worked fine for about 5 days - through rain and a blizzard. Then it suddenly stopped - couldn't find the satellite.

Dealer spent 4 hours here trying everything - replaced the modem, replaced the transmitter. Nothing worked. Now he says I can't "see" the satellite from the installation location because of trees in the way.

The trees didn't move. The house didn't move. The dish didn't move. So I think there has to be another explanation, but I have no idea what.

To add to the confusion, my neighbour, who was installed at the same time, is having the exact same problem. There they actually relocated the dish, to no avail.

Now Xplornet is claiming the cables are bad so they're going to try to replace those this week.

Anybody ever experience anything like this? Any ideas out there?

Thanks.

Apr 23^rd, 2007 at 4:46am

If XploreNet gets their hardware from the same place as Wildblue, there was a batch of TRIAs throughout the US that leaked. Soon as enough water got inside, they quit. It's spring, so this is probably a dumb question. But was it raining a lot before your two installations quit?

//greg//

Apr 23^rd, 2007 at 1:16pm

Yes it was raining and also heavy, wet snow, so I considered that a possibility (although the dealer didn't!). But I got him to install a brand new TRIA out of the box and it didn't change anything.

Most frustrating is the fact that everything worked well through several days of overcast skies, rain, and snow. Once the weather cleared and we got nice sunny skies - no signal.

Apr 23^rd, 2007 at 3:04pm

Did you note whether or not the replacement TRIA came from the same lot as your original? I have seen more than one report of several being installed before finding one that actually worked.

How about your neighbor? Did the installer try yet a different TRIA over there? Not the same one he tried at your place though, that wouldn't prove a thing. If yes, did a fourth TRIA still not remedy the situation?

Short of the coincidence of multiple bad TRIAs, radio interference in the Ka-band comes to mind. Do the police up there use Ka-band radar? If so, there might be a Ka-band radar detector left on in a neighbor's car. Traffic control might also use Ka-band. Any new traffic lights nearby? Aviation uses Ka-band radar too. Any airports in the vicinity?

//greg//

Apr 26^th, 2007 at 6:16pm

First of all, this is great. Thanks for your input, Greg.

Now to the questions ...

I don't know whether the new TRIA he tried at my place was from the same lot or not - it's a small dealer, so I expect he doesn't get hundreds of these, so the likelihood is high they are from the same lot. He did not try another TRIA at my neighbours. However he did say that he had subsequently installed "a few" others since us and they were experiencing no problems. Obviously doesn't mean anything if we just happened to hit a bad batch, but I do admit I'm skeptical about the quality of the TRIAs as that seems to be the only logical fail point since everything else (except cabling) has been replaced, to no avail.

No police, radar detectors, airports, etc nearby. We're miles away from anything that would use Ka-band.

At any rate, he's supposed to be coming back to try and get this working any day now(!), and I'll be sure to update this thread with whatever we find.