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Fire5er's avatar
Fire5er
Explorer
Sep 20, 2013

Dish Tailgater not working...Help!

I have been having issues with my Tailgater and Vip211k not finding satellites. It was working fine in March of this year and then about April I couldn't get it to work.
We finally ended up sending the Tailgater back to King Controls (Manufacture of the Tailgater) (at a cost of $75 to me) and they found a bad motor. King Controls replaced the bad motor, check all system, and sent it back to me saying it was good to go.
When I hook the Tailgater up to my Vip211k it still couldn't find satellites. When I called Dish and they said it was the Tailgater, and when I called King Controls they said it was Dish's 211k receiver.
Dish then sent me a new 211k to rule out the receiver as the problem and still it can't find even one satellite. When I look at the Summary page it indicates that good connection but the Transponder row shows X in all 4 columns indicating "Missing Polarity".
Anyone else have a similar problems or can advise us on possible solutions?
  • Just got off the phone again with King Controls, and again one of the motors appears to be out and not turning the antenna to the south...it's stuck in the 30 deg. position. King Controls emailed me a shipping label to return it so they can check it out again.
    So far we have used it 4 times in the year we have had it. This RV season it has been inop so not able to get Sat TV at all this season. Not very satisfied at this point.
  • Make sure your cable connections are tight (more than finger tight)
    Use a different (known good)cable between the tailgater and the receiver.
    Un plug the VIP 211 for a minute and plug it back in

    Those are the most common fixes

    If that doesn't work I would take the setup to an authorize dish installer and see what they can do.
  • Mine has never completely failed. But there have been occasions when it had difficulty finding the sats. I found that I had better success by pressing the power button for 10 seconds or so to cause a reset rather than unplugging and plugging back in as Dish rep advises.
    But it sounds as though something is still wrong with the Tailgater. Out of curiosity I took the cover off mine to watch how it worked. When powered up the dish would rotate more or less a full circle before settling back to a southerly direction. Then it would start incremental up/down and left/right movements as it homed in on each sat. You might take a look at what yours is doing. Mine did not have any kind of factory seal.

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