Dish Tailgator

When I had my first manual Dish with 2 lnb's it took about 10 minutes to setup. When I went to a HD dish with 3 lnb's the setup time and difficulty to hit all HD channels became much harder. would take 30 to 60 minutes and on a few ocasions even longer. One time when at a site for more than a week a needed to call out the Dish Tech who aimed the dish and it took him 30 minutes to get it on. That was it...I bought a Tailgater. Lasted 6 months before it quit. Was replaced under warranty. The second one lasted about a year and a half and now it's stopped working. Seriously thinking of going back to the manual HD dish...

In helping folks with TV issues.. I have found one common cause of "Long time to lock on"

Location, Location, Location.

Often moving the antenna unit, even just a few feet, made a BIG difference in peak signal strength and time to lock on.

greenrvgreen wrote:
Okay, there's one.

Plenty more out there.

Tailgater bundle 1-star reviews on Amazon

More Tailgater 1-star reviews

And another one

As with all product reviews, some of these are clearly user error. And there are many others who are perfectly happy with the Tailgater. Most, in fact, by a pretty good margin. But there were enough with what seemed to be legitimate complaints about the failure of the internal mechanism to scare me off. I'm pretty much a KISS person anyway. When given a choice, I like owning things that are unlikely to break, or if they do, it's something that I know how to repair myself, especially if it's something I have out in the middle of nowhere. To each his/her own.

amandasgramma wrote:

Dutch_12078 wrote:
An hour to aim a dish??? Other than my very first time, I haven't spent more than 15 minutes on setting up and aiming my tripod mounted 1000.4 dish. It might take another 5 minutes to switch from the eastern arc LNBF to the western arc LNBF, or vice-versa when needed, but that's about it. If the Tailgater or Pathway X2 received more than one bird at a time, I'd likely have one if the budget permitted, but since they don't, I'm quite happy with what I have.

Lucky you.....:) Our old dish (saucer) took a long time SOMETIMES. But it had gone out on us twice now. Refused to buy another LNB thingy again.....:) I, personally believe something was wrong with that old one from day one.

Yep, I agree it does seem like something must have been wrong.

Dutch_12078 wrote:
An hour to aim a dish??? Other than my very first time, I haven't spent more than 15 minutes on setting up and aiming my tripod mounted 1000.4 dish. It might take another 5 minutes to switch from the eastern arc LNBF to the western arc LNBF, or vice-versa when needed, but that's about it. If the Tailgater or Pathway X2 received more than one bird at a time, I'd likely have one if the budget permitted, but since they don't, I'm quite happy with what I have.

Lucky you.....:) Our old dish (saucer) took a long time SOMETIMES. But it had gone out on us twice now. Refused to buy another LNB thingy again.....:) I, personally believe something was wrong with that old one from day one.

Have the tailgater love it, Had it about 6 mo. Never had a lot of trouble setting up the old dish, but this is nice. Still get the compass out to see what in in the way.

An hour to aim a dish??? Other than my very first time, I haven't spent more than 15 minutes on setting up and aiming my tripod mounted 1000.4 dish. It might take another 5 minutes to switch from the eastern arc LNBF to the western arc LNBF, or vice-versa when needed, but that's about it. If the Tailgater or Pathway X2 received more than one bird at a time, I'd likely have one if the budget permitted, but since they don't, I'm quite happy with what I have.

Okay, there's one.

These are not troublesome units, they cost $350 new (I wouldn't spend $185 to repair one), and everytime I set it out that's an hour of my life saved doing anything I'd rather do than aim a satellite dish, assuming I could aim a dish in less than an hour.

If the frustration of dealing with Dish Company is being lumped in with the Tailgater, well then there are some negatives to consider. But again, I've never had the slightest issue dealing with Dish.

Perhaps it's the aggrevation of listening to us True Believers burbling on about how easy these Tailgaters are? Well then I understand!

That old manual, slow to aim dish is looking better every day...

We have a Tailgator, bought it right after they came out and it worked great until last June while in Tennessee when the motor that controlled the up and down movement decided to go out. Of course, it was out of warranty, so we couldn't use it until we got back home and had to box it up and send it in for repairs. It cost us $150, plus $35 to ship it back. Needless to say, we weren't very happy.