SatSig topic:

october sun interference

(Read 1932 times)

Oct 21^st, 2008 at 1:40pm

This is a wonderfully helpful site and may God continue to bless those anchoring/sustaining it because its a fountain of knowledge.
Please, my service provider on one of our sites sent us a mail earlier in the month that we will experience some distruption in service due to what he called October Sun Interference. We are on Intelsat 907 with Ku band using a Linkstar modem. Please,
1.What's that October Sun Interference?
2.Is it peculiar to Intelsat 907 sattelite alone?
3.Would it have been difference were it to be a C band service?.
4.Would this distruption be limited to the month of October?
Thanks for your all time support and knowledge sharing.

Oct 21^st, 2008 at 2:11pm

It is a semi-annual phenomenon (spring and autumn) that affects satellite communications worldwide. But it occurs ONLY when the the earth's rotation causes your dish to point directly at the sun AND your satellite briefly intersects that line. Dates and times vary with the angular relationship between the earth station and the satellite(s) to which it links. Outage durations are typically short (minutes), and occur only once a day for anywhere between perhaps 4 and 12 consecutive days. The severity and duration of these brief outages are basically a function of reflector size.

You can look up what IntelSat predicts for IS-709 here: https://www.intelsat.com/resources/satellitedata/sundata.asp

//greg//