Direct TV supplies needed

[darlingtontrio]

We are looking at putting a satelite in our TT. Nothing major. We are not full timers. We have DTV at home with 4 receivers. The camper is set up with a new digital antenna, so I can only assume it will pick up local channels as best it can. Now for the satelite. I am curious if all I need to do is get my hands on another dish and can I use one of my receivers at my house to use while we are camping? I have dug through allot of the posts, but none seem to answer my question. Thanks.

[edatlanta]

I aim a tripod mounted dish all the time. It is HD and the only difference from SD is setting the Skew before you mount the antenna on the tripod. You still aim to sat 101 on Direct. The skew takes care of the other sats.

Just be very precise when you are leveling your tripod and make sure it is absolutely level. I preset my antenna for skew and also elevation. I do add a degree of elevation to allow for any settling of the tripod when the dish is mounted. Then aim the dish to correct azimuth and tweak from there. I set my dish up two days ago and had a 88% signal with no tweaking. About 30 seconds of tweaking and it was up to 98%. Total setup time was less than 10 minutes.

[SCVJeff]

The people on this forum align their antennas all the time when camping. Its just not a big deal. As for ebay receivers, they are exactly the same radiosthat direct sends out, often for free.

[old_guy]

my son used to work for direct tv and he told me to get a receiver from ebay, since my receivers are for digital tv. the digital tv is very hard to line up with the satellites and the ones you can get from ebay are much easier and more forgiving. he said that with out his $900.00 signal finder he would be lost trying to find the right signals. buy a box from ebay and have it activated by direct and the cost is $6 a month

[SCVJeff]

There is no such thing as a digital antenna if that's what the salesman told you.. Do you know what off air antenna is actually on the roof?

[kjburns]

In general, yes, that's all you need. I have Dish and use a tripod mounted antenna once in a while. With DirecTV, you might need an additional part for SWM receivers.

If you go for a tripod mounted antenna, you'll need to learn to aim it. That process can be frustrating initially. It helps to get a smartphone app that shows where the satellites are so you can see where to setup the tripod and not have a problem with trees or other obstructions.

DirecTV SD is pretty easy to aim. It's the single LNB round dish. For HD, you'll want a multi-LNB antenna that adds another step to aiming. The multi-LNB antenna needs the skew adjusted to pick up multiple satellites. For SD, you just find satellite 101 and you're done.

[rr2254545]

Suggestions

Take one of the receivers from the house
Get a portable automatic antenna dish so you do not have to deal with trees

You can use a dish from the house but aiming is a pain.

Getting local tv over the air only works for me about 10% of the time