Which Automatic Satellite antenna?

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
Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owl

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 10, 2012
Posts
1,815
Location
Lake County, Illinois
For TV in the RV, I currently use a slimline dish antenna, mounted on a portable tripod. I'm thinking about changing to an automatic type, but do not need it to operate while in motion. The two options seem to be Winegard G2, Winegard G4, King 4100, or King 4800. Other than small differences in price, I can see no reason for selecting any one over the others.

It seem reasonable to assume that they are not precisely equal in the signal strength that they provide. In the wooded areas where I often camp, such a difference might be significant. I guess that I shouldn't be surprised to find that there don't seem to be any side by side comparison measurements of signal strength.

Joel
 
Personally I would never ever buy a Winegard product.  Sorry, but I have had a lot of issues and horrible customer support out of Winegard, thus the negative recomendation.
 
Dish or Direct? (I think "Slimeline is Direct")

FOr DirecHDTV (they are phasing out DirecTV)( youy need a dish type antenna, You can get Roof Mounted automatic dishes but I know of no ground mount..  Roof mounts suffer if parked under a tree.
For DISH  Winegard Pathfinder X2 for a SINGLE receiver, a DISH again is needed if you do multi channel recording or viewing.
 
Satellite signal strengths vary by dish size, location, satellite, transponder, and even the weather, making any signal level comparisons not made under identical circumstances meaningless.

I'm not familiar with a Winegard "G4", unless you mean their "T4" roof mounted in-motion antenna. The other three will all get the job done, but none will let you receive Direct's HD signals.
 
I currently use DirecTV, but all of those models could work with either.

The Winegard G4 is a recent update to the G2.

Of course signal strength changes with conditions, but it should not be difficult to set two units side by side, and measure both of the signal strengths at the same time.

Joel
 
I have Directv and the King auto tripod (Darth Vader mask looking thing) Make sure you check with both websites/ companies and get the proper dish that is for your receiver and service. Once you hook one up and realize it is NOT the dish for your service such as Directv your stuck and it won't work. Each dish must match the service and box per se. I got a dish off amazon and saved about a hundred bux.
 
NY_Dutch said:
If you buy all of them and ship them to me, Joel, and I'd be happy to test them for you...  ;D
Click to expand...

With as much effort as folks put into testing toilet paper, they might try a test that is at least slightly useful.

Joel
 
Great Horned Owl said:
With as much effort as folks put into testing toilet paper, they might try a test that is at least slightly useful.

Joel
Click to expand...

When they start selling automatic satellite antennas for the same price as toilet paper, I'm sure someone would be happy to test them all. Where do you expect folks to get the multiple units to test? Most of us only need one satellite antenna.
 
NY_Dutch said:
When they start selling automatic satellite antennas for the same price as toilet paper, I'm sure someone would be happy to test them all. Where do you expect folks to get the multiple units to test? Most of us only need one satellite antenna.
Click to expand...

How often will sombody with one model will fing that somebody in the next site will have one of the others?
 
Great Horned Owl said:
How often will sombody with one model will fing that somebody in the next site will have one of the others?
Click to expand...

From what I've seen, not too often. It's not uncommon to see a good mix of Dish and Direct dishes of all varieties. And even if you did find a neighbor with another model you want to test against, you would need to talk him into letting you connect your receiver to it to get an accurate comparison. The end game really comes down to if all else is equal, the largest dish will win the signal strength prize. That does not make the others necessarily bad choices though, just that the larger dish will tend to maintain a signal longer in a rain storm. Cost factors also come into play, if you're on a tight budget. That could make a lesser model a better choice for your circumstances. Keep in mind that your receiver choice can also have a bearing on which dish you can use. I'm not familiar with all the Direct models, but if they're like Dish, the multi-tuner DVR models models may not play nicely with any of the portable dome style dishes.
 
NY_Dutch said:
When they start selling automatic satellite antennas for the same price as toilet paper, I'm sure someone would be happy to test them all. Where do you expect folks to get the multiple units to test? Most of us only need one satellite antenna.
Click to expand...

I've got 2.  I had a King Tailgater setup in our old coach, which came with  us when we sold it.  The Bounder we bought had an old Winegard in motion dome.  I read the book, played with the switches on the antenna and hooked my VP211k to the dish, and  Boom, TV in the front of the coach. 
In the bedroom I ran the cable for the Tailgater down through the closet and out the back of the coach, bought a 2nd VP211k and we use it for the rear TV.  Allows us to at least have TV in the bedroom if we're parked under trees.  I know I could run both TV's off the Tailgater, but when we want to watch separate programs, they are seldom on the same satellite.  If that Winegard dish on the roof ever fails, I'll just buy a 2nd Tailgater to mount up there.
 
And I'm sure you know you're very much in the minority, Wally. Plus you would still need two more domes to make the kind of comparison chart Joel wants, not even considering that he's on Direct, not Dish. Then again, he could just use an open face multi-LNB dish, either automatic or manually aimed, for signal levels that will be better than any dome on the market. And get HD to boot...  ;)
 
I agree the Trav'ler is a nice to have option, Ernie, but for overall performance and satellite accessibility, I still prefer a tripod mounted dish that can be located as needed on treed sites. We're on Dish, and having both the eastern and western arc satellites available adds even more flexibility.
 
Someone ask about two people with different antennas on adjecent sites....

I have seen it where moving an antenna as much as six feet made the difference between a very poor signal and what we in ham radio call "Solid Copy" (That is crystal signal)

THis is part of the reason I DO NOT recommend roof mounts.. THe poor guy was parked under ye, old signal eating tree.. But thankfully he had a portable antenna so it was easy to move it that six feet.

NOTE That at the moment I'm parked under a signal eating tree but since I am watching OTA. not a problem it slips in under the branches.
 
Tripod/portable vs fixed mount is a classic case of flexibility vs convenience.  Probably a geography factor too - those who routinely camp among trees would find much greater value in some sort of portable system.

The only functional advantage of a fixed dome is for in-motion service, something that sounds attractive but few people actually utilize. If in-motion is not a requirement, an open face fixed dish is always superior in performance to a dome type.  Some people with fixed mount dishes also carry a tripod-mount or portable for use when the fixed dish signal is blocked.

For those who want the flexibility of a portable dish, the choice is basically a tripod-mount open face dish and manual aiming vs a packaged dome type with automatic aiming. There may be an auto-aiming tripod mount somewhere, but I've not come across it yet.
 
The closest I've seen so far to a "portable" automatic open face dish was someone that had a Trav'ler that they clamped onto the picnic table at their site.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 1,093 (members: 13, guests: 1,080)

Forum statistics

Threads
131,934
Posts
1,387,761
Members
137,684
Latest member
kstoybox
Back
Top Bottom