As I previously posted, I wasn't a great fan of my Winegard Travlr. The customer support was poor, I had two Dish reflectors suffer metal fatigue and blow off the coach when stowed while traveling and finally the SAT dish software was not compatible when I upgraded to my Dish Hopper3 (which I love).
I bought the RF Mogul after careful research but stored it in the box until my work schedule allowed time for the install. Of course the delay put me in bad weather to work around.
My first step was to mount the RF Mogul temporarily to a piece of plywood and use temporary connections to verify it would work in my wiring. It did
The hard part on my Anthem 44B is where the entertainment center is located.
The RG-6 antenna cable and old Winegard control cables run from behind the fireplace to the outer fiberglass shell then along the slide out room frame and into a slide out channel bar and finally into the coach. Running the wire that way would exceed the 40 ft maximum length for the RF Mogul 11 wire control coax. The only solution was to abandon the entertainment center and locate the control box in one of the upper cabinets near the cap like my old Monaco had. The top left cabinet was ideal, with a 110v plug operated on the inverter. Now my control wire run was about 20ft.
The first step was build a shelf for the control box.
Next I ran the RG-6 new cable to the future SAT dish location and into the cap and cabinet. Sealed all the holes. Ran a new RG-6 cable from the new cabinet location down the pillar, along the frame to the midship coax junction location, near the water pump, for the future connection. Then rained out, 7 days.
After the rain and cold was "gut check" day. Used a heat gun and paint thinner to remove Eternabond on old SAT dish and sealant. Removed old Travlr. Terrible job. Took about 4 hours to end up with a clean roof. Sealed old holes and Eternabond patches.
Installed new RF Mogul. Heavy mutha to carry up ladder. 8 lag screws, sealant in every hole and on each screw. Put new Eternabond on screws. Since wiring already in place job took about one hour. Connected cables and whammo turned on SAT receiver and locked. Signal was within 1-2% of the signal on each Satellite was previously but signal locked with 3 mins vs 10-15 mins.
The only puzzle was how to retrofit the former magnetic contact switch that indicates SAT dish stowed.
NOTE: I'm sorry for the poor posting I'm having troubles editing this post to add the photos.
) Fur kids Carl & Alvin
I also dropped and switched. Very pleased with the Hopper 3 equipment.
Linear Mode
