Dish Tailgater

We have the same problem at times. The farther north you go the more difficulity we find in hooking up to the feed. Even when we have a connection there is a lag when changing between the sats feeds, it will say no sat connection and then it gives us the channel. It's just the way it is.

I don't have a tailgater - I have a Winegard Pathway X2, but they work the same.

These receiver dishes are automatic, but they need to have a clear view of the satellites to start with. They also get their operating power through the cable. If you completely kill power to the inside receiver box (unplug it) or disconnect the cable, then it will have to go through the entire satellite acquisition process again.

How do you decide where to set the Tailgater ? They need to have a mostly unobstructed view. I use the DISHFORMYRV app for Iphones. $10. Works great.

GoPackGo wrote:
I don't have a tailgater - I have a Winegard Pathway X2, but they work the same.

These receiver dishes are automatic, but they need to have a clear view of the satellites to start with. They also get their operating power through the cable. If you completely kill power to the inside receiver box (unplug it) or disconnect the cable, then it will have to go through the entire satellite acquisition process again.

How do you decide where to set the Tailgater ? They need to have a mostly unobstructed view. I use the DISHFORMYRV app for Iphones. $10. Works great.

I use the same app to find the satellite's. It looses the satellites overnight when I turn off the box and tv. I don't unplug anything. Thx

We have the pathway and it doesn't happen with that. Once it couldn't find three satellites so I took the cover off to watch it. It says to aim the handle to the north and it was close but not close enough. It will turn all the way around to the stop, not 360. Turn the handle to the north and it works fine.

K Charles wrote:
We have the pathway and it doesn't happen with that. Once it couldn't find three satellites so I took the cover off to watch it. It says to aim the handle to the north and it was close but not close enough. It will turn all the way around to the stop, not 360. Turn the handle to the north and it works fine.

I do have the handle to the north and also took the top off to watch it. It's just strange that my motorhome has been parked in my driveway over a month with the tailgater hooked up and sometimes it finds the satellites quickly and sometimes it takes forever and I have to re scan everyday.

Just be aware that despite a poster above saying they work the same, they do not. These are very different antennas that operate differently and have different software. So, what a Winegard antenna will or will not do really has nothing at all to do with what a King Dome Tailgater will or will not do.

Mine takes longer to find the sats sometimes than it does at other times. But once found it is fine. I never turn mine off though until we get ready to travel to a new location. I just turn the TV(s) off and leave the sat box on.

My Tailgater looses the satellites and guide if the power is turned off but it never takes long to find them.

wd wrote:

GoPackGo wrote:
I don't have a tailgater - I have a Winegard Pathway X2, but they work the same.

These receiver dishes are automatic, but they need to have a clear view of the satellites to start with. They also get their operating power through the cable. If you completely kill power to the inside receiver box (unplug it) or disconnect the cable, then it will have to go through the entire satellite acquisition process again.

How do you decide where to set the Tailgater ? They need to have a mostly unobstructed view. I use the DISHFORMYRV app for Iphones. $10. Works great.

I use the same app to find the satellite's. It looses the satellites overnight when I turn off the box and tv. I don't unplug anything. Thx

:S

Don't turn off the Dish Receiver box, hurts nothing to leave it on. Turn on TV in the morning and hit the select button on the remote, and you are on line.
The only time I have had issues with getting signal most of the time the forest is in the way.
I have a couple of free Satellite location apps, and both work great.

As said, do not turn the reciever off unless you want the Tailgater to go through the whole process again. And yes, it can take several attempts on occasion, but if you have an unobstructed view of the birds it should not take 5 or 6 attempts, unless there is a problem.

I would double-check the connection, make sure you have as short a cable as possible (50-feet minimum) and that there are NO junctions or splitters in between. In my experience, when the Tailgater takes several attempts to find the birds it is suffering from low power through the coax.

I routinely run my Tailgater on 150-feet of coax. At that cable length it can take several attempts to find the birds. At 100-feet it requires a re-do considerably fewer occasions. I have found that every now and then the mechanism seems to get stuck, and simply jiggling the dome gets it moving again.

All in all I am very satisfied with my Tailgater and so far have no desire to upgrade to the newer, bigger Pathway X2. I suspect that the OP's issues have to do with very minor obstructions that happen to be blocking one or more of the three sats required for full service.