Worrisome Winegard Travler Controller Screen

[Zulu]

The last two times I've used my DISH Travler it has taken longer to acquire the sats and my ending Controller screen looks like this:

Missing asterisks (*) in front of 110 and 129.

The sats still appear on my Hopper 3, and their signal strength is also good, and I receive all my programming ok.

I contacted Winegard who answered the next day -- kudos. In effect, they said don't worry about it. That Travler acquisition can take up to 45 minutes. Great. I hope I'm not heading in that direction, nut my Travler is over a decade old. I'm seeing tripod set up in my future.

Anyone else seen this behavior?

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

The Trav'ler on our Trailer Supreme trailer is 9 years old and still function.  Since you are receiving signals, I would suspect the logic board in the turret decoding the signals from the LNBF head is fading. 

Trouble is that is a trip to Winegard for a fix.  But I would consider a rebuild of the Trav'ler.  And I do carry a tripod for the EA satellites and when trees in the way

[Zulu]

9 hours ago, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

Trouble is that is a trip to Winegard for a fix.  But I would consider a rebuild of the Trav'ler.  And I do carry a tripod for the EA satellites and when trees in the way

What does a rebuild entail?

Yeah, I have enough DISH parts to open a store.

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

Winegard would do the rebuild.  \you would send the turret into them.

[LindaH]

20 hours ago, Zulu said:

That Travler acquisition can take up to 45 minutes.

I've been told that, too, by Winegard.  But I'm not that patient.  When the dish starts having trouble locating the satellite, I'll stow the dish, disconnect it from power, wait for 10 seconds or more, and then start the process over again.  That has always worked for me...but so far, I've never had the problem you're showing.

[docj]

From what I have observed with my Trav'ler the satellite acquisition logic is keyed to the satellite on the left, in this case 119.  The other two are used to determine the correct skew.  My Trav'ler is a DirectTV model but I think the logic is probably the same since mine is about the same age.  For DirecTV the 3 satellites are 101, 110 and 119

At one location last summer our Trav'ler was unable to lock onto 119 because of a nearby tree.  In that case it went through the entire satellite  acquisition sequence at least twice, if not three times, before finally stopping and  presenting a screen similar to what the OP posted., that is with one(or more) of the other asterisks missing indicating the absence of a satellite lock on those birds.  Although I didn't time it, I know that the acquisition process took at least ~15-20 minutes.

My guess is that the increased acquisition time reported by the OP is driven by the inability of the Trav'ler to find one or more of the targeted satellites for whatever the reason.  In my case, the problem was a tree, in the OP's case it could well be an electronics issue, but the end result is the same--increased acquisition time because the Trav'ler will repeat its acquisition process several times before "deciding" that it can't find all three satellites.

If you're impatient and don't want to wait for it to go through multiple attempts to find the satellites, one thing you can do is do an "emergency power off" (Power + Select buttons) when you observe it peaking before it starts the acquisition process all over again.  I've done this in the past when this problem has arisen and it's always left me with a "good enough" satellite lock to be able to watch most channels without issues.

[Jim & Wilma]

We’ve had this same screen once when shooting through trees. Signals were sporadic and some channels were SD.  I assumed one of more of the LNBs were not getting adequate signal strength.

 

I did have a problem a couple years ago where Travlr was not able to acquire SATs with clear sky. Found one of the coax conductors, of three coax bundle, opened between LNB and base.  I know someone else also had a coax failure. 

 

If it was me, I’d swap LNBs out and also check the coax cables for good continuity. I’m not hopeful this will yield results but it’s simple enough to do and worth the effort imo. 

[Bill w/bus]

We had a problem that was the internal cabling within the turret.  This cabling is a failure point. LNB 's could be failing or possibly the cabling within the arm to the exterior turret connection points.

The voltage is ,14 and 18 volts  therefore good and secure connections are critical for proper operation.

Good luck with your troubleshooting.

Bill

 

[harley-dave]

Ours also does this. Doesn't seem to make a difference in operation. The acquisition time is the same as always was. Our travelr was installed in 2005.

I have replaced the LNB, the reflector and the 3 coax cables on ours over the years, mostly due to sun and wind damage. (bad storm).

Dave

[Zulu]

It's back to normal . . . *119  *110  *129.