Tripod mounting a Winegard Trav'ler

[remoandiris]

Can the Trav'ler be tripod mounted for portability or is it too heavy for such a setup?

[Biker56]

Winegard Trav'ler spec. It weigh's in at 53 lb plus whatever you will be mounting it on. A big enough storage compartment may be hard to find also.
there is a reason it is made to be put on roofs.

[Bobi and Dick McKee]

Roman, The traveler must remain absolute solid when it is in the up or receive position or it will not close down.  I say this because one time I left the dish up in a 50 mph wind that was hitting the dish head on.  When I tried to close the dish it went into the safe position and pointed the LNB  straight up.  When I called Winegard they explained that if a strong wind moves the dish 1 degree any direction, up down or side to side, the dish looses it position and goes into the safe position.  They walked me through the steps to close it and sent me an   e mail for future use.  My point is that unless your mount is rock solid you will probably have a lot of trouble.

[remoandiris]

So far the lot of trouble I am having is with finding the sat even with the correct az, el and skew.  Sat tech is coming again tomorrow.  Hopefully he can give me some more tips. 

[SWharton]

You are having these problems with the traveler on your roof or on a tripod.

Go to TV4RV.com for a dish and a very good tripod. Very good site.

[remoandiris]

I just got a Dish on a heavy duty TV4RV tripod.  The Dish tech had it dialed in.  I put the TV4RV folding LNB arm kit on a few days ago and can not find the sat, despite having the correct az, el and sk. 

I was hoping a tripod mounted Trav'ler would be possible, eliminating the need for manual adjusting of a dish while still enabling the use of a Hopper with access to different sats simultaneously.

[Zulu]

58 minutes ago, remoandiris said:

I just got a Dish on a heavy duty TV4RV tripod.  The Dish tech had it dialed in.  I put the TV4RV folding LNB arm kit on a few days ago and can not find the sat, despite having the correct az, el and sk. 

I was hoping a tripod mounted Trav'ler would be possible, eliminating the need for manual adjusting of a dish while still enabling the use of a Hopper with access to different sats simultaneously.

It's more than possible. However, despite what some of the "Satellite Whisperers" say, aiming a tripod-mounted sat dish can be a chore. I've done it for years, and it can still be a PITA, but after I popped for a pricey sat meter, the process became much easier.

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

1 hour ago, remoandiris said:

I just got a Dish on a heavy duty TV4RV tripod.  The Dish tech had it dialed in.  I put the TV4RV folding LNB arm kit on a few days ago and can not find the sat, despite having the correct az, el and sk. 

I was hoping a tripod mounted Trav'ler would be possible, eliminating the need for manual adjusting of a dish while still enabling the use of a Hopper with access to different sats simultaneously.

The dish was aimed and then you changed the arm and now you can't get a lock on the satellite again?

Putting the exact Elevation on the dish and aiming the dish in what you think is the exact Azimuth and assuming you put the correct Skew on the dish, you probably won't hit the satellite.

In 12 years of aiming a dish, I never tweaked the Skew so that is the one adjustment you can count on.  The Elevation of the dish is pretty close on the scale but may need to be tweak for best signal.

The Azimuth is the tricky part.  First off, what are you pointing with, the arm?  The arm isn't the part of the dish to aim with.  The closest accurate Azimuth reference is the parallel blades at the back of the disk.  The arm is a bad aiming device as the satellite signal path does not follow the arm, is is 15 degrees off of the arm which once the Skew is not 0 the signal path is to the side of the arm.

Second the dish is metal.  The closer you have the compass to the dish, the more the Deviation of the dish will change the compass reading.  I have seen +19 degrees.  The farther you move the compass away from the dish, the less accurate you are in aiming the Azimuth.  Deviation is not a constant, it varies as the placement of the dish is on the Earth's surface.

So start with the mast vertical.  If you have the TV4RV.com tripod, this is easy especially if you use the bullet level on top of the mast before the dish is mounted.  If you don't have a vertical mast, quit.

Set the Skew that you got from the manual or DishPointer.com.  Be sure if using DishPointer.com you are using tthe numbers for Multi-LNB Dish 1000;2 for the WA or Dish 1000.4 for the EA, not just 119 or 72.5.  Do not use any setting found in a Dish receiver.

Mount the dish on the tripod and set the Elevation to the desired setting.

Now aim the dish to the west of where you think the Azimuth is.  I usually add about 10 degrees. 

Now with the dish connected to the receiver or to a good meter.  If using the receiver, set the antenna pointing screen to satellite 119, and a transponder 11 or above.  This is important to set the correct LNBF on the dish to be aiming with.  A good meter will supply the LNBF selection signals.

Now watching you meter, this is so much easier with a meter than trying to use the receiver meter mode, slowly swing the dish or the left looking a signal from the satellite. You should have a blip in the signal strength.  If not, swing back to the right.  If you are not seeing a signal blip, you may not have cabling correct.

When you get a blip in the signal,  fine tune the signal level by small right level movement.  When you have the best level, then you can tweak the Elevation.  If you have not installed the TV4RV.com kit that makes the Elevation a screw adjustment, this can be hard as loosing the nuts, moving and re-tightening the nuts is hard.  A DPP 1000.4 dish has a built-in Elevation screw adjustment.

After tweaking the Elevation for the best signal, you should be done.

However, you could be on the wrong satellite.  You run a Switch Check on the receiver and see what satellites have been found.  For the WA, it should be 119, 110, 129 for the WA.  If the satellites are not in that order, you are one off.  If you are off one satellite, move the dish 9 or 10 degrees, this is made easier by using the scale of the TV4RV.com tripod.

A really good meter will tell you if you on the correct satellite.

As for the Winegard Trav'ler.  We make about 40-50 move a year.  If we are in the west, we may encounter a site where the Trav'ler can't lock on the satellites 1 or 2 times.  We use our tripod then.  When we are in the east and we find we want to use the EA satellites for PTAT on our Hopper, we use our tripod dish with an EA LNBF head.

 

 

[remoandiris]

I really appreciate everyone's input.  I found the problem.  The compass I have from TV4RV is simply not accurate enough.  Or I was too dumb to use it properly the second time.  I did fine with it the first time I did it.  

This time I used the compass app on my phone to dial in az.  I was off by several degrees. Now my signal strength is better than before I added the folding LNB kit.

Will be canceling the tech appointment and saving the $80 fee.

[Jim & Wilma]

2 hours ago, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

The dish was aimed and then you changed the arm and now you can't get a lock on the satellite again?

Putting the exact Elevation on the dish and aiming the dish in what you think is the exact Azimuth and assuming you put the correct Skew on the dish, you probably won't hit the satellite.

Nice write up Mark!

We kept the DPH LNBs on our system and got a SuperBuddy you recommended.  Using the meter, it's almost fun to setup the tripod.

Found the meter on eBay and the guy threw in a broken one he had.  Fixed the broken one and auctioned it back on eBay for more than I originally paid for the two.