Solar Outages

It’s that time of year (and we don’t mean Pledge Drive Lite). Each spring and fall our geostationary NPR satellite passes directly between KNAU and the sun. The orbital mechanics are similar to that of a solar eclipse.

But as the sun passes into the line-of-sight of our satellite dish antenna, we temporarily lose our satellite connections:  one with NPR and another one linking to our transmitters which are also satellite-delivered in Prescott, Page and Grand Canyon.

The outages will happen at about 11:40 from March 5^th to the 8^th.  At their peak, these interruptions will consist of deteriorating signal and a complete dropout lasting as long as 90 seconds. 

Here’s a link to a site that explains it pretty well: http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-03-20/how-can-the-sun-mess-with-your-tv-and-radio/8363976