Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

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Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:42 pm

Noticed today that there was no satellite radio dropout along the Mary Hill Bypass here east of Vancouver. Furthermore, there was no signal loss in my garage. I'm assuming this indicates a repeater has been put into service somewhere within 10 or so km.

Anyone else noticing reduced signal dropout here, or elsewhere in the lower mainland?
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby jon » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:56 pm

Terrestrial Repeaters go more than 10km, as I am 27km from my local one and reception is perfect here. City Limits go a long way South and West of here, and I'm sure they reach beyond that.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 9:27 am

The Vancouver repeater (Burrard and Robson) cuts out for me once I am half way into Burnaby, along Highway 1.

The behavior along the Mary Hill Bypass is definitely new.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby radiofan » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:14 pm

I just drove east on the Mary Hill Bypass and there was the usual constant dropouts from west of Shaughnessy St to just east of Pitt River Rd. The same when I was driving west earlier this morning.

Nothing has changed there.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby jon » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:23 pm

Dumb question: do Sirius and XM in Canada use the same or different infrastructures? i.e. - satellite channels and terrestrial transmitters?
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:43 pm

I'll be testing along the MHB again today. Yesterday, definitely no dropouts. I was struck by this. Furthermore, as I noted, the signal did not cut out once I was in the garage, with the door closed. Again, completely anomalous.

Then, while in PoCo itself, I noticed there were no dropouts behind the several large buildings in the downtown area. Again, completely against my experience over the past year or so.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby radiofan » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:12 pm

I really notice it when MHB traffic is stop/start/stop/start.Today, heading east there wasn't a lot of traffic and I was doing between 80 and 100k.

The only other dropouts I've noticed in Poco is on Tyner St when I'm at Apollo Music. Lougheed Highway between 203rd and downtown Maple Ridge also has a lot of dropouts.

I called Siriusxm.ca and complained about the poor service in that area and was told they would look into it. Along with their apologies was a $20 credit added to my account.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:40 pm

As I noted elsewhere, I pay $6/month and always renew over the phone by saying that I will not pay full price.

And the bypass observations from yesterday were made in stop-start traffic, slow speed.

I will test the bypass tunnel today. Previously I had to be going at just over 90 km/h to make it through the tunnel without emptying the buffer and losing signal (I judge it to be about a 6 second buffer).
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby jon » Fri Jan 06, 2017 4:12 pm

jon wrote:Dumb question: do Sirius and XM in Canada use the same or different infrastructures? i.e. - satellite channels and terrestrial transmitters?

I guess that I should clarify. It might be important for radiofan and kal to mention whether they have an XM or Sirius receiver, because each might be using a different terrestrial transmitter.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 7:35 pm

Great point. I don't know what my radio is. It is a year old.

I tested along the bypass again. No dropout in the usual spots. Radio runs in my garage, with the door closed. This has not been the case until yesterday. I use the radio daily. The originals Sirius satellites are being retired. They, unique amongst all satellites of any kind, are in a special "tundra" orbit. These orbits are highly elliptical, and although geosynchronous, they are not geostationary. As such, these satellites spend around 16 out of 24 hours over the northern hemisphere, and quite far north at that. This gets around the problem faced by signals from geostationary satellites. These are low to the ground and easily blocked by buildings and such. However, as I understand it, the tundra orbit satellites will be no more and SiriusXM will depend on geostationary satellites and repeaters.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby radiofan » Sat Jan 07, 2017 6:04 pm

I have no idea what my radio is. It came with the car in 2015 and has AM/FM and SAT.

I'm now wondering if different channels are coming from different satellites. On my way thru MHB going westbound this morning, I was listening to Soul Town and there were no dropouts.

On my way eastbound around noon, I was listening to 60s on 6 and the usual dropouts were there in the usual locations.

Next time I'm heading east, I'll be tuned in to Soul Town and see what happens.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Sat Jan 07, 2017 7:15 pm

That's an interesting point. I'm going to test that in the garage. I only tune the 12 XM presets so that should be a quick test, and 90% of the time I am listening to either Watercolors or CNN.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Tue Jan 10, 2017 1:20 pm

Tested yesterday along the MHB. No dropouts. Tested all my presets at the usual dropout points. No loss of signal whatsoever. In testing in the tunnel I found that I was able to go about 12 s rather than the usual six or so before signal loss. So, I am wondering if the buffer time has been increased. That might explain why there is no loss of signal along the bypass.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby kal » Tue Jan 10, 2017 8:03 pm

Tested today. Dropouts along bypass are back. Tunnel dropout back to 6 seconds.

I'm back to square one. Not sure what was happening.
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Re: Has Sirius/XM added a repeater?

Postby radiofan » Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:03 am

From Gord Lansdell at Northwest Broadcasters

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/87-siri ... anada.html

The above is a link to the list, complete with coordinates, which you can put into mapping sites to view, ie:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/49%C2 ... d-123.1225

https://www.google.com/maps/place/49%C2 ... 22.9613889

The two XM repeaters on the North Shore (listed as Vancouver) are at the CBC site on Seymour and at Capilano and Marine, presumably on the highrise hotel. The other “Vancouver” one is in Vancouver. The coordinates don’t pinpoint exactly to the antennas as there is no decimal point to the coordinate’s seconds.

Note also that XM and Sirius work on different frequency bands and so far, different satellites, although they will all eventually be fully integrated. The early Sirius ones will disappear when their orbits decay and all will be geostationary, as the XM ones always were. Obviously receivers will also be integrated, but are not so far. They appear to be roughly split between the different car manufacturers, depending on which outfit signed them up before the merger of the two companies.

XM was the bigger of the two in the US, but I think that Sirius was bigger in Canada because of the better satellite reach into northern areas.
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