Jesus....you got to be kidding me on all these installs!!!! I thimk most people would be saying F it and going with cable....D* needs to hurry with that slim dish, as I for one, would not be going through all that trouble to mount a dish "for them", so I can "pay them" for their service.
The installation of the AT9 is not that big a deal. My buddy put it together and we had it up on the mast w/monopole installed and peaked in about an hour and a half.
We have had the new 5 LNB Ka/Ku-band antenna since last November now and have never lost the signal even though we had some severe rain storms this past winter. Since it never snows where I live, I cannot speak for that type of weather.
From a theory standpoint, the Ka downlink would be more prone to rain fade than the Ku band downlink because of the higher frequency. Rain fade can also occur during the uplink if the weather is bad at the the Direct TV facility in Colorado, L.A. or the new regional/spotbeam facilities in the eastern portion of the country.