Satellite hookup


Daniel0731

New Member
I purchased a brand new Canyon Trail, made by Gulfstream, last year. I never attempted to connect a satellite to my camper until recently. I can connect my coax directly to my receiver and into my tv and everything works fine. But when I connect the coax from the dish to the side of my camper and plug my receiver into the wall outlet in the entertainment center, I get zilch for reception. I have connected my coax on the outside and brought the other end to the inside and checked the continuity of the cable running through the camper and it checks out fine. Am I missing something? The dealer wants to charge $65 per hour to just look at it. I will never purchase another new fifth wheel that only comes with a 1 year warranty. Sure would appreciate any help!

Thanks!
 

Gary B

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

Hi Daniel10731, welcome to the forum, as I understand it you are connecting the dish coax to the cable connection on the trailer, and then connecting the reciver to the TV ant. connection at the entertainment center, right? If this is right then it won't work, because the TV ant ampiflier (signal booster) interfers with the dish signal, so what you have to do is: remove the screws from the faceplate of the amp assy and pull it out so that you can see the incoming coax's, generally the center coax is the cable coax, you'll have to remove this(the cable coax) from the amp assembly and connect it to a seperate face plate which means drilling a small hole next to the amp assy and installing it, then you can connect the dish reciver to that connection and you'll have sat TV, & if you want or have cable it'll work of the connection also. Hope this is clearer then mud and you can make sense of it if not ask again. :) :laugh: :cool: :approve:

PS here is an excellent site with help check the tech section
http://bart.ccis.com/home/mnemeth/index.htm

Or you can due what I did last winter I just slipped the dish coax thur the slide seal before it was all the way out and then connected it to the reciver, worked for 3 months.
 

ARCHER

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

Hey Gary,
Just a thought. On my MH, I have the outside cable hook-up. Inside, I have the two outlets for hooking up the TVs. There is a switch in the one in the front that says, CABLE or ANT. If it is on ANT, the red light is on meaning (I think) that my power booster is operating. When I hook up to park Cable I put the switch on CABLE and no red light. According to your above instructions, would this solve the problem, if I just switch to CABLE and then hook up the Sat dish cable to the incoming cable hook-up and then run cable line from front outlet to sat receiver (making sure I switched to cable on the switch)?
Sorry if this is confusing. I'm thinking of going to Sat for my home network and also while on the road (buying an extra dish).
Hope your having a great summer and not working too hard. Wife working me to death at home.....need to hit the road again soon.
:) :laugh: :cool: :blush: ;) :approve:
 

Gary B

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

HI Archer, yes maybe (clear as mud now?) Ah seriously for some reasom most if not all motorhomes are wired differently than TT / 5th wheels. When we had our Bounder all we had to do was connect the Sat dish to the cable coax and then up in the TV/VCR cabinet there was a switch box for ant, cable vcr or aux, I installed a sliding coax switch on the cable coax and run one side to the dish reciever and the other to the main switch box cable connection, and from the dish reciever to the Aux input of the switch box. It worked great but you did have to get up and switch the switchs. Now to try to answer your question if you have a seperate cable outlet then yes it'll work but if you only have one outlet going to the tv and all you do for cable is turn off the amp, no it won't work because even with the amp off there is feed back thur the coax that mess's up the dish feed. For a Sat dish to work the reciever sends some voltage out to the dish head(LNB) which in turn ampifies the sat signal and sends it to the reciever. Hope that helps some. :) :laugh: :cool: :bleh: :approve:
 

Daniel0731

New Member
Satellite hookup

Hi Gary B. I really appreciate the warm welcome to the forum. It's kinda nice knowing your fellow campers are more than happy to assist another camper in a time of need. I think I need to clarify something I said earlier. On the side of my camper, there are 3 different connections. There is a "park cable" hookup by itself. Right beside that is a covered faceplate that has a phone hookup and a satellite hookup....so I was told. The "park cable" jack is labeled just that..."cable hookup". The jack behind the faceplate is not labeled...the dealer just told me that was the satellite hookup. In my entertainment center, there are two different jacks. One for cable/antenna and one for satellite.

The way I understand it, I plug my tv into one jack and I get channels from my "crank-up" antenna or from cable? Is that correct? I've never hooked up to cable before.

The other jack in my entertainment center is for the satellite. The dealership has assured me that the satellite coax does not run through a splitter...it's just one continuous piece of coax from the outside to the inside.

So there are actually 2 different coax's coming from the outside to the inside. One for antenna/cable and one for satellite.

Even though I have 2 seperate coax's coming into my camper, would the power booster for my antenna cause feedback on the other coax and cause me to not get a signal?

I hope I've made the water VERY muddy at this point!!
I really appreciate the website you included as well!!

:cool: :)
 

Daniel0731

New Member
Satellite hookup

Gary B. You won't believe what the problem was the whole time with my camper. I spent about 4 hours yesterday pulling cables and checking them with my ohm meter. The wire in question checked out fine, but when I connected my cables to the connector in the inside faceplate I got nothing. I replaced the double male connector in the faceplate and everything worked like it was supposed to. I brought the culprit to work to show a few guys, and come to find out, they put a "blank" in the faceplate. I can't believe that Gulfstream would do that do someone. Just wanted to let you know what I found out and say thank you for your help. I really appreciate the website you referred me to as well. Lots of useful info out there.

Thanks! :laugh: ;) :approve:
 

Gary B

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

Hi Danie10731, glad to hear you are up and going, boy a deal like that can sure throw ya for a lope, most likely a mfg flaw and no noe caught it. Thanks for letting us know what you found. :) :laugh: :cool: :bleh: ;) :approve:
 

mrt57mrk

New Member
Satellite hookup

If I may, I'd like to put my question up too. I havent had any dealings with satellite tv. I wanna get it for my travel trailer. I need to know what exactly do I need to buy. I see these four room free installation & equipment ads for dish-network all the time in my area. I was thinking of converting to dish from cable at home. If i do this can i take the extra reciever i'll get in the deal and then just buy an extra dish for the trailer and make it work this way??
 

Gary B

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

Hi Mark, yes you can do that, basicly thats what we due, we only have a single reviever, but we just discconet it from home and put it in the rv when we go. I found a couple of dishs that someone had thrown out, no LNB's, but went on E-Bay and bought a couple for less than $15.00 with shipping. Heres a great site with plans on how to build a low profile dish mount, I've built a couple of these and they work great, you never have to worry about leveling or the wind blowing it over, and there a great conversation starter. http://www.bbrv.dreamstation.com/index.html
:) :laugh: :cool: :bleh: ;) :approve:
 

TexasClodhopper

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

GaryB: The link you provided to the low profile dish mount is not working. Do you have another link? Thanks! :bleh:

> Heres a great site with plans on how to build a low profile dish mount, I've built a couple of these and they work great, you never have to worry about leveling or the wind blowing it over, and there a great conversation starter. http://www.bbrv.dreamstation.com/index.html
>
 

ARCHER

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

Hey Tex,
I was able to get into the site Gary recommended. Not sure why you can't. Try it again.
 

Gary B

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

:approve: :laugh: :cool: ;) :bleh: Hi Tex, I just clicked on it and it came right up for me, sorry don't know what to tell you. It comes up as Bill & Barbs RV page then go down to the bottom and find the many thiings they have. Hope this helps. :)
 

TexasClodhopper

Senior Member
Satellite hookup

I did try it again with grand results! Thanks for the feedback! Now all I have to do is pull one of our receivers out of the house when we go RVing!
 

mrt57mrk

New Member
Satellite hookup

Thanks Gary, I wasn't realy sure how it all worked. The site you gave me for the low-profile mount was excellent.What a great, simple design! Inexpensive too. I was just at Home Depot the other day buying pipe to plumb a sewer line for my Daughters trailer, & was looking at some of that 1" PVC as well. The most expensive part of that project will be the glue!lol I'll bet it cost less than 10$ to build that thing. Thanks again.
 
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