Topic: King Dish Tailgater Antenna (Read 5378 times) previous topic - next topic

Our first modification is complete, adding a King Dish Tailgater Antenna to the roof. 

For those not familiar with the product here is the link to it on the King website: The DISH Tailgater – Satellite Antenna for Tailgating and RVs | KING  Its very similar to the Winegard carryout or playmaker models.  It is for Dish only, so if you use DirectTV you would need another solution like the carryout.

We choose the King Tailgater primarily as it had a very nice optional mount system that allows it to mount to the roof, but if your reception is blocked by trees, you can easily un-clip it from the roof mount and move it to another location just like a portable antenna.  The roof mount we used is this one: Quick Release Roof Mount Kit for KING Portable Satellite Antenna

This gives us the most flexibility, the antenna stores on the roof so we don't take up our limited cargo space.  It often works just fine on the roof, but when it  does not, you can just go up the ladder (assuming you have one), unclip the unit and move it where it does have a clear sky view.  Ours is located at the very rear of the coach, we don't even have to get on the roof, we can unclip standing on the ladder.

I've attached a couple of pictures.

Looks nice ... I like how you can remove it from the roof and move it to potentially an open sky space.

How has the reception been so far with this unit?

So far pretty good! .... it has the "normal" tree blockage issues but its worked well in most campgrounds we have been in.  Will be traveling to the northeast next week so that will be a good test of the unit.

One thing to note is that you should turn off the dish at night (unplug power, not just the power button) or turn off the sleep setting in the receiver itself.  If you don't it seems the receiver wants to update the guide and since this dish is a single satellite at a time, it needs to move / position to each one to get the full guide.  If this happens, at say 5 in the morning, you will hear the dish motors activate to move it around, which will wake you up.

I like your quick disconnect roof mount. I chose a Winegard Carryout G2+ only because it would allow me to switch providers and hold down my monthly charge for reception. But Winegard doesn't offer a quick disconnect roof mount. I hope someone makes a million $ building one for sale for the public.

If they had a detachable roof mount available, I probably would have gone with the G2, mainly since I've had good success with Winegard products and had not experience with the King one.

As another update, we went to a campground in Maine that we had been to before in another RV.  That RV had the large Travler dish on the roof and was able to pull in 2 of 3 satellites. 

The King dish was blocked by trees, so I popped it off the roof mount and placed in on the picnic table (took less than a min, really !) ... hooked it up to the external satellite connection in the utility bay and swapped the receiver to the non-roof satellite connector.  The King found the same two satellites.  So that little dish worked just as well as the large dish.  Moving from the roof was really a snap as well, worked great the week I was there