K.Brown
Swansea, IL
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Joined: 02/26/2012
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I purchased a Winegard SK1000 for DISH service. I took a spare receiver from my house and hooked it MH and everything worked perfect. However, over the weekend I took a trip approx. 180 miles away from home and I had trouble receiving the local channels. The receiver would search for the local stations but had trouble finding them. When it could find local stations it could not hold connection very long. Is there some type of setting that needs to be changed to receive my normal local stations when I'm away or is this something I have to live with?
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Devonm2012
TN
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Joined: 04/16/2009
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When we move, I have to call dish network each time and give the physical location (address) of the campground we are in so then I will begin to get local channels. Easy to do and they start to appear in about 15 minutes or so.
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gordonls
Victoria, Texas
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Joined: 12/29/2003
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You were probably outside the footprint for your local channels. 200 miles seems to be about normal not to receive locals.
2007 Monaco Diplomat PDQ
40' 400HP Cummins
2006 Trailblazer Toad
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houtrz
Lake Jackson Texas
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Joined: 05/15/2005
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All of the local channels are spot beamed so you will only receive them close to home, just like an over the air antenna and the regular cable channels are broad beamed to you so you can pick those up at any location. A few solutions, one try your crank up antenna for locals, or like someone mentioned call Dish and have the service moved while your camping however when you do that, the receiver you have at home will lose the locals until you call Dish back and switch back to your home address. You can't have two local services set up.
Another option is to call All American Direct. You can buy their local service which will
give you two different network feeds, one from New York and the other from San Fransico. ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. These channels are broad beamed to you so you pick them up everywhere and will not effect your regular Dish local channels. They come in on channels 241-248 and cost about $160 for all eight channels for a year. This is the service I have and love it. At home I have three different sets of locals and when I travel I always have the two.
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BB_TX
McKinney, Texas
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Joined: 04/04/2005
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As mentioned, local channels are "spot beamed" around a local metropolitan area, in your case I assume St Louis. Basically that means the spot beam covers a circle centered around that area. Inside that circle you can get your locals. Outside that circle and you can't. Sounds like you may have been near the edge of the spot since the locals were in and out.
If you were near another large metropolitan area, you might have been able to call Dish and get them to temporarily reprogram you to the nearest locals to your new location. That is what I do when traveling outside my spot beam (DFW area). A quick call to Dish, tell them the zip code of your RV location, they will reprogram to a new spot beam serving that area (if available), and about 5 minutes later you can get the new locals. Upon returning home, call them again, tell them you are home, and another 5 minutes and you have you home locals again.
Now the above is based on the fact that I have the dishformyrv feature. Not sure if they will freely do the reprogramming if you simply take a receiver from home.
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RoyF
Fayetteville Arkansas
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Joined: 12/20/2009
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I used my new Tailgater for the first time last weekend and was also wondering what had happened to local stations at 400 miles from home.
Just in case the following will help some other new dish users, here is my story. When I set up the Tailgater and turned the receiver on, it would go through acquiring signal and downloading program guide, then it would display "satellite signal lost" and turn itself off a couple of seconds later. Did that five times in a row. Tried moving the dish - no help. FINALLY, I guessed that the receiver had been set to a local channel when it was last used, so it was looking for the local satellite. Turned it on again, and this time I changed the channel during the two seconds between "satellite lost" and the receiver turning itself off.
That worked!
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johnsonbert
Houston, TX-Ironwood, MI
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Joined: 12/05/2004
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When we use the receiver hooked to the Kingdome, we always leave it parked on 101, the dish channel. That way the next time we use it, it will settle into the 119 sat, load the guide and be on a consistent channel for starting up. It has worked well that way for us. I also have All American direct and they work well for us. I understand that Dish may start resisting the "changing physical address every day" thing. Hope this may help. Happy Trails Bert
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wny_pat
Western NYS
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Joined: 08/11/2007
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Once you are out of your local spot beam area for your local channels, you can not receive them. If you call Dish, you might be able to change to the locals in the spot beam where you are at. But if you left a receiver on at home and set to record something, it will not receive the local spot beam, because you had them switch. You get one or the other and not both.
Dish spot beam maps
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JerryofWV
Charleston, WV
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Joined: 11/17/2005
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My stick home is in WV. I use a receiver from the house in the motor home with a Dish 1000 dish. I get my local channels as far South as Homestead, FL. (that's as far South as I have tried)
Jerry & Dee Dee Pauley
1998 Pace Arrow 36S, 1 Slide, 1 Tag, 1 Triton V10, 2012 KIA Soul Toad
The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything they have.
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Razorback
Fayetteville, Arkansas
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Joined: 06/03/2003
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Dish told me I could log into my account and change my service address without calling them. Haven't tried it yet but will the next time we move.
Johnny and Bonnie
1998 Bounder 36'
1998 Saturn
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