Satellite Hookup

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
JoelP

JoelP

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 2, 2016
Posts
735
Location
San Jose, CA
I bought a 6 year old RV from someone who was too deaf to watch TV and never used any of them.  Therefore he had nothing to say about whether any of this electronics actually worked.  My wife and I decided to try to make the Winegard Roadtrip SD that came with this rig work, so I bought a new H24-100 DirectTV receiver on eBay and hooked it up per the instructions I found on the internet.  In the cabinet just over the drivers side there is a place to plug a coax in for either external antenna or rooftop antenna, so I connected my receiver to the rooftop antenna input. To my surprise it didn't work.  After trying many things I discovered that the coax from the receiver was not delivering the 13+ VDC (and probably no other signal) to the electronics of the satellite, so I ran a wire directly from the receiver to the satellite electronics and it worked like a charm.  My initial thought was that the wrong coax wire was connected to the rooftop side so I reversed this in the cabinet and again no signal to the antenna. 

Perhaps this coax is routed elsewhere and the dc voltage  or signal is not making it to the antenna.  Does anyone have any experience with this in their Winnebago or Itasca?  My next step will to be to pull the plate and try to trace where this coax goes, but sure would benefit from experience here.

Thanks!

 
Typically the junk wiring that comes on RVs is pretty useless.  Cheap hi loss coax coupled with a bunch of splitters and non approved connectors tend to kill sat signals.  Your best choice is to make a dedicated run from inside to outside.
 
Yes I noticed that there was a splitter near the switching panel that directs signal to the various TVs, but I am perplexed as to why they would need a splitter on this coax.  Good point about the quality of splitters.  There are some that are much more lossy than others.
 
Don't know what kind of dish you have but normally the receiver supplies power to the dish over the coax. Find out what dish you have to see if it needs separate power or gets it from the coax. If it gets it through the coax go buy or borrow a length and run it out the window or roof fan to give it a try.

I have the VuQube dish and mine gets power through the coax.
 
JoelP said:
...Perhaps this coax is routed elsewhere and the dc voltage  or signal is not making it to the antenna.  Does anyone have any experience with this in their Winnebago or Itasca?  My next step will to be to pull the plate and try to trace where this coax goes, but sure would benefit from experience here...
Click to expand...
Take a look at your TV/coax wiring diagram. If the coax is labeled "Sat" or "Dish" that would indicate there is no splitter in-line and it should work. You can verify your wiring with an inexpensive test box like this one. Lowe's and Home Depot should carry these in the electrical tools section.
 
My Winegard gets power to move the dish from one place, but the Winegard electronics gets the 13.5VDC power from the receiver.  Using a multimeter I measured the voltage on the coax, coming from my receiver to the satellite electronics, there was no voltage. This caused me to question whether Winnebago had really hooked up the plate in the cabinet to the coax going to the satellite.  That is why I am asking other Winnebago owners if they had run into this. Bypassing the RV's wiring with along piece of coax the satellite receiver worked just fine.
 
I will look through my manual again to see if I can find a wiring diagram, but don't recall seeing one. 
 
Are you sure "Antenna" is actually coming from the dome?  Mine distinctly differentiates between roof antenna and roof satellite dish.

PS, or kingdome was DOA when we bought it, so replaced it with a Trav'ler satellite dish.
 

Attachments

  • ca.JPG
    ca.JPG
    117.3 KB · Views: 17
JoelP said:
I will look through my manual again to see if I can find a wiring diagram, but don't recall seeing one.
Click to expand...

Look on Winnibago's website for this wiring diagram if it is not in your manual. Winnibago provides many diagrams that can be downloaded from the web site.

Unless a connector states specifically it is for satellite, then it probably isn't!. It could be for a park cable connection but "Antenna" almost always refers to an 'over the air' (OTA) antenna (often a bat-wing style on the roof). Any of these connections may be equipped with a hidden splitter or the little power supply/splitter that is used to power a bat-wing style antenna. and/or select between a cable or OTA connection.

You may not be factory equipped for the special coax wiring for a satellite receiver/dish connection and this might depend  largely on the year of the RV. Satellite connections require a clean (no splitters etc) connection from the receiver to the dish LNB itself in most cases, although some installations may have 2 clean satellite connections - mine has one to the dish on the roof and 1 for a portable dish with an A-B manual switch to select which dish to use.

A quick connection directly from the receiver to the dish (perhaps run through an open window) should work well enough to point the dish initially and check the signal.
 
^^ What Stu said ^^

Please read the Winnebago and Chassis Resources thread near the top of this board. There will be links to your wiring diagrams, plumbing,  parts and copious amounts of other good stuff.
 
John,

Thanks for this very useful link to the Winnebago resources.  There is a wiring diagram there that will surely be a big help.  Even after looking at this I am still puzzled a bit about where the coax goes from the wall plate labeled "Rooftop Satellite" but with this I have a pretty fair shot at figuring this out. Once I pull the cover off the place where the routing switches are mounted I will be able to see some of the subcomponents that are labeled in this diagram.

Joel
 
You are quite welcome. A general note about Winnebago wiring diagrams - some will be a schematic and some will be installation. The schematic will show you connectivity and the installation will detail how/where it's installed.
 
Are you mistaking the over the air antenna connections for the SD connections?  My 3 Winnebago MH's all had connections for roof SD, roof antenna, portable SD, and cable.  The SD cables terminated at the receiver,there were 2 cables from the roof.  They all terminated in a front overhead cabinet.
 
In reply to schoolsout2, as I look at the diagrams that John pointed me to I see that there are 2 versions of the coax connector plate for Winnebago.  One has 2 connectors and one has 3.  Mine has only two: a connection for Portable Satellite Dish and one for Roof Satellite Dish, both clearly labeled on the plate.  The one for the rooftop appears (from my measurement) to not go directly to the satellite on the roof in my RV,. And, the Winnebago wiring diagram shows it connecting to a (4BR) control module. That 4BR module has one connection labeled on the wiring diagram as From Ant, a second as To Prep Plate, plus a unconnected DB9 connector, and what seems to an unused  RJ11 connector and a 24V input from a separate power pack that is plugged into another receptacle. 

I am unclear about what this control module's purpose might be, but the wiring diagram shows that power cord for the 24V is labeled on its 120V input as Power Cord In Motion Satellite.  I don't know if this refers to keeping the satellite positioned when the vehicle is in motion, or if it is a circuit to disable the system when the vehicle is in motion as a safety system.  In any event I need to next find this 4BR Power module and see what I can find there.
 
Power Cord In Motion Satellite.  I don't know if this refers to keeping the satellite positioned when the vehicle is in motion, or if it is a circuit to disable the system when the vehicle is in motion as a safety system.
Click to expand...

An "in motion" satellite system is exactly that, it allows the system to be used while moving down the road (ie as you said, it keeps the dish positioned....)
 
You can still use the A-B switch, just leave it in the position of the roof top dish
 
The A/B switch was something I added because I had an external dish I used when trees got in the way of my rooftop dish. I wanted to let the OP know he didn't have to go buy one unless he also wanted to use a external dish.
 
I thought that I made a post yesterday, but it seems not to have appeared here. 

I removed the plate in the left hand cabinet labelled Roof Satellite and Portable Satellite and traced the wires in the rear.  The roof satellite coax was routed behind the front TV and exited through the roof through a type of coax connector that was attached to the roof of my rig.  It would seem that either this cable or that roof connector was compromised.  I saw no the electronics along this route to the antenna referenced in the wiring chart. 

As I took the access panels off to look around I was dismayed to see how haphazardly Winnebago stuffed wiring into this space, some of which seems to have no purpose and is unterminated.

After learning that DirectTV has no month by month plan I am having second thoughts about replacing the bad coax and hooking up the satellite at all, at least until such time as I am traveling more.  I was hoping that AT&T would offer some DirectTV customers a discount if they already had wireless plans, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Even a basic DirectTV plan is about $50/mo.
 
Check out Dish - they might have a month to month plan. DirecTV keeps digging more and more into my pocket - we are over $100 a month now (but we have 4 DVRs, two on the coach that only get used six months out of the year.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 662 (members: 6, guests: 656)

Forum statistics

Threads
131,929
Posts
1,387,651
Members
137,677
Latest member
automedicmobile
Back
Top Bottom