satellite and antenna

liz795 · Veteran Member

satellite and antenna

Bruce and Bev · Guru

Hi Willy and Liz.

If youre TV reception is good enough, your normal RV antenna will work, even if under trees. Im on the outskirts of Melbourne with large gum trees above and about us. I haven't even got the TV antenna wound up - the signal strength is so high.

If you are in an area where your standard antenna wont receive a TV signal, then you need a sat dish. They do not like trees between them and the satellite - line of clear sight into the sky is best, but if you have no option and the trees and branches are not too close to you, you may get a reasonable signal. You ust have to try

We have both - and unless we go into remote areas, never use the sat dish. If youre in a county CP - they often have a small repeater on site you point your RV antenna at and you can watch ABC, Sky and Ch 7

Baz421 · Guru

liz795 wrote:
Hi all
just wondering people with sat dish, do they also have a normal antenna, why i ask is, if we park under trees we wont get reception with sat dish ???
so would you use the normal tv antenna . What iam asking do you normally have both, or not

We have 20m cable from sat dish to van, this means you can park in the shade and put your antenna 20m away. You could have longer but best buy the best cable and if required a booster.

PeterD · Guru

Looking at your avatar I thought your van would have come with a wind up antenna or a Jack antenna. The majority of travellers would try these antennas before going to the rouble of erecting a sat dish.

liz795 · Veteran Member

Iagree ,most people would lol. We sort of knew what we wanted. So we negotiated a complete package with surpreme caravans. AS this is our first van, we were told certain things that we believed .

that we didnt need ESC or tv aerial ETC But after joining this grey nomad site, we have done a lot of reading asked a few questions , its been extremely helpfull

so after contacting supreme again, about the third time lol, chopped and changed we got what we wanted, they were very good about it so were getting our van drawn up now.

I think the only thing we need would be heating, and inverter , perhaps generater, a good 24 inch telly (geeeeeee the dollars do add up lol)

Anyway this site been so helpfull, we would not have made changes for the better without all your help

THANKS

JayDee · Guru

We have a Sat dish which allows us to take our Foxtel box from home.
Also have longer cables. Beauty of Fox is that we can record and also watch any recorded programs we have stored when at home base.
Do idea how things work if one does not have the Foxtel box.
Jay&Dee

Boss N Me · Member

I'm with Baz421 & JayDee. We carry a portable Satellite dish and one of our Foxtel HD boxes from home. (although I understand Foxtel don't exactly approve, but who cares, we still pay the bills)

We went for the portable option (as Baz mentioned) as we can run a long lead away from the R.V. if we happen to be parked under or near trees that block our reception. Yes it takes a few set ups to get the hang of it, but most of the time we're connected in 15min or so. We bought ours from iTech World.

It doesn't matter where you travel, you'll still get your local Foxtel programs (for example we've just spent time in the Byron Bay/Kingscliff area and watched the Melbourne news).

For dish setup & alignment, I can't go past this document. CLICK HERE