Frustration with Dish Tailgater and my Big Country 3650RL

[cgaskins]

We have a 2015 Big Country 3650RL which we love. We recently a Dish Tailgater satellite TV system. My BC has 4 coax ports on the Universal Docking Center (UDC). The 3rd port from the left is labeled Living Room. So I attach the coax cable to the external antenna / dish and to the 3rd coax port on the RV. I then attach a short coax cable from the coax port in my TV cabinet to the Dish receiver. Note these are not the same coax ports used by the Cable TV system as that is separate wiring from what I can tell. The Receiver can communicate to the external receiver and I can hear the dish trying motor whirring. Unfortunately, the system cannot lock onto the satellites.

Now if I bypass the trailer coax wiring and drag the coax cable from the external antenna into the RV and directly connect it to the receiver, it works perfectly. So something is up with the wiring. Any thoughts or comments on this? It is very frustrating...

-Chris

[Fire5er]

Our Place can you post a picture of the mount you made? I have been thinking of doing the same.

[Our_Place]

I got mine to work by installing a "port" on the back wall that connects directly to the sat box. I also made a mount for my tailgater and it mounts on top of the rear ladder so it's up high, can't be knocked over, and would really hard to steal!

[GoPackGo]

rmalik1 wrote:
Internal splitter is more likely the problem IMO. We just use a flat coax cable thru the window. Problem solved for $7

I agree.

Also - Suggest you move this to the technical forum as this has been discussed there many times.

[rmalik1]

Internal splitter is more likely the problem IMO. We just use a flat coax cable thru the window. Problem solved for $7

[Bill___Kate]

While the Tailgater is light and easy to handle, it only has a small internal dish antenna, and does not pull in a very strong signal. Any little bad connection may cause it problems. I finally gave up and bought a Wingard Pathway X2 which is like $100 more, but a much more substantial piece of hardware with a bigger internal antenna. I compared the two side by side, and the X2 pulled in a signal twice as strong as the Tailgater. The X2 also is capable of receiving the southeast set of satellites as well as the southwest and that gives you more options when you have to set up around trees, etc. You can also run a second receiver if you want ..... Sold the Tailgater on eBay

[FlatBroke]

First BH I had the Sat wire must have had nail, staple run through it. Dealer ran another cable. That worked. But, they left the old cable adding to later confusion. Second BH I bought cable didn't work. Dealer said they had to email factory before they could work on it, this was at the PDI! Fixed it myself in five minutes, loose connection. Third trailer was run through a Winguard selector box. Even though the selector box is marked my Sat DTV won't work through it. Had to bypass the selector box.
Bottom line is I don't think the RV industry is too Sat/cable savvy. With these new docking stations they have to run twice the cable they normally might have to do. Twice the chance for problems.

[dbbls]

I had the same problem on my Big Country. The Tailgater worked when running the cable directly to the back of the receiver but only about one time in ten would it work when connected to the connection in the UDC. My Dish 500 worked every time through the trailer. I replaced the Tailgater with a Winegard Carry Out and it works good. I think there are too many connections for the Tailgater to work.

[Coach-man]

I purchased the tailgater as well, POC! Finally used the supplied coax connected to the back of the TV set, could not pick up a good signal. Dish's "customer service" was to call a proffessional installer! Really, every time I move to a differant camp site? Told them to place it where the sun don't shine! Returned the equipment to CW!

[jnharley]

Could your wires be routed/marked incorrectly? We discovered that ours were labeled incorrectly. We do not use a Tailgator though the incorrect wiring sure gave us trouble setting up our DirecTv until we got it sorted out.

[rhagfo]

BB_TX wrote:

N7SJN wrote:
......... When I contacted DISH about using extensions the response was "Not approved" the signal loss at each connector will cause severe deterioration of the signal.

Dish may not approve it, but works fine. I originally had a single coax input connector for the RV. Could use the OEM internal coax as is for cable, or for sat by my moving an internal coax jumper. Tailgater and sat worked fine with it with the jumper moved.

But to simplify things, I added a second coax input for sat by drilling a hole in the outside wall, installing a weather proof coax connector there, mounting a coax wall plate inside under the TV, connecting the two with a new short RG6 coax. Tailgater to the outside, sat box to the inside, works fine.

I high quality quad shielded RG6 coax cable from the Tailgater to the RV helps also.

X2

If the Coax is good should not be an issue. We have a connection into the 5er, so no issues even with High Deff.

[Gearitis]

You may have a coaxial splitter in the mix. The Satellite connection will not work well or not at all if the signal is split in anyway or the splitter is power passing but not passing a high enough frequency. Satellite reception is up to 2 ghz so a 900 mhz splitter is not high enough frequency. I had that happen on my Sabre. Also, another thing is that a lot if not most are not cabled and properly marked. Several people have found that something labeled satellite was cable and some labeled Offair Antenna was satellite. You may need to trace cables to see where they actually lead.

[BB_TX]

N7SJN wrote:
......... When I contacted DISH about using extensions the response was "Not approved" the signal loss at each connector will cause severe deterioration of the signal.

Dish may not approve it, but works fine. I originally had a single coax input connector for the RV. Could use the OEM internal coax as is for cable, or for sat by my moving an internal coax jumper. Tailgater and sat worked fine with it with the jumper moved.

But to simplify things, I added a second coax input for sat by drilling a hole in the outside wall, installing a weather proof coax connector there, mounting a coax wall plate inside under the TV, connecting the two with a new short RG6 coax. Tailgater to the outside, sat box to the inside, works fine.

I high quality quad shielded RG6 coax cable from the Tailgater to the RV helps also.

[amandasgramma]

We had that problem. Our tv is on the slide. DH did some sleuthing and discovered the slide had "ground" on a cable and worn it thru. He re-routed the cable and all is fine now.

[tegu69]

A friend of mine had a similar problem. Turned out to be a staple shot into the coax. His was repaired under warranty. If you have an ohm meter handy, you might want to check it.