ADDING SATELITE ANTENNA

I have a Winegard SK-3005 TRAV'LER slimline dish in my 5th wheel. It is worth its weight in gold. After a long days worth of driving the last thing I want to do is muck around carrying out the dish finding a location and aiming it, and worrying about it growing legs and walking away. Sometimes I am so tired I leave the truck connected and it is nice to just push one button and have the dish unfold and look for a satellite. I think I paid about $1,100 for mine plus installation and the last time I checked the price has almost doubled. When I trade in my fiver I will have a Winegard SK-3005 TRAV'LER slimline dish installed if it does not already have one installed

I just got a Winegard G2 to use with my new Class A. I like it, but there are a few drawbacks. The most annoying is that it likes to have a good coax feed directly to the Sat box. My Winnebego apparently had degraded coax from the service bay to the cabinet where the Sat box goes. I ended up running a new, quality cable from the cabinet and it now works great. There is a recommendation that the overall cable length not exceed 50 feet. I have not tried a longer cable yet, so I can not answer to that.
I used the tripod-Sat dish for years. Bulky to store, timely to set up, BUT you could set it up with 100 feet of coax.
Hope this helps

Bill

WDW.BWV wrote:
So we're at the point determining what type of satellite dish to add to our new Mirada by Coachmen.

1. Has anyone added a sat antenna to a Mirada?

2. Were you able to use the existing wiring to feed two boxes from the antenna?

3. Where is the OTA amp hid?

4. What antenna? We're Direct TV at home.

Any advise is appreciated!

Any advise is appreciated

He didn't ask about HD.

Teacher's Pet wrote:
You could go with a Winegard Carryout for a self install less than 1/2 price of the Trav'ler. Plus it's light weight to get on the roof. I picked up a used Winegard Pathway (Dish) w/stand and cable ($300) for our Phaeton when in trees and as the sole Satellite antenna for our B+. Trying to figure out a roof mount rather than the Winegard "legs" for the B+ so I can pull it off when stored and switch over to the Phaeton. We have had a Trav'ler for Dish for just over 5 years on our Phaeton and just recently had to change the LNB ($45) and sheathed cable assembly ($59).

The carryout Winegard is for SD only for DirecTV, which the OP has.

You could go with a Winegard Carryout for a self install less than 1/2 price of the Trav'ler. Plus it's light weight to get on the roof. I picked up a used Winegard Pathway (Dish) w/stand and cable ($300) for our Phaeton when in trees and as the sole Satellite antenna for our B+. Trying to figure out a roof mount rather than the Winegard "legs" for the B+ so I can pull it off when stored and switch over to the Phaeton. We have had a Trav'ler for Dish for just over 5 years on our Phaeton and just recently had to change the LNB ($45) and sheathed cable assembly ($59).

I have the Winegard Traveler SK-3005 automatic roof top dish on my coach. If you tell the RV park where your dish is mounted on your RV, 90% of the time you will have no problem with reception. The rain hitting the dish problem is the same as it is with your dish at your stick built home. Usually not much of an issue.
The dish is something that you can install yourself. The only hard part is getting it up on the roof. The dish itself is exactly the same size as the dish that you have on your stick house. There are connections on the dish to run coax to four different TV's from the antenna and you can watch different channels if you take two boxes with you. You probably already have a roof penetration point on the coach that will allow you to fish the coax down from the roof. The Winegard Traveler and antenna has HD capability so you will get more channels than the SD dishes with your DirecTV account. Some channels are only broadcast in HD and if you want to watch them, you have to have an HD Dish.
We use our crank up antenna for the local network channels and have no problem finding them with our King Jack antenna. Most of these are broadcast in HD and the King antenna has the amplifier built in to the antenna.

As a Direct subscriber the problem you'll have is with the automatic dome based antennas can not access the signal for HD channels from Direct. As such you're looking at the two ends of the cost spectrum if you want HD. Either a manual aimed residential based antenna mounted on a tripod as jerseyjim described or something such as a Winegard Trav'ler. Anything in between will work just no HD channels.

Roof mounted antennas work well but you could run into problem with the line of sight between the antenna and the satellite blocked by trees, mountains, buildings,,,. Last owner of my coach install a roof antenna but I also have a carry out with 100' of cable which gives me flexibility to find a clear view if the roof antenna is blocked. I use the carry out on average 3 out of 4 trips due to blockage. I only have a single receiver so the signal feed was simple using the existing coax. Since your intended installation is two receivers you can run into problems with a some dome based antennas in that the antenna can only receive a signal from one satellite at a time. If you are using two receivers there can be problems if the channels for each receiver is on different satellites. With either a residential antenna or the Trav'ler that won't be a problem.

The amplifier for OTA channels is in the antenna. Power for the amp is injected on the coax going to the antenna.

You can go for big bucks...or not big bucks. For a rooftop unit, $1400 or more, maybe plus installation. Or...the cheap way...(like me) tripod,dish, strength meter, and compass. Maybe 100 bucks

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. For the roof-top, if you're under trees...forget it. Maintainance? O, boy. And...according to quite a few posters here on the forum, rooftop (dome)system failure is commmon. Plus reports that if rain gets on the dome...no picture.

For the method I use...it can be time-consuming to aim the thing. And secure it from wind, etc.. But it works just the same. Good, clear reception.

I too have DirecTV in the house. 2 boxes. Hi Def in the living room...and SD in the bedroom. Not caring about Hi-def in the RV, I take the SD out of the bedroom and put that in the motorhome. Even so, i really don't use it all that much...especially for over-nighters. Mainly, when I know I'll be stopping for, say, more than a week...THEN I put up the dish. Otherwise, I use the cg cable system.
On the DirecTV website, there is a page for aiming the dish. Just type in the area code and the specs are there.

No need to ask for problems...tell DirecTV nothing, but pay your bill on time. However, some folks want extra East-West feeds....and other options. Up to you.

I have a passive switchbox...a great item to have...making switching from cable to antenna to satellite to DVD player a simple push of a botton.

G'luck!