Satellite dish on moterhome

[Peaeye10445321]

Hi all,
I have a 2000 Pace Arrow and it has a Winegard satellite dish on it and I have no instructions as to how to use it.
I have Direct tv in my house and would like to use it in the my.
Does anyone know how to do the hook up and find the satellites? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Peaeye

[CloudDriver]

We have the Winegard RM-DM46 crank up antenna on our MH. It's an 18 inch dish, which can only receive standard definition channels (no HD). That's OK with us, as we don't watch much TV when we travel.

Here's the method I use to aim the antenna, which is a bit different from the official instructions:

Once parked in the campsite, I walk about 15 feet from the front of the MH to get away from the magnetic field distortion caused by all the metal in the MH. I then sight along the center of my compass and the side of the MH and rotate the azimuth ring on the compass until the north arrow is over north on the compass. In the picture below, the rear of our MH was facing 160 degrees.



Once I know which direction the MH is facing, I go inside and rotate the azimuth ring on the antenna to that direction (in this example, 160 degrees as in the picture below). I then crank up the antenna to the elevation for the local ZIP Code. The elevation displays in the elevation sensor readout, which is on the right in the picture. BTW, the red clip on the crank goes on the gear shift so we don't drive off with the antenna raised.



Once the antenna is raised, I rotate the antenna to the azimuth for the local ZIP Code. In the picture below, this was 240 degrees. I then use the Dish Pointing/Signal Strength meter to find the exact direction and/or elevation that gives the strongest signal for the satellite. Most of the time, I find the satellite and get a strong signal with only a minute or so of tweaking. There have been a number of occasions when I get it just right with no tweaking at all.



Since the antenna only receives standard definition channels, we always go to Settings and select Hide HD Channels. This gets rid of the 771 - No Satellite Signal messages if we were to change to an HD channel.

[Bill_Satellite]

It's not easy and you will lose the satellite TV signal in the wind, but the information you need to get the antenna setup can be found here:
http://www.winegard.com/support?support=RM-DM46_and_RM-4600
I will go very badly at first and you will be convinced that it doesn't work. It does, but it takes a lot of practice.
You will need to find the right coax cable connections and you will have to use an appropriate DirecTV receiver (must be H24 or lower model) but once you "get it" things work pretty well.

[Peaeye10445321]

The prior owner did use a direct tv receiver but he did not know how to do it. It was just hit and miss.
It's a crank up satellite on the roof, bat wing on the opposite side of the roof.

[Bill_Satellite]

Need more info. What kind of antenna? Dome, crank-up or automatic open faced? If you know the model that would help. If the antenna is something other than the crank-up, was the antenna installed and used by the previous owner? If so, do you know if that owner used Dish or DirecTV?

[eadeal55]

You probably have the same Winegard crank-up dish that I have. Here is the link to their website for dish support, set-up and operation

http://www.winegard.com/support?support=RM-DM46_and_RM-4600