On Mon, 29 Nov 2010, Tom Yoksas wrote:
http://noaaport.admin.niu.edu:8025
That's as ugly as I've ever seen it, except when I was picking it up initially
as a test on a 3 meter dish 3 years ago. Must be my dish, right?
The viterbi bit error rates look awfully high alright...
Yep, and it still is this morning as of 15:20Z.
re:
http://www.opennoaaport.net:8025
These look even worse.
Um hmm, which leads me to believe it's not me.
The indicated bit error rate off of our Novra S200 looks very good:
CMCS 192.168.1.20> show satellite
Satellite Interface Settings:
Receiver MAC Address: 00-06-76-04-00-87
Receiver Mode: DVBS
Frequency: 1193.0 MHz
Symbol Rate: 6.348 Msps
Viterbi Rate: 7/8 QPSK
Signal Lock: On
Data Lock: On
Uncorrectable Rate: 0/Second
Viterbi Bit Error Rate: 0.0000e+00
Carrier to Noise C/N: 11.4dB
Signal Strength: -31 dBm
Ahhhh, Santa came early to UNIDATA this year! :-) Someone got a Novra
S200...nice! One thing about the S200: It has higher gain than the S75
or S75+. I saw that immediately when I installed ours. The Novra claims
1 dB better, but I suspect it's actually higher. The C/N of 11.4 dB is
very good...anything above 8 is what you want to see.
BTW, you have been bit by the Novra S200 bug! Notice the symbol rate is
shown as 6.348 Msps. It should be 6.349, and yes, there is a difference.
Set it as 6.350, and when you hit enter, it will go to 6.349. Novra is
aware of that bug, and hopefully they will fix it in the next firmware
release.
When we were using the Novra S75 (not the S75+), we noted the need to
reset the device from time to time. The symptoms for a reset being
needed were the combination of one or more of the following:
- non-zero viterbi bit error rates
- frequency of the lock being markedly different than 1193.5
- unusually _high_ indicated signal strength (e.g., >80)
What happens to your stats after an S75+ reset?
Absolutely nothing. I did it, but I expected it wouldn't help. The last
firmware update in 2009 corrected that problem.
And while I typed all of this, I got an email from Jami Casamento,
NOAAport chief engineer:
---
Gilbert,
I am not aware of any changes...and have not received any complaints
from our NWS Weather Forecasting Offices.
I will submit a request to our NCF to check into this.
Thanks,
-Jami
---
One obvious question: since I have an S200 with higher gain, why am I not
using it? Easy: until Jose Nieves updates his npstats package, I want to
know and see where any and all reception problems are. The UNIDATA stats
pages have been broken now for over a month, such as:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/iddstats_vol_nc?NEXRAD3+noaaport.admin.niu.edu
Since I have IDD backup, and since I still have reception, I'm staying put
for now.
*******************************************************************************
Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
*******************************************************************************
