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.

[schneid]

What you need is here but first you need to decide if you are SWM or non-SWM. SWM is newer tech and only requires one wire from dish. The newest receivers require it and some older receivers can't use it.

Slimline with SL3 LNB and SWM kit:

eBay

Many of us believe the HD Combo Tripod Kit from this guy is the way to go:

TV4RV.com

As I stated before it easiest to duplicate what you have at home. You know that works.

[hybridhauler]

We currently use Direct TV at home and like to keep things as simple as possible. I picked up a Winegard Carryabout satellite dish and had Direct TV add a designated receiver just for the RV. The receiver for the RV is something like 5 bucks a month. I pull up on the campsite and once the RV is set up and leveled, I pull out the satellite and in less than 5 minutes we are watching satellite TV. No aiming the dish and no hollering back and forth with the wife to see if we have a signal. The only drawback is I can not receive the channels in HD. A small price to pay.

[darlingtontrio]

Thanks for all the knowledge. There definitely is allot here. Right now we just have a basic antenna on the TT, it is one that does not go up and down, but it does rotate to an extent. We have not even tested it yet. I guess my first thing is to get a dish that will work with my receiver and go from there.

[Sandia_Man]

Yes, many of us bring a Directv receiver from home into our RV to get satellite channels while camping. Apparently the process is difficult for some, but in reality it is quite simple whether attempting to get SD or HD content. There are several products available that will automatically align themselves with the proper satellites, but very few offer Directv HD content unless you're willing to spend major $$$.

We chose to have all the same exact channels we have at home while RVing by simply taking our bedroom HD receiver and purchasing the same dish (Slimline 5) we have mounted on our roof from Ebay for under $50. We constructed a homemade stand (tripods are available online) that stores in 2 pieces and takes about a minute to assemble on site.

Using settings for our location as indicated by the Directv receiver and a simple compass, we are easily up and running in under 10 minutes. As long as we're within about 250-300 miles from home we even get all our local channels as the spotbeam is quite large for our area. Practice at home a few times to get the hang of it and it becomes second nature, there have been many times that just plopping the dish on the ground in the general direction of the satellites has indicated 90% signal strength. We primarily camp in the four corner states and rarely have to make any adjustments to our satellite dish, just point to sat 101 and all the other satellites come right in allowing us to enjoy all the same channels (HD&SD) we have at home.

When not plugged into shore power, we run our LCD tv, HD sat receiver, Bose sound system, and Blu-ray dvd player all off of a 350 watt pure-sine inverter I installed in our entertainment center. Although we don't watch much TV when on the road, my DW does follow a few of her favorites shows and of course I want to be able to catch any of the big games my teams are playing in. Even when an RV park offers cable, we readily set-up our sat dish as there is simply no comparison with the full blown package Directv offers. Happy Camping!!!

[donn0128]

Lots of suggestions. Some good some not so good. Over the years i have tried probably all of the gadgets on the market. What finally works for me is two items. First is an Align-A-Site, which is permentantly mounted to the dish and does not require that you try and level the tri pod as the bubbles are on the tool along with a compass. This gets me real close. Then I connect my Birdog satellite meter, turn it on and set it for the bird I want. This gets me peak signal without ever going inside or yelling back and forth while DW is watching the signal strength on the TV. You can buy a HD antenna from a lot of places on the internet. Including a good tri pod, some coax cable and your trady to go. Just remember if you wand SWM technology you will need 120VAC on all the time. My portable dish is non SWM so when dry camping i can connect it and still have HD programming. My new root top antenna is SWM is is powered when we are connected to shore power. Best of both worlds.

[schneid]

THIS is the correct answer. Hook up to it exactly like you do at home using the same gizmos and you will have DirecTV HD.

edatlanta wrote:
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.

[RoyB]

I was camping one time up on a KOA off I81. Got all setup and started looking at where the roof mounted dish was going to point. Trees everywhere.

Then I notice a small hole thru the trees just a few in-line feet from where I was parked. I said "I wonder if that is the dish direction" sure enough it was. I only had to move the trailer a foot back haha...

Apparently someone before me had climbed up into the tree and cut out a hole to gain access to the DIRECTV satellite...

Worked good too...

True Story

My Home Entertainment items are run from my batteries using a PSW 400WATT Inverter when camping off the power grid. I only run my generator at 8Am the next morning for three hours if my batteries are down to around 12.0VDC (50% charge state) so we can do this all over again the next day/night run off the batteries.

Roy Ken

[lucy6194]

you still have to have power either electric or generator to run these things we prefer the peace and quiet to the nonsense on the tube

[wa8yxm]

Many do as you suggest. ... I will give you the method I recommend for doing it. And one warning.

If you camp close to home.. GO FOR IT

If you don't you may loose network (ABC, NBC, FOX, et-al) when you travel, However in MOST areas your over the air antenna should pick 'em up and most DirecTV receivers contain an ATSC receiver (over the air digital) as well.


But don't count on it.

Now. you have a choice of antennas.
Rooftop dome.. NO HD, and no anything if you are parked under the evil signal eating tree.... An In-motion type dome will work while you drive down the road though (so you can record for later viewing)

Rooftop DISH: No anything if parked under the evil signal eating tree. Good otherwise. Must stow to drive

Tripod mounted dish: Must stow to drive, Have to aim manually

Portable dome: See rooftop dome, subtract bit about the tree.

To aim the easy way you will need.

In addition to the coax (RG-6) for the antenna you need a 2nd length 59 is ok but 6 is better, six is always better) and a battery operated (or ac if you must) Portable TV.

Hook the TV up and hook the antenna up WITH THE RECEIVER UNPLUGGED, now plug in, turn on and go to the antenna pointing page.

Enter the zip code where you are parked, USe the suggested settings to preset the antenna.

While watching the portalbe TV adjust the direction (Azimuth) a bit to peak, make sure it's the right bird (The in-line meters will peak on any sat in the proper band, the TV will tell you if it's the right one which makes it better)

Then adjust elevation and if needed tilt.

Lock it down, Enjoy

[Merrykalia]

We use one of receivers from the house and we FOUND a round dish in the garbage can at a local apartment complex. DH made a stand out of PVC and mounted a compass and level to it. We can put the dish IN or remove it for storage.

It works great and we did purchase one of the satellite "finders" that ROYB has on his reply. We will manually set it up with an approximate aim with a compass and the receiver, then, if we need more help, we will attach the "finder" and see if that helps. Usually, we can get a signal within 10-20 minutes, but the biggest problem in most of the campgrounds we go to is that there are trees.

We have just recently been given another oval two LNB receiver that had been at a friend's mothers house. She is now deceased and they are renting her property. He called DIRECTv and cancelled her subscription and told them to come and get the satellite dish and they told him it would cost more to remove it than to leave it. They left it and we got it.

[sclark]

As others mention you can take a receiver from home. You then need to purchase the dish that will work with the type of receiver you have. We used THIS . Good luck.

[Bobbo]

old guy wrote:
he said that with out his $900.00 signal finder he would be lost trying to find the right signals.

I was never a Directv installer, but I could aim my dish in about 15 minutes without any meters at all except what was built into the receiver itself. All I needed was a good compass.



The receiver gives you the azimuth and the elevation. Set the elevation on the tripod. Level the tripod. Shoot the azimuth with the compass and note an object in the distance on that line. Turn on the receiver with the audible meter very loud, or with a helper telling you the readings. Aim the antenna at that object, and rotate slowly listening for the click rate to maximize. At maximum click rate, you are good.

[MeandMyLabs]

We use the small SD antenna dish for DirecTV. No hd or dvr but gets all of the standard definition signals from sat 101. Easy to aim and small to pack. We use the trailer's antenna for local channels.

One thing you should be aware of... if your trailer is not wired for satellite, just cable as many are, the sat signal will not work correctly without additional adjustments to the wiring (coax). The signal coming in cannot run through the antenna amplifier before the receiver or it simply will not work.

[RoyB]

I still have great luck using this tone device finding SAT TV SIGNALS. I sometimes get tricked by finding the DISH satellite instead of the DIRECTV Satellite but that is rare. I think the DISH NETWORK is due south of CALIF and the DIRECTV Network is due south of TEXAS. We also lose our LOCAL TV SAT TV signals as soon as we leave our ZIP CODE foot print. We will use the OTA Local Town Natl Broadcast HDTV signals to pick up the local TV signals when using SAT TV on the road.


We don't really bring along our SAT RCVR and portable dish setup much anymore since the Natl Broadcast has changed to digital mode high def TV signals from the local towns... We get 6-36 full blown HDTV signals using our OTA BATWING setup just about everywhere we go here on the East side of the US. Using the SURELOC Digital TV finder has been helpful for us to zero in on the HDTV signals. For us watching full blown HDTV signals from local towns has been much better than watching the SAT TV standard format TV signals. The local towns HDTV is also free to the public.


Roy Ken