Satellite Antennas

You didn't mention which sat service or if HD is required. You said portable but didn't state manual or automated satellite acquisition. For Directv HD there are no capable portables domes, for Dish HD it can be done but most can only feed 2 receivers and they must be on the same satellite.

No doubt the best choice is the Winegard Traveler mounted on your rig's roof which would solve almost any want or desire for sat service in your RV. On a new RV purchase I'm sure you could work out a deal with the selling dealer to have one installed before delivery.

We have had HD sat service in our rig since it became available. We RV on many instances where exposure to the southern sky is limited and thus have always purchased the same HD dish we have at home and mounted it to a tripod or home-made stand for use on the road.

On our next new rig we will have dealer install Winegard Traveler, but we will always bring portable HD sat and over 100' of coax for the several times of year we need to move it around the campsite to acquire all three satellites when trying to point between the trees.

The most versatile setup for DISH on multiple TV's would be a tripod mounted triple LNB 1000.2 oval dish. With both eastern arc and western arc LNB sets on hand, along with 3 or 4 fifty foot lengths of RG-6 coax, you would be set for almost any location and aiming situation. You would also be set to feed any TV with any channel, regardless of which satellite it's on. The downside is the learning curve and time involved in setting up and aiming the dish at each location. Personally, I have that down to 15 minutes or less in most locations. I have not landed on a site yet where I could not get a signal, even if it was only by carefully sighting the dish through a small gap in the tree cover.

If you must have an automated solution, the only similar option is a Winegard Trav'ler roof mounted dish or an equivalent. The Trav'ler is only capable of "seeing" the western arc sats automatically, although it can be manually tuned to one of the eastern arc sats I understand. As was posted earlier, a tripod mounted dish can be done for around $100 or less. A Trav'ler will run around $1500 plus installation.

It also depends on how the new rv is wired.

I sure got a lot of use out of this Winegard SATELLITE dish setup. It has the head for DIRECTV and has two outputs on it.


I ran a RG cable to each of my two HDTV setups in the trailer. This portable stand has a great place to wrap up very long RG cables around it... I would always sit this portable stand on the truck hard plastic bed cover so I would always remember to stow it away when we left the camping spot. I also used one of those tone type SAT DETECTOR meters on one of the TV cable ports and could find the SAT real easy using this...


I used two SAT RCVRS I would bring from home and my two long RG cables from the dish to each of the SAT RCVR Antenna port. Then I would run VIDEO OUTPUT cables to the HDTV VID PORTS. This allowed me to select SAT TV or CABLE TV using the TV Remote. Of course this was only good for standard definition SAT TV...

Did this for several years and when the NATL BROADCAST came out with their change-over to DIGITAL TV I found the full blown HDTV signals from the local towns a better thing to watch so eventually stopped bringing all of my SAT TV items along with me on our trips. I use the BATWING antenna to pick up these local town HDTV signals just about every where we camp at...

Roy Ken

Does it have to be a portable? Why not get a permanently installed Traveler.

Ron

amandasgramma wrote:
We have tried two Dish portable sats. The white cube was good but you could only watch one tv. The big gray one we could watch two tvs HOWEVER, they had to be both on the same satellite. grrrrrr. And it took forever for it to search when you changed channels....yes, even 1 minute is forever to me. We also had trouble with it dropping the satellite. Every morning we had to do a search for the HD satellite.....no matter where we were parked, or what state we were in.

We finally went back to the original dish on a pedestal. We can hook up 3 tvs to it. We have had very little trouble finding the sats with it. Any problem finding the sats were minor compared to the trouble with the other two. And it was less than $100!!!!

never mind question removed as I realized you were not referring to the new Winegard PA-6002 Pathway X2 Satellite TV Antenna

schnoot156 wrote:
I've been RVing for about 4 years. Bought a Winegard Carryout and have 2 211 boxes for DISH network. We didn't use the tv's much but I had issues last spring and never really had time to resolve them. I just purchased a new Raptor which will have 3 tv's. What satellite antenna will work best at this point. Additional info, I am primarily on the east coast and looking for a portable antenna.

I too was looking for such and the most recommended one was the new
Winegard PA6002R Pathway X2 Bundle Satellite TV Antenna
with the 211Z receivers or the wally.its good for 2 tv but have to stay on same satellite. I paid 386$ plus 65$ for extra receiver

We have tried two Dish portable sats. The white cube was good but you could only watch one tv. The big gray one we could watch two tvs HOWEVER, they had to be both on the same satellite. grrrrrr. And it took forever for it to search when you changed channels....yes, even 1 minute is forever to me. We also had trouble with it dropping the satellite. Every morning we had to do a search for the HD satellite.....no matter where we were parked, or what state we were in.

We finally went back to the original dish on a pedestal. We can hook up 3 tvs to it. We have had very little trouble finding the sats with it. Any problem finding the sats were minor compared to the trouble with the other two. And it was less than $100!!!!