EASY Portable Satellite Dish Hookup
I'm so happy about this situation that I thought I would pass it along to help others.
This will apply to 2014 Heartland Bighorns, and possibly also other Heartland products.
I've been dreading the process of hooking up a portable free-standing sat dish to my 5th wheel after reading so much doom and gloom about all the problems associated with trying to do that. But I was pleasantly surprised.
I have a 2014 Bighorn 3010RE and I just bought a Winegard Pathway X2.
The short version of the story to hooking up any of these portable sat dishes that MUST get their power thru the coax line from the receiver box is that all I had to do was run a line from the sat dish to a 'sat in' cable receptacle in the outside water and cable hookups closet and then run another short cable from the cable TV wall plate receptacle near the living room TV to the receiver box, run an HDMI cable from the receiver box to the TV, set the TV input to the correct HDMI port, and Poof ! - instant TV. Heartland did a very nice thing - that wall plate receptacle has 2 cable hookups (not labeled !). It comes from the factory hooked up to the outlet that brings in antenna or campground cable TV. The other outlet is for satellite TV. The beauty of it is that I now can choose between antenna, campground cable, or sat TV any time I want. Yes, I realize the question is 'why', but I do like options.
Unfortunately the owner's manual did not say anything about this. I found out by noticing the 2 connections on the wall plate and then talking with Heartland tech support.
Passing this along because I hope that Heartland did this for their other brands too. If considering adding a portable sat dish, just follow the cable coming from the TV to the wall plate. If you see a wall plate with 2 cable connections I think you're good to go.
As others have stated, it's best to run a cable thru a window to the receiver first and get the sat TV programming set up and running. Doing this first will insure that the dish, cable, and receiver work. Then you can proceed to the outside hookups.
Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.
Tim
This will apply to 2014 Heartland Bighorns, and possibly also other Heartland products.
I've been dreading the process of hooking up a portable free-standing sat dish to my 5th wheel after reading so much doom and gloom about all the problems associated with trying to do that. But I was pleasantly surprised.
I have a 2014 Bighorn 3010RE and I just bought a Winegard Pathway X2.
The short version of the story to hooking up any of these portable sat dishes that MUST get their power thru the coax line from the receiver box is that all I had to do was run a line from the sat dish to a 'sat in' cable receptacle in the outside water and cable hookups closet and then run another short cable from the cable TV wall plate receptacle near the living room TV to the receiver box, run an HDMI cable from the receiver box to the TV, set the TV input to the correct HDMI port, and Poof ! - instant TV. Heartland did a very nice thing - that wall plate receptacle has 2 cable hookups (not labeled !). It comes from the factory hooked up to the outlet that brings in antenna or campground cable TV. The other outlet is for satellite TV. The beauty of it is that I now can choose between antenna, campground cable, or sat TV any time I want. Yes, I realize the question is 'why', but I do like options.
Unfortunately the owner's manual did not say anything about this. I found out by noticing the 2 connections on the wall plate and then talking with Heartland tech support.
Passing this along because I hope that Heartland did this for their other brands too. If considering adding a portable sat dish, just follow the cable coming from the TV to the wall plate. If you see a wall plate with 2 cable connections I think you're good to go.
As others have stated, it's best to run a cable thru a window to the receiver first and get the sat TV programming set up and running. Doing this first will insure that the dish, cable, and receiver work. Then you can proceed to the outside hookups.
Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.
Tim
