Satellite Dish Reception & Internet Options

[w5vthdonb]

When we had the 40 foot diesel with the automatic system, I put a disconect in series with the antenna line so we could use a tripod mount also. We carried a 1 meter dish as when you travel south to Encenata Mexico you need at least a 20" dish and the futher south you will need a 1 meter dish. We found that travelling north in Alaska, the dish would almost be flat to the ground and the 1 meter dish worked great.
While camping in the US, if we had to park under trees we would just put out our tripod. Today the have signal meters and the set up doesn't take any time.
The LNB needs to have power for it to work so I installed in my BF a cable in the Refigerator compartment so that a tripod system could be conected there.
If you are going to install a roof mount, you might think about running the coax through the refrigerator compartement with a disconect and you have best of the two worlds. It is best not to try to install a A/B switch as this was made for the lower frequencies, and they attenuate the high frequencies of the satilite.

Don USN ret.
2002 26' RSB
1987 Cabriolet Convertable toad

[Mike Jean Bandfield]

One downside to Directv is that if you don't use it for about a month, it has to be rebooted by Directv.

Dish is similar but needs reset about every 4 months. We had to call them in September and then again in January. Naturally, both times we were out of cell phone range - and for several days. When I complained last month they suggested we set up the antenna before leaving on a trip and calling them for a reset. It would be nice if you could just call them without hooking up the rcvr and having the reset work the next time you turned it on.

Regarding roof top vs tripod sat antennae:
I can't justify the cost of the rooftop antennae. Plus the fact that I don't think it would work in the majority of places we stay. We've actually had trouble finding line of site in more than half the sites we've been in over the last 8 months. On the CA coast at Jalama Beach sats 110 and 119 were blocked by local hills but we were able to get our Oregon local stations on sat 148 which was in a more westerly view. At Julia Pfeiffer State Park we had no reception. It seems that most places we stay I need the tripod and all of the 50' feet of cable to find a clear view. It's certainly easier to move the tripod than move the rig. (Quartzite was easy! )

So our plan is to use the roof top broadcast antenna when staying at places like Walmart and use the sattelite tripod elsewhere. We're OK with not having satt a times and we frequently don't turn on the tv when making over night stops.

Regarding the video distribution plan:
We use a portable tv in 3 different locations - in the rear side sofa area, the cabover bed and when watching from the salon we like it placed between the pilot and co-pilot seats. These sites each have a coax port wired back to the video cabinet next to the door. The roof antenna and cable/sat come into the video cabinet where we keep the sat receiver, VCR, DVD and the video distribution box. The video distribution box allows us to select the video source (cable, sat, batwing, DVD or VCR) and connect it to any one of the 3 tv locations (i.e., salon, cabover bed or rear side sofa). I haven't got all this put together yet, however that's the plan.

Regarding cell phone and internet:
We have a Wilson Cellular Trucker antenna for the cell phone. It's pretty amazing. My sense of it is that it extends celluar reception from about a 5 mile radius to about a 15 mile radius from cell towers. This gets us reception just about everywhere except the most extreme locations like areas of the Oregon Outback and Northwestern Nevada. Also, internet access is pretty easy using a regular Verizon account (not their data service) and a $30 pcmcia card and a cable to the phone. There's no additional cost for the service and its charged at regular air time so weekends are free. The data speed on the voice line is as good or better than than a 56K modem on an analog land line when we've got a good digital connection. Good digital connections are the norm when traveling close to the interstates and in the cities but rare at the campgrounds we frequently choose. If we were on the road more or needed to work on the road, we'd go with a satelite data service.

Just my $.02 for what it's worth.

Mike

[joslef10]

this is a test

[jean]

WE have a roofmounted satellite. WE had a 75 watt solar panel installed, took out the crt tv that came with our 24ft.RB and bought a wonderful 15 " Toshiba LCD tv/dvd combo that folds up like a laptop comes with the both dc and ac plug and draws very little power. It is the Toshiba SD_P 5000...wonderful. Using our batteries we can watch for 3 hours and the solar panel charges it back up the next day even with an overcast sky. Hope this helps!

[Trisha]

I have decided to go all out. Right now I am staying at parks, and mostly because I miss my connections. Well, I've had it!

I want to put solar panels (like what was outlined in the FMCA magazine for Feb 06) or like the top of Jeff & Linda's rig. I think they are MAG 100 and MAG 85 that were tested in the magazine article. So I have to learn all about how to do that and how it provides power and if it provides any AC power directly or do I need to add an inverter too.

Then I am going to add the satellite and probably the one with internet. I'm going to stop all these services at home. Maybe I'll even just go fulltime. I need to find a way to make it a bit more profitable, and while the front-end expenses are higher, not having double services and double homes will save me....which means full timing.

These are my most likely things for right now. I love being able to just go south when I don't like the weather. But I want the freedom to avoid having to go to a park for electricity and television reception. The genny is great but I want solar with the generator as a backup.

How much work am I looking at and how much of a learning curve am I going to hit?

I know precious little about how all this ties to gether inside the rig.

I just don't like going home... but I do have a cold and right now that kinda stinks.

Patricia in Corpus Christi, TX

[w5vthdonb]

When I had the roof mount I installed a banet fitting in the refrigerator compartment outside, so I could disconect the roof mount and use the tri pod. This gave us the best of two worlds. I drilled out the rivets and put screws on the LNB dish arm. This way it didn't take any room up. When I needed the remote system I would take out the tri pod and just screw the arm into the dish and align. No problem. I carried 100 feet of RG 6. On the LNB line you can add a five foot piece of coax which is always attached to the LNB and just insert a bullet to connect the two pieces of coax together. This also alows the use of a satilite finder box which cuts the time down from searching for the satillites.
I have used this system for over 15 years. We lived in AR and parked in all the parks in the state and never had a problem. When we travelled to the NE still no problems in the state parks of MA, CN, VT, and NH. As we were fulltiming having the East West feeds from Direct TV we never missed and programs we were intereted in.
If you are going to install a roof mount, you might think of this arrangement also.
Don USN ret
2002 26" RSB
1987 Cabriolet Convertable TOAD

[Trisha]

Don, I guess I will have to go do some research. Your post was about half greek. What is an LNB and why would it take up room? See what I mean?

I will go look on a satellite forum and see if I can learn a lot more. I don't know what all the parts on a system are called, or if the arm you screw into your tripod mount has to be screwed into the roof mounted one when you're using it?

I'm going to stop derailing the thread now and go do research elsewhere.

Trish