Tailgater by Dish Network, How well does it work for RVers?

A couple of months back we spent some time talking about some of the pain points with full timing. One of those pain points was around TV reception and we touched on some of the choices. One of those choices being Satellite TV. Today we are going to talk about the Tailgater system from Dish Network.

Great deal couldn’t pass it up!

Before going on the road Vicki and I had a Satellite setup at our house from Direct TV. We had all the bells and whistles, and we were paying a huge cable bill. When we sold the house and moved into the RV one of the expenses we decided we did not need was satellite TV. So for the last 4 years we have only been using over the air HD. In a lot of areas we could get some channels but constantly ran into issues with poor or no reception, fuzzy pictures and limited choices.

Last month while visiting in Virginia someone that was coming off the road had a complete Tailgater system with a fairly new Box and lots of cable. He was asking $300.00 which was a great deal, but I offered him $200.00 WHICH was even a better deal and he took it. We were getting ready to buy a new antenna for the rig anyways and that was going to be about the same cost so this seemed like a better solution. Even though we don’t watch a lot of TV it’s still nice to have and it seems that for the past few month everywhere we went we had NO reception at all. So we thought this might help alleviate some of those pain points.

Initial Setup – How hard could this be, LOL?

Getting the dish up and running and the cable to the RV was easy, getting it to pick up satellites, not so easy. I went online and everything I read said you had to go directly from the Tailgater to the receiver, no splitters. I decided that the first order of business would be to get it hooked up and running then decide what would be the easiest way to run the cable. So according to Dish, just point it towards the southern sky and you will be good to go. THAT is not the case at all. It turns out that you actually need to point it somewhat south depending on where you are at. You can’t have ANY obstructions at ALL with the tailgater. Because of the size of the dish itself you need a pretty clear view. When you first turn on the system it does a scan for 3 satellites, 110, 119 and 126. Each has a set of channels for Dish as well as the HD side of the channels. If you don’t pick up all 3 satellites, you won’t get all of your channels.

Easy solution, there has to be an app you can download to help with this, right? Well if you have an IPhone there is an app DISH FOR MY RV you can download it from the apple store. I have an android and well at the time that I setup our system could not find an app that actually helped with the setup (Since the initial setup I did find an app that works pretty well for android, SATFINDER LITE). I highly suggest you get the app for pointing as it makes it a lot easier process by far. Since on my initial setup I did not have any app to assist me it was all trial and error and took about an hour for me to get the system to work.

I was not able to get all the channels we signed up for but it was better than nothing. Since this was my first time ever setting it up and was not sure what I could or could not do with the cable I just ran it through the door. Now I need to find a long term solution that will make setting it up each time we move easier. I decided that I would go ahead and go against what everything on the net said and just hook the cable through my park cable connection. I recently upgraded that wire and figured it would be an easy setup each time we moved. Guess what, IT WORKS GREAT. I have no issue when running the cable from the tailgater to the park connection.

Honest Review of the Tailgater from an RVers perspective.

The setup was not as easy as I had hoped for, I think part of that was due to where we were located at the time we set it up. There were a lot of trees and getting a completely clear view of the sky was almost impossible. But if you are full timing then you stay at campgrounds, and most campgrounds have trees. If I would have found the SATFINDER LITE app when I was first doing my setup I think it would have been a lot easier. This app works pretty well, since last month when we bought the system we have been in 2 other campgrounds, both in the Mountains of Virginia. I honestly thought that getting the satellites to align correctly would be next to impossible. With this app I’m able to get the general area of where the satellites are and point the dish pretty close, may need to make a small tweak or two but overall we are able to get our satellite up and running in about 15 minutes.

Since the initial setup pain points we have had little or no trouble with the system. It works pretty well and we have been happy with the reception and choices of channels. Overall it’s a pretty good system and so far seems to be a great solution for us. I will say that if you need technical assistance utilize the internet and would not suggest relying on dish’s technical support. During the initial setup when I called and in the first week when I called it seemed that they only have 2 solutions to give you and if that doesn’t work then they tell you the system is bad and you have to take it to the local retailer. You can find answers to just about all of your issues with a Google search.

Overall I feel that the tailgater is a good solution if you are wanting a simple satellite solution without breaking the bank. One suggestion is to check craigslist. There seems to always be someone out there selling a system. If you buy a system from craigslist or a private seller, get the number off the box before completing the transaction and call dish, make sure that the box is not stolen or that there are no HOLDS on the account for that box.

Until Next time – SAFE TRAVELS

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Photo: Tailgater by Dish Network