Dish HD Portable RV Satellite Tripod Kit

So I have been a Directv customer for years. Few months ago I changed to Dish Network. I have a 5th Wheel RV and dry camp a lot, mostly at NASCAR tracks. I have had a manual dish in the past and been thinking about changing to a Tailgater or some type of auto find style. With the change to dish seemed to be perfect time. I love the Wally set up as to “Pay-as-you-go”. I really looked into all my options. Each I think fits a need. As to a Tailgater. If you are looking to run only one TV and move a lot. It would be perfect. Nice options and works great. If you want to run two TV’s at the same time, now we are at a different beast! With all that I found the King and the Pathway X2 are really the best. If you are south of PA or know that you can always get the Western Satellites, the King is all you need and works great. If you are north of PA and New England area where you might need to catch the Eastern Satellites, pay the difference and get the X2. Now the issue. They both run to TV’s, But with two RG6 cables ran to RV and the dish in the unit is small so it only picks up one Satellite at a time. So if you are on the 119 and change to a 110 satellite channel it moves. If the 2nd TV is on a 119 channel. It will lose it and have to reboot to a 110 channel. My son is always with me and never wants to watch the same channel so didn’t want to fight this. With the manual dish, you can do all you want to! You get all the 110, 119, and 129. This unit can run a Hopper and a Joey too. If you have two Wally’s you just have to run two lines from the LNB head right to the Wallys and works great. All my HD and no time to wait between Satellites. I think a lot of people worry about aiming the dish. It really is not that hard at all. The stand packs up small and take very little room. The kit is great it comes with. Find the Southwest sky, make sure your stand is level and take no time at all. No it is not a top of the line level and items. But they are nice and all you need. Everything was just as it was sold and was watching TV in 20 min after unboxing everything. Again it is all in your needs!

I bought this tripod kit for use with a ViP211k receiver I had recently purchased for traveling in my RV with Dish Network's Pay-As-You-Go plan added to my existing home account. I considered getting the Tailgater antenna instead, which aims itself, but read too many reviews about it failing. I started imagining the internal aiming mechanism breaking out in the middle of nowhere and having no way to fix it or aim the dish manually, which was enough to convince me to get this one instead. I figured once I learned to aim the thing it wouldn't be a big deal, and after getting it set up the first time I'm convinced that that will be the case.I received the kit last week and just got it set up last night. And as others have indicated, the instructions are pretty vague. Despite that I didn't find it too difficult to figure out what goes where. A bigger flaw I found in the instruction sheet was in the table of settings by zip code. The recommended skew setting for my zip code was 5 degrees different from the setting recommended by Dish Network on the receiver's "Point Dish" screen (using the receiver's remote, press Menu, 6, 1, 1 which brings up the Point Dish screen, then enter your zip code in the left field, set transponder to 11 and satellite to 119, the settings will appear below that). Dish's setting worked correctly.I was impressed with the quality of the components. The satellite finder works great, the compass is well built (and I was wanting one anyway so this will be great to have), and the tripod is sturdy. But I really wish the tripod had individually adjustable legs and a bubble level, which would make it much easier to set up. If you don't have the tripod very level, all the rest of your adjustments will be difficult if not impossible to make. As it is, you have to either put objects (such as shims) under the legs, or play with the screws that hold the center tube in place in an attempt to get it perfectly level, which is difficult. I had a small level (about 6" long) with a magnet on the side so I put it on the side of the center tube and leveled it one way, then moved the level around the tube to get it level on all sides. It was quite tedious. I have a small round bubble level for use on flat surfaces and I am going to see if I can mount that on the top of the tripod to make future setups easier.But once I got to the elevation, azimuth and skew settings it went pretty smoothly and I picked up a signal on the first attempt. Fine tuning took another 15 minutes or so. One thing I noticed was that although I had the elevation set exactly as specified for my area, the signal was stronger with it a little higher. I suspect this is due to the fact that the dish mount seems to sag slightly, or it could be that the tripod wasn't perfectly level. So I set my elevation about one degree higher than indicated which increased signal strength.Now I've got all my channels and everything's working great.

This setup is all you need for your RV, aside from a receiver (I use a Dish Wally, works great!) This kit has everything you need and the products that are supplied are of nice quality. The case is great, it is easy to assemble. Leveling is no problem (have a few wood blocks around in case...we are RV'ers, you know the routine). The tripod has some adjustments for the post that give you a little extra leveling if needed. The meter works great without making that horrible, loud whine that others do...it makes a subtle noise you can hear but your neighbors probably won't.I suggest you set this up somewhere that you have tools, internet and time on your hands. Get used to doing it by...doing it. I can set this up in a few minutes now by just going through the exercise a few times. A few hundred more dollars and you could get one that aims itself...I don't know about you, but a cold beer and 10 minutes is well worth saving several hundred bucks. It is like anything else...harder the first time than the 5th. There are apps out there that help locating the satellites, I won't buy a different dish until I'm looking for something I can watch in a class A rolling down the road.