Razor Automatic Antenna MOUNT

[Dutch Star Don]

I'm starting a new thread to clarify some information. Apparently, Newmar has been mounting the Winegard Razor Automatic antenna directly to the roof, which sets it well below the height of the roof facades. Winegard makes an aluminum antenna mount that raises the antenna about 6"-8" off of the roof. The mount costs $50.00. Some thought that price was high, but being a mod/fab guy, I can tell you the aluminum would cost you at least $20.00 and to make it one piece, would take a lot of configuring, cutting and bending to make it match the Winegard unit.

Here's why I'm posting this. This mount was previously discussed in the body of another thread and was reported that the unit costs $50.00, but they wanted close to $60.00 to ship it. Well.….. I called Winegard today and found out a couple of things. First, you can only order it from Winegard by telephone, because it's not available on their website. Second, for the cheapest ground shipping to my house, Los Angeles area, it was $72.00 total, which included the unit, shipping and sales tax.

I don't use OTA that often, but I would like it to work when I can't use my sat. In another post, "Turbo Pilot" recommended the use of a filter to filter LTE interference. You might as well install that while you're adding the mount.https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Maste...rds=LTE+filter

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by Dutch Star Don

I don't use OTA that often, but I would like it to work when I can't use my sat. In another post, "Turbo Pilot" recommended the use of a filter to filter LTE interference. You might as well install that while you're adding the mount.https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Maste...rds=LTE+filter

While the height of the antenna is an important issue for the Winegard Rayzar there are more serious problems with this product.

I am currently overhauling all of the electrical components in the forward cabin on my NA. The Winegard Rayzar control head is poorly designed. Take a look.



This unit brings in the cable input from the basement as well as the antenna on the roof then outputs the signal to the coach TV locations. THE UNIT IS COMPLETELY OPEN. NO SHIELDING AT ALL. So all the interference passing through the coach from other sources like cell phones, WiFi, on board noise from other electrical equipment is picked up by this head acting as a mini antenna.

I discovered this mess when I could not get a good TV signal hooked up to the basement cable connection with the Rayzar off. Lots of interference. The reason is the Rayzar is switching the connection on this board totally unshielded.

I am going to document all of my changes and improvements up front when I finish. Pretty well done with the center control panel. I have activated the light switch lighting in the panel (switches on lights but Newmar never hooked them up).

But most importantly I installed a cable "A/B Switch". This switch selects "Antenna" or "Cable" as the source for the TV's in a totally shielded manner. I also installed the LTE filter downstream of both signals. In addition I enclosed the rear/sides of the Rayzar control panel with aluminum foil for shielding. Not much we can do with the front.



I am currently working on decommissioning the WiFi Ranger Pro. This equipment is now obsolete. Much better technology now available to do the same thing. More on that when it is complete.

[Dutch Star Don]

"turbopilot".....Keep up the technical work, but keep in mind, guys like me can fabricate and do repairs, but our level of technical skill is limited. As you make changes and correct issues with the antenna, explain them so we can all understand. I think you typically do this, but some go off and start talking about...... 8GLTE through a Dyna60 port, linked by a quad linear server with light output on a red spectrum circuit board retainer. As dumb as what I just wrote sounds, some of the technical stuff sounds just like that to some of us when it's not explained. Thanks

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by Dutch Star Don

"turbopilot".....Keep up the technical work, but keep in mind, guys like me can fabricate and do repairs, but our level of technical skill is limited. As you make changes and correct issues with the antenna, explain them so we can all understand. I think you typically do this, but some go off and start talking about...... 8GLTE through a Dyna60 port, linked by a quad linear server with light output on a red spectrum circuit board retainer. As dumb as what I just wrote sounds, some of the technical stuff sounds just like that to some of us when it's not explained. Thanks

Understand. And so do companies like Winegard who put out these kind of products. Near junk quality.

As far as TV antennas and cable connections are concerned THEY MUST BE SHIELDED from source to TV. Any breaks in between introduce noise and interference. This is very basic stuff.

[wildtoad]

Wonder why they wouldn’t put it on their website?

[Stuart W]

Originally Posted by turbopilot

Understand. And so do companies like Winegard who put out these kind of products. Near junk quality.



As far as TV antennas and cable connections are concerned THEY MUST BE SHIELDED from source to TV. Any breaks in between introduce noise and interference. This is very basic stuff.

I have also noticed that Newmar runs many short cables connected to each other and splitters with open non terminated ports.

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by wildtoad

Wonder why they wouldn’t put it on their website?

I suspect the reason is that it would highlight most RV manufactures are not mounting the antenna properly. For best TV signals (which is line of sight), there should be no metal between the antenna and the TV transmitter. In the NA, the TV antenna has an air conditioner and metal awnings on two sides essentially blocking a line of sight signal over 180 degrees of antenna sweep.

[Winepress]

Most of the time I’m on the satellite, but when I have used the antenna I found that it works great without any interference. No reason to raise it up, unless you’re in a fringe area.

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by Winepress

No reason to raise it up, unless you’re in a fringe area.

This is an important point. The reason I got a motor home was to get out into the "fringe areas" not hang around major population centers. So yes, many of the issues of poor installation and design go away when you are in major population centers overwhelmed with strong signals.

[Stuart W]

Originally Posted by Winepress

Most of the time I’m on the satellite, but when I have used the antenna I found that it works great without any interference. No reason to raise it up, unless you’re in a fringe area.

Same here, I haven’t tried the park cable, and only tried the Razor in my garage in LA and get about 4 stations crystal the rest not so much. Direct TV all of the time.

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by Stuart W

Same here, I haven’t tried the park cable, and only tried the Razor in my garage in LA and get about 4 stations crystal the rest not so much. Direct TV all of the time.

This is how I discovered the Rayzar issues, plugging into park cables. Pictures were always bad. At the last park I looked at the TV of a neighbor and it looked fine. That's when I dove into the wiring.

As to local stations, I really enjoy dialing into the local stations at a new destination for local news and weather, that's about it. Good way to learn about the local activity.

On a related subject after following the discussions here on Directv and Dish, I changed my Dish zip code to the LAX area. I am now getting those stations all over the southwest. So far I have not driven out of coverage. LAX stations came in fine in souther Utah recently.

[Stuart W]

Originally Posted by turbopilot

. I am now getting those stations all over the southwest. So far I have not driven out of coverage. LAX stations came in fine in souther Utah recently.

Zion, Salt Lake, Boise, Winnemucca and Bishop we watched local LA stations perfectly on our home DTV account, including all of those disturbing Dodger games[emoji51]

[Dav L]

Awaiting the more detailed info on the WiFi Ranger...but what is the summary of where you find it lacking? Signal quality? Connecting to crappy WiFi campgrounds in general? The software for configuring the prioritization of WiFi signals?

I run the WiFi Ranger as a pass through to a PFSense firewall. I find the PFSense software more flexible for things like VPN configuration and more capable firewall rules.
My RV now "docks" to the home WiFi with high security wherever it is. PFSense is the DHCP server and the firewall rules don't allow the DHCP messages to go between the two LANs (RV / house). But all devices are on one virtual LAN (can share and connect all devices to each other).

[turbopilot]

Originally Posted by Dav L

Awaiting the more detailed info on the WiFi Ranger...but what is the summary of where you find it lacking? Signal quality? Connecting to crappy WiFi campgrounds in general? The software for configuring the prioritization of WiFi signals?

I run the WiFi Ranger as a pass through to a PFSense firewall. I find the PFSense software more flexible for things like VPN configuration and more capable firewall rules.
My RV now "docks" to the home WiFi with high security wherever it is. PFSense is the DHCP server and the firewall rules don't allow the DHCP messages to go between the two LANs (RV / house). But all devices are on one virtual LAN (can share and connect all devices to each other).

You are way ahead of my on security. That is not even on my short list of concerns when using the coach. Maybe it should be.

The WiFiRanger Pro is basically a 2.5 GHz WiFi solution. This WiFi band has become mostly unusable in RV's today. Totally oversubscribed. I was in an RV park lately and the WiFiRanger Pro was picking up 3 pages of SSID's all with good signal strength. Even if you can hook up to a campground hotspot with good internet throughput, WiFi congestion will make the link usable. There are basically only 3, 2.5 GHz bands even though it looks like there are 11. So everyone is fighting for access over just 3 full service bands.

There is really no choice but to use the 5.0 GHz band wherever you can. I was in several RV parks this Summer with 5.0 GHz service, so they are slowly coming on board.

One factoid my novice RV users don't understand is that when using a cellular mobile data source (like MyFi, cellular router, smartphone hotspot) is that they are degrading the bandwidth of that internet connection if they connect to the device using a 2.5 GHz WiFi connection in a locally congested area. All connections must be 5 GHz to avoid contention with all the other 2.5 GHz WiFi connections in the campground.

My crystal ball says that using WiFi local campground connections will be less and less important in the future. We now have very good cellular data connections in most places and it is about to get much better for mobile data users with adoption of TMobile's 600 MHz, Band 71. This is a game changer for mobile data.

For now I am replacing WiFiRanger Pro with a new Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 Router with a Cat 6 LTE Advanced Modem. With LTE-A this modem is really fast on Verizon. Anyone who wants fast cellular data now needs to move to LTE-A now. LTE-A is basically "4.5G" as we wait for the 5G rollout.

But for RV's the neat thing about the Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 Router with a Cat 6 LTE Advanced Modem is that it includes both 2.5 GHz and 5.0 GHz "MIMO" WiFi. It also includes "WiFi as WAN"
that can be used on either frequency. WiFi as WAN is what the WiFi Ranger is doing but in the WiFiRanger Pro version but there is only 2.5 GHz band.

With the Pepwave MAX BRI MK2 LTE-A you get all the functionality of the WiFiRanger Pro plus blazing fast 4.5G cellular internet all in one very small form factor. On downside of the Pepwave MAX BRI MK2 LTE-A is that you need 4 antennas on the roof (2 cellular and 2 MIMO WiFi). That is my current project, running the 4 antenna leads to the roof. Note 4 wires coming out of light socket in image below. Will report more when installation is complete.