[Carl n Susan]

Having been a DirecTV user for over 15 years, let me address some of your questions.

• Yes you can take your home receivers with you.While DirecTV would like you to open a separate and expensive second plan to cover your RV, it is not needed. As mentioned before, once you get out of range from home, you loose your local channels. You can call DirecTV to have them change the locals to match your location but DO NOT tell them your are in a RV. Tell them you are at your cabin, condo, second (or third?) home. You probably don't want to change locals too frequently as DirecTV is not as tolerant of that as is Dish. Normally your OTA antenna will get the locals where you are without involving DirecTV so a call to them may not be needed.
  
• Do you want HD pictures from DirecTV?
  
  • If NO, then any of the portable automatic antennas will work for you. They all can receive the SD pictures with easy setup.
    
  • If YES, you want a roof top mounted automatic antenna (Winegard or RF Mogul) or a full sized ground mount one like you have at home. The rooftop ones are pricey, the ground one is not. Solid Signal (great company) or Amazon have the complete antenna (mount, reflector, and LNB) for less than $100 (last time I looked). I highly recommend the tripod from TV4RV.com (also around $100). This easy to setup unit holds the antenna and is adjustable to aid in aiming the antenna.
    
• Setting up an antenna ranges from simple to relatively easy. Any of the automatic antennas (Tailgater type or rooftop mount) are simple. Push a button (rooftop) or place on ground and have at it. The full sized, on the ground, tripod mounted one (for HD) is a little more difficult. You have to set the Elevation and Skew on the antenna then mount it on the tripod (which has to be level) pointing generally towards the correct Azimuth (dishpointer.com will give you Elevation, Skew and Azimuth as will the receiver if you plug in the ZipCode for your location). Then use the builtin signal meter in the receiver (or a portable one, my choice) to locate the satellites and fine tune for the best signal. It sound more complex than it is. It rarely takes me more than 15 minutes, start to finish.
• If you decide the portable SD only antenna is what you want, remember you don't have to put it on the ground. The top of the roof or slide are much better locations.