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JimMartin's avatar
JimMartin
Explorer
Sep 27, 2015

TV cable, Antenna, and Satelite hook up?

Antenna question: Our "new to me" 2003 Georgie Boy Pursuit we bought about two months ago has a crank up Satellite dish on the roof. Also has a old batwig crack up antenna too. Neither of these are hooked up right now. Also it appears the someone remove the antenna booster that came in the RV originally?

Question is: What do I need to do to hook this stuff up correctly?

I know I need to add a DirecTV receiver (which I have)

Do I need a new antenna booster for the batwig?

Should I run all the cables into a Winegard VS-5312A Video Switch Box?
  • The video switch allows each of the inputs to connect to any of the TVs.
    One TV can be watching over the air, one could be watching from cable and one watch satellite. (not that this will happen).
  • RoyB's avatar
    RoyB
    Explorer II
    Don't know much about how the motorhomes do their wiring and systems for HDTV but if your BATWING looks similar to this and has a larger base then the ANTENNA BOOSTER PRE-AMPLIFIER is located in this area not down inside the RV..

    Then you would use a ANTENNA WALL PANEL that only controls the 12VDC going up the coax to the pre-amplifier located inside the BATWING antenna base...

    This is what my BATWING crankup antenna looks like along with the DIPOLES added for better UHF operations..


    My setup in my non-motorhome type RV unit uses an antenna control panel on the wall to support the batwing antenna...







    Just passing this along to give you idea how yours might have been wired up at one time... I know the motorhomes deal with the SAT DISH setups more then the rest of us do...

    I would not rule out the OTA BATWING operations however... Since the NATL BROADCAST has gone to the digital format the resulting HIGH DEF HDTV signals coming from the local towns are very nice to watch now... There is probably a time for both SAT and OTA HDTV operations... We get excellent results pointing the OTA BATWING UHF antenna at the local towns getting many full blown high definition HDTV signals...

    Roy Ken
  • If there is only the sat receiver and the OTA batwing, why the video switcher ?
    Why not just use the A/B switch built into the sat receiver.
    If more things are involved, yes, the video switcher is nice.
  • The install for the Winegard VS-5312A says DON'T use the antenna booster because the box has a built in one?
  • Yes, you need a new antenna booster for the batwing antenna.

    The easiest way to distribute the signals is a Video Switch Box (VSB).

    Run the coax from the satellite dish to the receiver, then to the VSB.

    Run the coax from the batwing antenna to the signal booster, then to the VSB.

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