Fall 2015 Sun Outages

Interruptions with TV reception may occur beginning Fri Oct. 2nd through Sun Oct 10th. The outage window occurs daily between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM.  This yearly phenomenon occurs on different channels at different times and usually only lasts for a few minutes. Viewers can expect choppy video to total loss of signal for a very brief period.

The sun outages are predictable for each satellite and all television service providers experience them. Fortunately, they are a very short term problem; however, there is technically nothing that can be done to prevent them. 

** Sun outages will not affect your ValuNet internet or telephone service **

It is important to remember that the sun outages are a naturally occurring, atmospheric phenomenon and there is nothing wrong with your TV or ValuNet’s fiber service.

Sun Outages or Solar interference occurs twice a year, every February/March and September/October. A Sun Outage takes place when the orbital positions of the satellite and the sun are in one line. The earth station receives signals from both the sun and the satellite, but the more powerful sun rays subdue the desired signal, causing a loss of service. The high energy level and broadband nature of the sun’s energy can overpower a satellite’s downlink signal and effectively wash out a receive signal with noise.

Outage Photo

Channel interference will gradually intensify each day until it peaks and then in the same way it will gradually decrease until the event is over, a period of about 8 to 10 days in our case.

For more information go to the following link to learn more:

http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/satellite/solar-effects/sun-solar-outages-basics-tutorial.php