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You can view Dish 72.7 on a Trav'ler!
First some quick background... the Winegard Trav'ler antenna is designed to receive the three Dish 'western arc' satellites (110,119, and 129) simultaneously in fully automatic mode, and can also be set to a manual mode to acquire eastern arc satellites (singly). The reason you might want to manually select an eastern arc satellite (primarily 61.5 and 72.7) are uncommon situations where you might be in the extreme northeast US or in a location where the western arc satellites are blocked (perhaps by trees or a building) but one or more of the eastern arc birds are visible. The Trav'ler can automatically acquire 61.5 with ease but cannot acquire 72.7 (presumably due to interference from the nearby satellite at 77 degrees.)
But I found that the Trav'ler can indeed acquire 72.7, with a trick... you simply have to substitute a Dish receiver and your brain in place of the Winegard IDU (control box.)
Steps are as follows:
1. Turn on your Dish receiver (I am using a VIP211z but I believe all others will perform in a similar fashion) with the Trav'ler stowed. The receiver will of course fail to find a signal and display an error message. At this point go to the 'point antenna' screen and set the Sat ID for 72.
2. Power-up the Trav'ler antenna and set the IDU for manual mode, sat 72.
3. Power-cycle the antenna, and it will begin to search for 72.7. It may first go find a high-elevation western arc satellite to help orient itself -- if this happens it will be clear because you can see the satellite (often 101 or 110) ID'ed in the IDU display -- and then it will continue on to locate 72.7.
4. When the antenna slews over to find 72.7, watch the 'point antenna' screen on your television. As the antenna peaks (this will be displayed in the IDU) you should eventually see a green bar on the point antenna screen indicating adequate signal strength. At this point immediately press the 'Power' and 'Select' buttons simultaneously on the IDU, which will power down the Trave'ler and prevent it from continuing to search (if you do not do this the antenna will continue to hunt back between 72 and 77 endlessly.)
5. You should now have a green signal strength bar with the notation 'Locked - 72.7' below it. You did it! Run the 'Check Switches' routine and you should be good to go!
It may sound complicated but it's not difficult once you get the hang of it. In fact I was successful on my very first attempt.
So... why would you want to use 72.7 over 61.5? In many case you wouldn't because 61.5 carries local stations in HD and most all of the 'cable' and premium channels in SD, so in many instances 61.5 may be the better choice if you want to view locals. However... if you can receive local stations OTA (over the air via your TV antenna) then you don't need them from the satellite and using 72.7 will give you the 'cable' and premium channels in HD, so in that case it might be the better choice.
Anyway, nice to know that the Trav'ler can indeed work with 72.7. Hope this helps someone...
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Linear Mode
