haste maker
alabama
Full Member
Joined: 05/29/2009
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
 Offline
|
To those of you that have a satellite dish in your trailer, what type do you use? And can you use your home receiver with your trailer dish?
Retried Teamster
2007 Dodge
2012 Sierra
2002 Honda Goldwing
|
Gooseneck
Waynesville, NC, USA
Senior Member
Joined: 07/19/2004
View Profile
Offline
|
I've had Direct TV for several years. I have two receivers in the house and when I travel I take one of them with me. I bought a second dish at a yard sale, made a stand from pvc pipe and carry a 50ft cable with me. With a signal finder I can be set up in just a few minutes. Hope this helps and good luck!
Gooseneck
2003 F350 4DR DRW w/7.3PSD 4WD
Upfitted/Updated Dutchmen 30' 5er
|
greende
Syracuse,NY
Senior Member
Joined: 04/05/2011
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
I have a Winegard Carryout Automatic antenna. No satelite at home. Bought the package from dishformyrv.com and it came with the receiver. Works well but sometimes there are too many trees to get a good reception.
2011 Chevy 3500 HD LTZ Duramax/Allison Crew Cab Long Box DRW
B&W Turnover Ball with Companion
2012 Keystone Cougar 293 SAB 5er
|
RoyB
King George, VA
Senior Member
Joined: 04/13/2008
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
|
I installed a crank-up SAT dish for DirecTv and mounted it on my fifth wheel but never really got to use it very much. SAT DISH on trailer roofs IMO are not a good deal. You can never get a clear shot to the satelitte. I'd rather park my trailer under a shade tree then watch TV it seemed.
I ended up getting a tri-pod dish antenna setup and that was great. I used a 100-foot long RG cable with it and one of the tone boxes for finding the satelitte..
Then I would take my bedroom SAT RCVR to the trailer and use that. This is all approved to do by DirecTv. I carried my SAT RCVR all over the south and as far west as OKLA and TEXAS and worked just great. I used to get my local WASH DC stations in TEXAS but that stopped after awhile. It seems the SAt COMPANY started doing something to kill your local station when you got outside your ZIP CODE assignment somehow...
There is a downside however using your SAT RCVR is sometimes when you unplug it from 120VAC at your house it will lose its settings and when you setup again in the RV nothing works until you contact DirecTv again and get your SAt RCVR turned on again. You will need your account info on hand to do this. I taped a note on the side of the SAt RCVR with all that info. You can also log into the DIRECTV network on-line and input your account info and reset the SAT SIGNAL from that as well. You still need to have your account info to do this. Not fun being way out in the woods and NOT know what your account number is haha... This may all have to do with my old SAt RCVR equipment but I had to do this alot.
The other problem is finding the correct satelitte. The DISH SAT NETWORK is close to the DIRECTV SAT position in the sky so sometime I would zero in on the DISH NETWORK. It has the strong signal and everything but you can't get it to work. So then you realize you have the wrong SAT SIGNAL.
I would run my 100-foot RG cable into the trailer thru a window or whatever and connect it directly to the SAT RCVR antenna input. Then I would use the VIDEO OUTPUTS of the SAT RCVR and route those RED-GREEN-WHITE cables to the VIZIO HDTV VID 1 input. Dont mess with the CH3-CH4 thing...
Now with the SAT TV on VID 1 and CABLE TV on the ANT input you can select cable or SAT by just using the remote control.
It works great but of course it is NOT high def and the camp ground CABLE hookup is also not high def.
I would use the OTA BATWING crank-up antenna to pickup the local NATL BROADCAST Digtial HDTV signals from the local town. This is the ABC-CBS-NBC-FOX-PBS local channels offered to the public for free using your OTA BATWING antenna. Just point the antenna to the close by town and scan in the digital signals into the HDTV. We would pick 6-36 digital stations just about anywhere we go to. These are all transmitted in full screen full high def mode for the local stations. cant beat that for free HDTV.
I even do this when at camp sites with cable TV- Just use the cable TV for the cable channels like CNN-and all the movie channels etc. I watch the local channels using my OTA BATWING in full high def mode. I can sit in my easy chair and switch from SAt TV, CABLE TV, or OTA ANTENNA TV using my remote.
I finally had to drop the DirecTv account since I retired and needed to cut back on things. It was too much a deal to mess with anyway. Right now we enjoy the free Full High Def local digital HDTV channels and use the CABLE hookup at camp gounds. We can also watch most of the CABLE stations on the computer as well using our Verizon MIFI setup but this is only for ocassiona as it eats up your Verizon data plan pretty quick this.
Always got to have a PLAN B hehe...
Watching NCIS or CSI way back in the woods off the power grid in full high def mode is pretty neat. Even the squirrles like it...
This all works good for us doing it this way. Hopefully you can use it the same way. You will get into big trouble trying to figure out how to use the existing cables coming into the trailer for both SAT and CABLE. My way of using everything as is and run my SAT DISH RG cables in separately seemd to be best way for us.
I would run two SAT DISH cables into the trailer from the SAT DISH if i wanted to hook-up two HDTV setups. One in living room and the other one in the bedroom. You would need a second SAt RCVR to do this. I had one in everyroom in the house so no big deal for us when we had DirecTv going.
My Posts are IMHO based on my experiences - PM me
Roy and Carolyn
RETIRED DOAF/DON/DOD/CONTR RADIO TECH (42yrs)
K9PHT (Since 1957) 146.52M
2010 F150, 5.4,3:73 Gears,SCab
2008 Starcraft 14RT EU2000i GEN
2005 Flagstaff 8528RESS
POPUP PHOTOs-Pg52-Pg56
.JPG)
|
Cimriver
Colorado
Senior Member
Joined: 01/05/2002
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
I put together a tripod stand using a surveyors transit tripod very similar to TV4RV's. The tripod cost me about $60.00 as I recall. I used a chain link fence pole and had a friend weld it to a flat metal plate to mount on the tripod. I have used it for years.
I use one of these to tie down the dish. We've been in some pretty hard winds and never a problem.
I take a receiver from home. I have never had a problem getting it to work.
Gordon & Patti
2008 F-350, 6.4L. Power Stroke, CrewCab
2012 Dutchmen Komfort 3130FRL Fifth-Wheel
Be Safe!!!!!
|
|
|
HappyTrails2U2
Tennessee is home but being held hostage in GA.
Senior Member
Joined: 11/11/2009
View Profile
|
We use Dish Network. We have Dish at home in Atlanta and for an extra $5 bucks a month we have the dish in our trailer on the same account. We live in our trailer 3 or 4 nights a week while I'm working out of town. When we moved our trailer from Mississippi to Augusta, GA a couple of months ago to my latest job site we just called Dish and got a technician to come out and set our satellite dish back up. And since we have the optional insurance that can be purchased in case something happens to knock the unit out of whack which is no fault of the Dish Network it didn't cost us anything for the technician to come out and set it up. Without the insurance it would have cost a service call which is approx. $60. I think they may have changed that just recently and it will cost $18 the next time I call but that's still better than $60.
2010 Rockwood Signature Ultra Lite 8315BSS
2003 Chevy Silverado 1/2 Ton Extended Cab
|
westend
all over
Senior Member
Joined: 11/17/2011
View Profile
Offline
|
Cimriver wrote:I put together a tripod stand using a surveyors transit tripod very similar to TV4RV's. The tripod cost me about $60.00 as I recall. I used a chain link fence pole and had a friend weld it to a flat metal plate to mount on the tripod. I have used it for years.
I use one of these to tie down the dish. We've been in some pretty hard winds and never a problem.
I take a receiver from home. I have never had a problem getting it to work.
Now that is a slick setup! I just happen to have a surveyor's transit tripod gathering dust in the shed so I'm about half way there. Thanks for your post!
'03 F-250 4x4 CC
'71 Starcraft Wanderstar -- The Cowboy/Hilton
|
Dennis M M
Geneva, IL; Tucson, AZ
Senior Member
Joined: 11/06/2004
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
|
We have used our home Dish Network receiver in the fiver for years with a portable dish, a bit of a PIA to set up sometimes and could only get one sat at a time. In 2010 we added a Winegard Trav'ler and we love it. Over two years I think we hit three places where the Trav'ler could not find the sats due to trees. We still carry the portable dish. but have not used it since the installation.
The Trav'ler works with our home DVR and easily locks on all three sats. Where we spend the winter in AZ we cannot get over the air TV for local stations so we change our "service location" with Dish and then we get the AZ locals there as well.
'99 Volvo VNL610 - 425 HP Volvo; Super 10 Spd
'11 smart fortwo on Volvo
'05 Newmar Mountain Aire 35 BLKS
Trailer Saver; Bigfoot; Pressure-Pro.
Our Travel Blog - A New Adventure
|
rgolding
Southern Illinois
Senior Member
Joined: 05/09/2010
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
greende wrote:I have a Winegard Carryout Automatic antenna. No satelite at home. Bought the package from dishformyrv.com and it came with the receiver. Works well but sometimes there are too many trees to get a good reception.
Ditto, except we bought our receiver and Winegard Carryout Automatic antenna from Camping World, during a sale. I have an app on my Droid for making sure there is a clear spot in the sky to the satellites.
|
CloudDriver
New Jersey Shore
Senior Member
Joined: 10/30/2005
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
When we got our RV back in 2003, we decided that we wanted to take our Direct TV with us on trips. I picked up a used dish that a neighbor had put in the trash and built a simple PVC mount for it. The mount is low profile, so no problems with tipping over or loss of signal in strong winds. The mount breaks down into two pieces and I modified the LNB arm to make it removable for easy storage in the limited space in our Class C.
The only downside to the portable dish was that we like to be out sightseeing with the RV every day, meaning that we had to pack it away when we left the campground, then set it up again in the evening. This got to be a real PITA and we found that we were seldom using the dish.
Two years ago I installed a Winegard crank-up satellite antenna on the roof of the RV. This eliminated the daily set up-take down issues with the old portable dish and freed up the storage space that the portable dish had needed. We also found it much easier to locate the satellite than the portable dish. Obviously, trees can be a problem with a fixed location dish, but we can live with that.
2003 Winnebago Minnie 24F - Ford E-450
|
|
|
