Satellite TV – Antenna Installation

I’ve been without satellite TV since I sold my last motorhome – JBAM – in November 2016. That has been very good for me.

Of course, I have been able to receive over the air TV in some places. I also have a reasonably good movie & TV show digital library. However; after watching each of my recorded shows and movies a dozen times (or more), I was ready for something new.

Dish started a satellite TV program for RV owners several years back and it worked pretty well when I had it before – I think it was called Dish On The Go. At that time, it was basically just a month to month service for those that own their own equipment. If you didn’t want it for a period of time, you didn’t have to have it (or pay for it). It seems they have improved it since then and now call it Dish For My RV. So, I went with Dish again.

I purchased:

• Winegard PlayMaker Dual antenna
• Dish Wally Receiver
• Winegard RK-4000 RV Roof Mount Kit
• 1TB disk drive DVR add-on

Why the “Dual” version of the PlayMaker antenna?

I thought I might someday want to add a TV in the bedroom. The difference in cost between the single and dual satellite antenna was negligible. Having to change it out later would be costly and time consuming. I figured I would simply prepare for it now and then I don’t have to worry about it later.

To get things running, I simply placed the satellite antenna outside on the ground. It took no time to hook things up and make a call to Dish to activate my system. Of course, I wish these things could be done without using the phone but… what can a fella do…

One of the recent Dish improvements is a smartphone app that allows you to specify your current position to receive local channels. Previously, this could be done with a chat session or phone call (yuck). The app is a nice touch.

For the permanent, on the roof mounting, it took me a while to decide if I wanted to mount the satellite antenna on the front or back of Missy. Keeping it away from the solar panels was key as I wanted to avoid shading issues. I finally decided that it looked best at the back of the coach.

Since I’m still in construction mode, it was easy enough to wire TWO coax cables. One to the front, where my living room TV is located. One to the bedroom where I may someday have another TV.

As you can see from the long shadows in these photos, I did the installation early one morning while it was still nice and cool!

Installing the antenna is pretty simple. The real trick is thinking of all the tools and stuff needed BEFORE making the trip up onto the roof.

I must admit… it took me three trips.

In my defense – one trip was to poke the coax cables up thru the new hole since I was doing the work solo.  The forgotten item? A wrench to tighten the coax cable nuts and box of shorter screws (than provided in the kit) for the coax cover plate.

The mounting kit includes four feet that are mounted to the roof. The satellite antenna then mounts to these feet. The hardest part is finding some structure under the roof to screw it into. Missy has a very solid stainless steel frame member going right down the middle of the roof.

Two of the feet (forward and rearward most) each have one screw going into this frame member. The other screw just goes into the sheet metal.  The two screws in the other two feet (left and right sides) are also screwed into sheet metal. All of the new holes in the roof were given a VERY liberal coating of Dicor sealant to ensure no water leaks.  Note that the middle screw (in the photo below) does not penetrate the roof – it is the screw holding the antenna to the mounting foot.

The two coax cables must also penetrate the roof and a nice cover plate is included to make this water tight. I drilled a 1″ hole for the coax cables. This hole was line with a short piece of PVC to provide protection from the sharp sheet metal.

As before and with all roof penetrations, a VERY liberal application of Dicor sealant was applied.  Water leaks are just not fun!

Once it was all wired up, the system did its thing, found the satellite and hundreds of channels of absolutely worthless shows were ready and waiting for me!!

My previous satellite antenna’s have been somewhat manual. The first, VERY manual as in it had to be aimed entirely by hand.  That worked for longer stays. The second only required pushing a button for it to change to the next satellite.  This one is fully automatic!  Very nice!

TADA! Satellite Television!

Another bus conversion task completed!