questions about roof satellite antenna

[tinlizzie23]

Our used 2004 Designer 5er came with a Winegard crank up satellite antenna, which we have never used. To date, we have only used the television for DVD movies. With retirement just around the corner, longer trips are being considered, and we are interested in limited use of the satellite for news and an occasional program on rainy days.

I am a complete novice when it comes to satellite TV reception, and am wondering what you have to do to get it functioning. Do you have to go to one of the major companies and get a subscription ? If so, how does that work for intermittent use, as opposed to a regular home system that is used every day ? Sorry to be so ignorant, but any help or suggestions would be welcome and appreciated.

[RoyBraddy]

I cant answer how you get setup for SAT TV but here is what we did to watch SAT TV a few years back.

We were using a portable satellite dish setup. Mine has two heads on it so I can run a RG cable to to the front room SAT RCVR and to the Bedroom area SAT RCVR receiver. Then I run a RGB cable from SAt RECEIVER and connect to the VIZIO TV video input. All i do to watch SAT TV in grab the remote and switch to VIDEO 1. I can still use the camp ground CABLE SETUP when I select TV on the VIZIO TV.

I never had any luck trying to use the SATELLITE INPUT on my trailers. Never worked. It has to do with the SAT RCVR has to send 12VDC to the dish to operate the SAT DISH HEAD I guess. I never wanted to modify the regular trailer wiring to make it work so figured i would just run my own RG cables and come into the trailer thru the storage bay area. Worked out pretty good for us. Was easy to bring along a couple of SAT RCVRS form home. Never had any trouble with DIRECTV doing this. I would lose my LOCAL STATIONs however when I got outside my ZIP CODE area. Sometimes my SAT RCVR would lose their setups so I had to call DIRECTV to reactivate it. I always carried my account information. Actually had it taped to the case of one of the SAT RCVRS.

Now they have all the fancy stuff with SWM and high def SAT pictures so I have no idea how all that works.

This might really help you out using the OTA CRANK UP BATWING antenna on your trailer. I am assuming you have one of these as they are pretty standard to have on the trailer. However your trailer may have the SAT DISK mounted on it instead of the BATWING antenna as you mentioned already. You also may be confused what you really have on the roof - crank it up. If it is a satellite dish that will be obvious. If it is an antenna that looks like this then it is a BATWING OTA TV Antenna


Some of the newer trailers are coming out with the JACK OTA TV antenna that looks like this


Some of the JACK antenna don't crank up they just rotate .


Now that the NATIONAL BROADCAST is transmitting high def full screen HDTV from the local town we sort of stopped bringing out the SAT TV stuff. We get 6-36 full HDTV stations from the local towns using out OTA Antenna setup. If we really want to watch something on CABLE when out in the woods we will downstream it on the internet. Even when we are at camp ground with cable hookup its alot better watching the local towns HDTV then watching the non high def cable hookup at the camp ground. Just use it to watch cable channels in NON HIGH DEF mode...
The NATIONAL BROADCAST is free to the public - no contracts required to use it... Try it out now - not a whole of choices to watch like CABLE TV has but works good for us getting all of the NBC-CBS-FOX-ABC-PBS and some movie stations like MY20-ION-This etc... I like using this as we get at least one station that has the 24HOUR RADAR up for the local area.

Roy ken

[Seann45]

I started using a manual dish last year. What I found was the easiest way to aim the dish is to take a small lcd TV outside to where the dish is.. with the control box hook it all up out there.. use the installer program on the sat box and watch the meter on the TV screen.. you also have to go on the net to one of the many sites that will give you the "tilt and pan" for the dish.. then at the dish set up as I have said it is just a matter of fine tuning it..

[tinlizzie23]

Thanks, Roy Ken and Seann, for the responses. Yes, I do have a Winegard satellite dish that is manually cranked up. At this time, we do not anticipate watching enough TV to justify buying a portable unit, so we were just trying to see if the rooftop would work at all. If we get into a CG where trees interfere, it's not a big deal at this point. Before learning how to turn the dish to get reception, I wanted to know if we can get any satellite reception of cable networks like FOX without a subscription to Dish or DirectTV, or is such a paid subscription necessary for reception. Sorry to be so ignorant on the subject, but I am pretty much computer or satellite challenged.