Direct TV supplies needed

As others mention you can take a receiver from home. You then need to purchase the dish that will work with the type of receiver you have. We used THIS . Good luck.

old guy wrote:
he said that with out his $900.00 signal finder he would be lost trying to find the right signals.

I was never a Directv installer, but I could aim my dish in about 15 minutes without any meters at all except what was built into the receiver itself. All I needed was a good compass.



The receiver gives you the azimuth and the elevation. Set the elevation on the tripod. Level the tripod. Shoot the azimuth with the compass and note an object in the distance on that line. Turn on the receiver with the audible meter very loud, or with a helper telling you the readings. Aim the antenna at that object, and rotate slowly listening for the click rate to maximize. At maximum click rate, you are good.

We use the small SD antenna dish for DirecTV. No hd or dvr but gets all of the standard definition signals from sat 101. Easy to aim and small to pack. We use the trailer's antenna for local channels.

One thing you should be aware of... if your trailer is not wired for satellite, just cable as many are, the sat signal will not work correctly without additional adjustments to the wiring (coax). The signal coming in cannot run through the antenna amplifier before the receiver or it simply will not work.

I still have great luck using this tone device finding SAT TV SIGNALS. I sometimes get tricked by finding the DISH satellite instead of the DIRECTV Satellite but that is rare. I think the DISH NETWORK is due south of CALIF and the DIRECTV Network is due south of TEXAS. We also lose our LOCAL TV SAT TV signals as soon as we leave our ZIP CODE foot print. We will use the OTA Local Town Natl Broadcast HDTV signals to pick up the local TV signals when using SAT TV on the road.


We don't really bring along our SAT RCVR and portable dish setup much anymore since the Natl Broadcast has changed to digital mode high def TV signals from the local towns... We get 6-36 full blown HDTV signals using our OTA BATWING setup just about everywhere we go here on the East side of the US. Using the SURELOC Digital TV finder has been helpful for us to zero in on the HDTV signals. For us watching full blown HDTV signals from local towns has been much better than watching the SAT TV standard format TV signals. The local towns HDTV is also free to the public.


Roy Ken

I aim a tripod mounted dish all the time. It is HD and the only difference from SD is setting the Skew before you mount the antenna on the tripod. You still aim to sat 101 on Direct. The skew takes care of the other sats.

Just be very precise when you are leveling your tripod and make sure it is absolutely level. I preset my antenna for skew and also elevation. I do add a degree of elevation to allow for any settling of the tripod when the dish is mounted. Then aim the dish to correct azimuth and tweak from there. I set my dish up two days ago and had a 88% signal with no tweaking. About 30 seconds of tweaking and it was up to 98%. Total setup time was less than 10 minutes.

The people on this forum align their antennas all the time when camping. Its just not a big deal. As for ebay receivers, they are exactly the same radiosthat direct sends out, often for free.

my son used to work for direct tv and he told me to get a receiver from ebay, since my receivers are for digital tv. the digital tv is very hard to line up with the satellites and the ones you can get from ebay are much easier and more forgiving. he said that with out his $900.00 signal finder he would be lost trying to find the right signals. buy a box from ebay and have it activated by direct and the cost is $6 a month

There is no such thing as a digital antenna if that's what the salesman told you.. Do you know what off air antenna is actually on the roof?

In general, yes, that's all you need. I have Dish and use a tripod mounted antenna once in a while. With DirecTV, you might need an additional part for SWM receivers.

If you go for a tripod mounted antenna, you'll need to learn to aim it. That process can be frustrating initially. It helps to get a smartphone app that shows where the satellites are so you can see where to setup the tripod and not have a problem with trees or other obstructions.

DirecTV SD is pretty easy to aim. It's the single LNB round dish. For HD, you'll want a multi-LNB antenna that adds another step to aiming. The multi-LNB antenna needs the skew adjusted to pick up multiple satellites. For SD, you just find satellite 101 and you're done.

Suggestions

Take one of the receivers from the house
Get a portable automatic antenna dish so you do not have to deal with trees

You can use a dish from the house but aiming is a pain.

Getting local tv over the air only works for me about 10% of the time