In this paper, the orbital diversity configuration which is one of the suggested protection schemes foreseen for satellite paths operating at frequencies above 10 GHz, to overcome the high rain-induced attenuation, is discussed. More particularly, a recently proposed methodology for the prediction of the outage performance of an orbital diversity system based on the lognormal assumption is modified to include the gamma form for the rainfall and attenuation distributions. This is probably the case for Japan and other locations with similar climatic conditions. Numerical results are compared with the only available set of experimental data taken from an operated system located at Fucino, Italy, where the existing single attenuation distribution best fits the gamma form. The agreement was found to be quite good.