Outdoor TV Antenna connection to RV?

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r2sharpe

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Joined
Jun 11, 2005
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We don't use our RV often enough to justify a satellite dish so we have decided to put an outside HDTV antenna on a shed near our 34' Coachman Mirada.  We have a lot near the river, and we get two distorted channels if we are lucky.  Some of the internet sites state that we can use a cable converter with the antenna and use regular cable.  I have used the rabbit ear antenna converter for emergency TV reception during hurricanes.

The guy at Lowe's told my husband that we cannot connect the cable connector on the outside of the RV.  Is the Lowe's man correct?  I don't see what the difference is?  We have an electronic box under the TV with many buttons for the front, the back , and outside TV.  I thought we could use the RV outside cable insert and start pushing buttons on the electronic box until we get reception.    The guy at Lowe's said we had to connect to the antenna on the top of the RV.  Does anyone know?

You guys have been so helpful with our RV learning mistakes in the past.  I figured you would know. 

Thanking you in advance for your assistance.
 
The jack on the outside of every camper I have owned that is wired for cable is a standard coax jack.  If you can connect a standard coax cable, you should be able to do it.
 
The outside jack is probably labeled Cable and that would be the input to select on the video switch box.  You can certainly hook the external antenna to that jack.  The difference between the external antenna connected that way and the roof mounted bat wing is the bat wing has an amplifier inline to improve the reception.  If the external antenna is good enough, you don't need the amplifier.  That's probably what the Lowe's guy was referring to.
 
As Ned mentioned the guy at Lowe's was probably meaning the batwing antenna is amplified. Remember the amplifier is located in the batwing antenna head not down at the switch box. Buy your self a amplifier (radio shack etc carry them) and place it in-line with your coax that is coming in to your switch box under the TV, hook your outside antenna up to the cable connection on the outside of your RV. If you receive anything at all, it will help improve the picture just like the batwing antenna does when it is turned on and being used.
 
He is partially right...

First: The cable in your rig is most likely low-cost RG-59. .. Sat specs call for high quality RG-6  so it would be best to run dedicated cable.. In fact I'll tell you how to make good use of the park cable with some Direc/Dish receivers.

The other fact is it does not run where you think it goes.

The park-cable inlet on most rigs runs to a mixer/splitter/switch mounted on the back of a "TV OUTLET" panel, This is the outlet panel that has a 12 volt outlet (To plug the TV IN) a "F" connector (Television antenna cable connector) a button and a light (Turns the amplifier in your batwing on and off)  Turning on the batwing amplifier also selects the batwing.  This box will not pass power to the sat antennas.

Winegard says to ... Remove the park cable from this box, run it to the LNB in on the sat receiver and run the TV out from the sat receiver back to the box....

I say,  Much the same as Winegard only run the park cable to the TV-ANT IN, on the sat receiver

NOTE: you will need to use an extension cable

Run a fresh run of RG-6 either to a bulkhead connector or to a storage compartment where you can couple to a run (or just store the run) to the antenna.

Advantage to my method

Batwing on:  Over the air

Batwing off Sat on: Sat

Both batwing and Sat off: Park cable

 
In fact, in most RVs, the park cable input does not go to the amplifier control, but directly to the video switch box.  Only some models have the Winegard system, ours and most that we have seen in our rving have not had the Winegard system.  If you have an input on your video switch box labeled Cable or possible Aux, that's where the park cable connection goes.

The OP didn't say they wanted to connect a satellite antenna, in fact, they said they didn't have any need for satellite, but were putting up an external TV antenna for HD TV.  Mentioning satellite is just confusing the issue.
 
Sorry.. Most of the places I hang out folks talking about HD are talking about sat and I got confused

Ok if you are wanting an antenna for HDTV.. Then your batwing is good, you do not need a different antenna UNLESS


In the world of television HEIGHT IS MIGHT,  If I were to park at the house my parents used to own I'd not be able to pick up anythign with the batwing but static.. (Analog or digital)

However the Channal master... Up the tower, 100' in the air.. Did rather well.

But unless it's going up a big tower. The batwing is a very good HDTV antenna
 

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