Satellite Antennas - Old Fashioned Dish

Thanks again all. So to hijack my own thread...how do the portables, i.e. Tailgater, work in the eastern part of the USA since they only receive the western arc satellites?

I should mention I am not concerned with receiving local channels.

I have a DishTV 'dish' with 3 eyes hanging in my shed. I gave it up when we purchased a Tailgater. Since then, we've given up all satellite televison. I gave the Dish Receiver and Tailgater to another RV.net member several months ago.

I'd gladly give the old 'dish' with 3 eyes to you if you want to come and get it. No plans for camping in Virginia any time near soon to possibly meet up. I'd even throw in the trip-pod for the same price!

Our entire original satellite system for our motorhome cost about $250. That included a Dish VIP211K receiver, a 1000.4 dish that came with an eastern arc triple sat LNB, a western arc triple sat LNB, three 50' lengths of RG6 coax and connectors, and a roof mount tripod that I modified with about $20 of hardware store parts to add adjustable leveling feet and a large thumbscrew for locking the shaft. I also modified the dish with plastic handled thumbscrews, making the entire setup and aiming operation "no tools needed". Having both eastern and western LNB's available significantly expands the aiming options on heavily treed sites. To date, we have never had a site where I couldn't get a signal, even if only through a small gap in the tree cover. It normally takes me 15 minutes or less to set up and aim the dish using a digital signal meter.

Thanks everyone! I was looking at this dish paired with a VIP211K.

https://www.amazon.com/NETWORK-1000-2-EASTERN-DPPLUS-ANTENNA/dp/B00P49YTEA

Most important when setting up the dish is to make sure the mounting pole is as perfectly plumb as possible. Any time I had trouble locking onto a sat signal, I would go back and double check my mount and invariably it would be a little out of plumb. Once I made sure it was plumb the signal would lock.

I always used 100 feet of coax just in case I had to move the dish away from the RV to get a clear shot to the satellites.

It can be frustrating... It's taken any where from 20 minutes to put the dish and mount together and align it to an hour. Once it actually took about 8 hours over 3 days until I was finally able to find a spot where I could get a signal.

I now use a Dish Tailgater portable antenna and it is well worth the $400 to me. I screw in the coax and it's ready.

You should be able to locate a portable dish from lots of different sources... I use one here...

Something like this one

google image

You will want to find one with the head for the SAT SERVICE you are signed up with... Also I would get a two port head so you can run RG cables to both your Living room and Bedroom HDTV setups. This will allow you to watch separate TV channels at the two locations.

I use to bring SAT RCVRS from the house and this worked out great for me to pick up standard SAT TV signals from DIRECTV. I would connect the SAT RCVRS VIDEO OUTPUTs to my VID1 AUX port on the HDTVs. This way we can use the TV remote to select either SAT TV or CABLE/OTA TV.

However when the Natl Broadcast went to digital mode a few years ago I started using my BATWING antenna to pick up the local towns HDTV signals which is a much better TV signal being full blown High Def HDTV.

Stopped bring along my SAT TV items from home after that. We usually get several HDTV signal from the local towns just about everywhere we go using the BATWING antenna pointed at the local towns.

Roy Ken

I have one, but I modified it. The dish now has a manual adjustment knob for elevation, and with that, I have a tripod modified with a manual azimuth knob.

Along with that I use the SatFinder app on my Android phone and the usual signal strength meter.

I carry the dish on my rear ladder and the tripod on my cargo rack.