picking up our tailgater satelite today - Montana Owners Club

Capt Kidd · 01-27-2012, 05:20 AM

I am going to the Dish dealer today to pick up our Tailgater satelite today.

Now comes the fun of installing it. I will have to drill a hole thru the slide wall behing the TV to run the cable out. This gives me the willies. I hate to put holes in the side of my Monty.

However am really looking forward to having this satelite and being able to switch back and forth from cable, air, and satelite all from the remote unit and not having to change cables all the time.

bw2 · 01-27-2012, 09:53 AM

Check with Dish, a couple of folks in our park are having a problem with the Tailgator. They say it sets and locks on to the sat. but then a little while later it switches into the set up mode again and starts searching for the sat.

Just an FYI

Mrs. CountryGuy · 01-27-2012, 12:57 PM

So far, the only issue we have had with ours (knock on wood, err, my head) is that heavy rain has knocked us off line. Trees can be an issue, but, of course.

CountryGuy is in 7th heaven! He has wanted satellite for SOOOO long! LOL

wingerphil · 01-27-2012, 04:59 PM

ours has a had a couple of hicups lately. Overnight dish does an automatic update on the hard drive for the reciever and it shuts down and re-boots going through the check switch and locking onto the sats again. Twice now the tailgater will not "lock on" even though we are showing strong signals on the built in meter on the receiver but still no picture. Each time it has done this I have fixed it by changing the coax cable. I have 3 50' cables and just by swapping them out it starts working again. Not sure if it's a bad connection or just me manhandling the tailgater unit while changing out the coax but either way it starts working again.
We have had ours for 3 months now and besides the instances above have really enjoyed it.

Phil

Champ_49 · 01-27-2012, 11:34 PM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Mrs. CountryGuy

So far, the only issue we have had with ours (knock on wood, err, my head) is that heavy rain has knocked us off line. Trees can be an issue, but, of course.

CountryGuy is in 7th heaven! He has wanted satellite for SOOOO long! LOL

Carol, we had our sattelite go out there at the park when the storms come in. Its pretty common there. Just to let you know I don't believe its the tailgater thats your problem. Ours is a traveler and it happened to us also.

Dave

sreigle · 01-28-2012, 02:03 AM

I also didn't want to jack with the cables all the time. Plus sometimes we'll have cable and want satellite, too. Like right now.

Our 3400 had a phone jack on the wall behind the desk. I removed the wall plate on both inside and outside, removed the phone jack wiring between them. You could then place two wall plates having coax connectors where the original plates were, then connect the two with a short piece of RG6 coax. Connect the inside to your receiver and the outside to the dish. Camping World sells an outside wall plate with a cover to protect it from the elements when not in use.

We had already replaced the phone jack for use with our external cell antenna for our wifi so I drilled a new hole through the wall, close to where that phone jack was. Then I installed the wall plates as above. It works great. The wall has hard foam insulation inside so it's not a problem to drill. I started with a small drill bit and drilled from inside, just in case I hit a stud. At least there wouldn't be an extra hole outside. But I did not hit a stud.

We got a tailgater a couple of weeks ago, after seeing CountryGuy's setup. Many thanks to Al for his help and to John for pointing us to Al and Carol's setup. For us, we have a cable tv connection so often I just couldn't see paying for satellite those months we don't need it. This solves that problem since we pay for satellite only for the months we use it. And I also didn't want to deal with aiming the dish. With the tailgater all I have to do it point it generally south and it automatically finds and locks in on the satellites (3 of them). Currently our sight picture looks like this... The tailgater found one satellite but that one includes espn so we can watch our Jayhawk ballgames in HD.

Having the tailgater also opens up new opportunities for us. No longer do I have to try to find an rv park with cable.

For those wondering, the "standard" price for the Tailgater and receiver (with 50' coax) is $499. We bought from a Dish Independent and got it all for $449 and tax. If you don't already have a Dish setup somewhere, be sure the retailer connects the receiver to their system and downloads the latest firmware. It requires at least version L495 to work with the tailgater.

sreigle · 01-28-2012, 02:06 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by bw2

Check with Dish, a couple of folks in our park are having a problem with the Tailgator. They say it sets and locks on to the sat. but then a little while later it switches into the set up mode again and starts searching for the sat.

Just an FYI

Ask them to check the firmware/software version in their receivers. There is only one receiver currently that works with the Tailgater. That's the VIP211k HD Solo receiver. It MUST have version L495 or later to work properly with the Tailgater. I think the info button on the front of the receiver might show them that info. If not, it's on one of the menu items. I forget just where. Believe it or not, some of these receivers have been on the shelf for awhile and have not been updated. The Tailgater has only been available since about last August.

sreigle · 01-28-2012, 02:09 AM

Another thing we (and CountryGuy) have discovered, Don. You can connect a usb hard drive to the receiver, then call Dish and pay $40 setup fee, and you have DVR recording, playback, pause, skip back and forward, etc., including pausing and skipping what you're currently watching. Check the manual, though. It requires an externally powered hard drive, must be at least 50GB and not more than 1TB (some sources say it now can handle 2TB). Ours is a 320GB and that allows for a couple hundred hours recording of standard definition or about 30 hours of HD. The manual recommends a couple of brands. We used the MyBook suggested in the manual.

Mrs. CountryGuy · 01-28-2012, 03:02 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Champ_49

Carol, we had our sattelite go out there at the park when the storms come in. Its pretty common there. Just to let you know I don't believe its the tailgater thats your problem. Ours is a traveler and it happened to us also.

Dave

Agree Dave, it was not the unit, but, the weather. We just waited for the storm to pass.

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