MotoSat Satellite Dish

[dmr1021]

I do web sites for a living and need broadband access. I'm looking at mounting a Motosat satellite dish on our new 3400 RL...or mounting it on a tri-pod. Does anyone have experience with this? I've seen them on Class A'ss but never on a 5th wheel.

In the past I've used a Sprint Aircard...acceptible in the East, good near Interstates. Service was non-existent in the West...CA, WA, NV, ID, AZ, NM. Except in large cities.

-Dave

[Glenn and Lorraine]

Welcome Dave to the MOC family.

Very familiar with the term "I do web sites for a living". Prior to our full time lifestyle I also did web sites. Sold the business as I felt I could no longer do the customers justice with a limited cell phone type connection. Than we also discovered the AirCard but in our case it was the Verison Aircard. We have had it for 2 1/2 years with little problems with connections but we have been staying pretty much east of the Mississippi. I have spoken to some of our western members using the Verison card and they too report little to no problems getting connected.

[HamRad]

dmr1021,
If you need broadband service then you're pretty much stuck with the satellite connection. That would be either Starband or HughesNet..... previously DirecWay. If you are going to be moving a lot as you do your RVing then you will probably want to go with the true MotoSat setup. That would be the automatic setup on top of the 5er. There is no reason they cannot be mounted on your roof. If you are going to be in one place for extended periods of time then the tripod system would be much cheaper. We have the tripod system. We also have just the standard system. If you are in business then you will want the "business" level service. Since you can probably use the cost of the system as a business write-off ...... Tax-wise.

We also use the Verizon aircard. If you are in or around one of the cities that has the true broadband then that would probably work for you. I understand it is very fast. But most of the country is covered just by the regular speed. The speed is faster than dial-up but not as fast as DSL..... close but not close enough. The coverage, however, is very wide. There were very few places we have traveled that we did not have a signal.

Good luck.

HamRad

[rvivey]

Hi Dave,
I have the DataStorm on top of my 3475RL and it works great.
I have an Internet business selling software and must have a connection wherever we travel. It has been very dependable.
We are also fulltimer's.

[dmr1021]

At long last, we took delivery of our 3400 RL on Aug 1st. Montana Satellite out of Kalispell, MT put a MotoSat Datastorm and an HDTV dish on top. WOW!!! The MotoSat has been great so far and a really supportive Users Group. We have wireless attached to it so we can work anywhere...inside or out. I recommend it for anyone that needs reliable internet.

-Dave

[w4nfr]

We too have the Hughes Internet Satellite service on a tripod and it works very well. We camp in the west where there is spotty cell phone service many times, so we added the
Net Zero telephone service to use over the Internet. Only $4.00/month for 100 minutes and 2 cents/min after that. The phone dialer is on your computer screen and my headset plugs into the USB port of the computer. You get your own area Code / phone number and it is two way and anybody can call you. Also,features voice mail. It works good is a good backup for crappy cell phones. The only trick to using the Net Zero VOIP over satellite is that only one person can talk at a time, a little like two-way radio, but the switching is automatic! The quality is pretty good!

William & Lydia
'04 Big Sky Montana 3575RL
'03 Ford F-350XLT V-10 6.8L, K&N, 4.30 rear-end,
B & W Companion Hitch, Prodigy Controller, Rhino Bedliner.