Need a new Satellite System

[sgtjoe]

On my 2001 Tradewinds I had a MV-3500 installed on my roof. Over the years it has been no problem at all. Now it finally kicked the bucket. Winegard says they don't have parts for it. So I'm looking at the Winegard R-3 which has Directv and Dish. The BOSS prefers Directv. Since my MH was made in 2001 I've been told that these new satellite systems won't hook up to my current wiring. I'm not going to have the old big one removed from my roof and thinking of just sitting the new one out on the ground to receive TV. Any problems with that?

Can I run two lines for the two TV's?

[CamJam1]

I bought a Winegard Playmaker portable dish off Amazon. It came with a Dish Network "Wally" receiver. The connection between the the receiver and the new dish is coax, same as our coach, so I just connected the portable dish to the cable TV port in the electrical basement locker. Then it was just a matter of finding the other end of the cable in the front overhead cabinet and connecting it to the new receiver. My old receiver had been removed by a previous owner, and there were several loose cables up there, so it took a bit of trial and error to find the right cable.

The Wally has both HDMI and RCA type video connectors to connect to the TV. At the time I still had my original CRT TV and used a $20 converter to convert the Wally receiver's RCA connectors to the old TV's coax input, but last year I replaced the TV with a new LED model and now just connect the Wally receiver directly to the TV via HDMI. With the converter I somehow had the rear TV working too (but only on the same satellite channel as the front TV) but I haven't bothered since I got the new front TV. I'm actually thinking of removing the rear TV entirely as we never watch it. I don't remember exactly how I got the 2nd TV to work, but I think my old converter had two coax outputs and I ran one of them the the BOMB (box of many buttons), which then routed the signal to the rear TV whenever the right buttons were pushed.

I eventually removed the original dome off the roof and just kept it's mounting base in place so as not to have to seal up the holes.

The portable Playmaker dish is not perfect-- it sometimes doesn't find the signal even when there is nothing blocking the signal-- but usually just a reboot of the receiver fixes that. I typically let the dish search for satellites while I'm connecting the water and putting the slides out etc. and usually it's found them by the time I get done. Overall I'm very happy with it. Being able to move the dish around to be able to see between trees sure is nice, and the picture is superb.

[Scooter]

If you run out of options....you might look at the RF Mogul Eagle RV antenna. Expensive but if repairs needed...the inside box is the only thing to send back to factory.