Fall 2020 Reception Issues Related to Satellite Sun Outages
For a two-week period in both the spring and fall, you may experience some degree of video interference due to a phenomena known as sun outages.
For the fall of 2020, sun outages are expected between October 4th and October 14th at the following times:
| Date | Start | End |
| Wednesday, October 5, 2020 | 1:50 PM | 3:52 PM |
| Tuesday, October 6, 2020 | 10:38 AM | 1:54 PM |
| Wednesday, October 7, 2020 | 10:36 AM | 1:54 PM |
| Thursday, October 8, 2020 | 10:36 AM | 1:54 PM |
| Friday, October 9, 2020 | 10:36 AM | 1:54 PM |
| Saturday, October 10, 2020 | 10:36 AM | 1:53 PM |
| Sunday, October 11, 2020 | 10:38 AM | 1:50 PM |
Sun outages are a normal consequence of satellite communications. Our programmers send us their signal via a satellite downlink. The interference is caused when the sun is in a direct line with a communication satellite. The sun's radiation overwhelms the satellite signal. Being that we use multiple satellites to receive programming, different channels will go off at different times in the morning and afternoon each day during this time period.
Related disruptions in service typically last about 15 minutes per day, per satellite. Some symptoms of sun outages include:
Video
- static, sparkles or fading picture
- frozen picture
- black screen
- snow
- hissing
- popping
- stutters
