Anyone use a Dish Tailgater?

A few easy tips will help reception: First, coat the tailgator with a rain repelling product. I use rainex. Otherwise the dust, etc will keep rain from running off easily and will affect reception.

Secondly use an accurate satellite finder. Be sure to sight exactly where you plan to set up the unit. I often set up on a picnic table, etc to gain height. I have seen others on top of RV's. doing this will eliminate much hunting around for a clear line of sight and get you watching tv much sooner.

When we fulltimed for three years I set up our dish myself on a tripod. The tailgator is far easier, and now with a class B we simply do not have the room for a full dish and tripod.

BTW, I have had dish service at home and on the road for almost 20 years now, and have found like most companies they do not always get it right the first time, but with a bit of persistence and patience on my part they do in the end.

IMO the real value of the Tailgater is that it is powered through the coax and will function perfectly with 100-feet of coax, and functions reasonably well on 150-feet. This makes getting a clear shot of the sky very easy. And by the way, can someone show me how a tripod antenna can see through trees that a Tailgater can't?

My hat's off to anyone who is content to aim and futz with a tripod antenna. Me, I'd rather be watching the TV I brought all that gear for in the first place. I love my Tailgater!

Re/ Dish's idiotic customer service, my own experience confirms that of Cajun Bill. At point of sale we were all told we could suspend the service anytime, for any reason, at no additional cost. But call up and try to do that and you will get a world of grief from those creeps. They will insist that unless you pay that fraudulent $5/month you must close your account while you are disconnected. We're already paying a premium for the PAYG service, why in the world kick us in the shins over five bucks? Sheesh!

We started out with the Tailgator a few years ago and it worked fine.

Last year we upgraded to the Pathway X2 in order to get the 2nd hookup for the tv in the bedroom.

Turns out reception is better, we get both arcs and no loss of signal (so far) in rain.

Happy with X2 and DISH.

Would not recommend the Tailgater, especially for camping. If there are some trees, even far away you will not get all Satellites if any, which makes the system very expensive for the service received. Go with Tripod antenna.

Have had my Tailgater for about 3 years and until recently, I was very satisfied with it. Can't say the same for Dish Customer Service. I have the "Pay as you Go" service and thought I had the routine down pat in that when I wasn't going to use it for awhile, I would call Dish and "disconnect" even tho they would do their best to get me to "suspend" the service at a cost of $5/month. Each time, I would have to insist that I wanted to disconnect, then I my account would carry a balance until I "reconnected" at which time they would charge me the difference between a full month's service (about $59) and what I had as my balance carried forward. In most cases, if I didn't use the service longer than a long weekend, when I "reconnected", my CC would get hit for about $9-10. I was very satisfied with that until due to some health problems with my DW, we didn't use the camper for about 9 months. When I called back in to reconnect, I had to argue, almost cuss, etc., but they would not back down and insisted that I had received my credit to my CC therefore I owed them a full month before they would reconnect. I finally gave up and relented, but when the hit my CC for the full month and turned the service back on, I had some type of technical problem in that the receiver couldn't see the dish so I ended up calling back that same day and got them to refund the charge to my CC until I had time to work on the technical issue. Still don't know if the dish is messing up or it's just a bad connection. All in all, a real hassle that I had not experienced in about 3 years of using the service. Thanks for letting me vent.

Dutch_12078 wrote:
Add in the ability to watch and/or record multiple channels from multiple satellites, and I've found the 10-15 minutes it takes me to set up the tripod and dish is well worth it.

X2 I use a VP 722 Dual tuner DVR so Tailgator would not work for us. We usually record two or three shows at a time. We snowbird for six months in Winter. We also time-shift our watching.

Bill & Kate wrote:
If you can afford it, I would go the extra $100 or so and get the Pathway X2. Same automatic setup as the Tailgater, but considerably larger antenna inside, and much more robust construction. Also has the advantage of using the southeast satellites as well as the southwest ones if you have a better shot at them. You can hook a second receiver to the Pathway, but it has to tuned to the same satellite as the other receiver.

X2
Some tree cover is not so bad, either. We used our pathway in a forest site in Idaho - managed to get 2 of 3 satellites.

We used it side by side with our roof mounted dome and it got much better reception, particularly when there were trees. It held the signal better in rain than the roof system.

In heavy tree cover, we could move the Pathway. We were in Hunting Island a couple of weeks ago and managed to get 2 satellites on the Pathway using the SE arc satellites by placing it on the picnic table. The dome managed 0.

Use a Tailgater while on the road which is most of the time. We do have a 500 in storage but I have found the Tailgater much easier to use. Yes you will have loss of signal with both.

I've had mine for almost three years. Only downfall is only can be used with one tv. if I did it over again I would spring for a traveler satellite for the roof and fully automatic. Costs about 1600 + for one but heard its the best out there for dish!

On three occasions this past year, I've fed a neighbor the signal from my 1000.4 tripod dish when it was setup for the Dish eastern arc birds, and their Tailgater couldn't get a shot at the western arc. Add in the ability to watch and/or record multiple channels from multiple satellites, and I've found the 10-15 minutes it takes me to set up the tripod and dish is well worth it.