Wiring in Satellite

[fast murray]

We just purchased a 2004 Wildcat 28bh 5th wheel. Can anyone explain to me how the TV wiring is in this trailer? I want to run a satellite dish but I don't understand how the rooftop antenna ties into everything. Ex. where does the antenna wire go in the camper? If I hook up to the TV in jack, is the antenna out of the loop? Is there a switch someplace? I was thinking I could just hook up to the outside TV in jack but it's looking more like I need to run a new coax out to the dish. I'm an electrician so I understand how it should work but I'm guessing there is some stuff hidden in the walls somewhere. Sorry for all the questions, this is alot different than when I put this stuff in my folks' motorhome. Thanks in advance for any advice!!

[jimh]

do you have a sat connection inside the trailer?
the sat on my 2002 cardinal is next to but a separate system.
to get the sat receiver to both tv's, i use radio frequency link over the air.
the tv ant and external cable connection are controlled by a switch on the inside tv panel. when u turn on the amplifier, the antenna is switched in and the outside cable is switched off. when the tv amp is off, external cable is fed thru.
the switch i am referring to is the very small switch that turns the ant amplifier on. on mine there is a tv outlet and a cigarette lighter socket mounted on this plate. feel around on the plate and u will feel a very small push switch. when u push it a (green) light will come on. when this light is on, the ant is active.

[fast murray]

Here's what I came up with for the time being: I drilled a 5/16" hole through the bottom corner of the TV shelf into the top of the storage area under the 5th wheel. I routed that to the outside cable connection, removed the existing one and hooked my new cable to that (I taped the other one up as I have no idea where to disconnect it. I can now hook the dish to the outside cable in connection. This way I have an uninterrupted cable going to the receiver. Now I can backfeed the wiring in the camper from the receiver by the TV and at least everyone can watch the same channel.

[jimh]

urs may not have been wired for sat. mine has a separate plate outside that is fed to its own jack downstairs and upstairs. i'm not sure how they split it but believe they are using a standard (satellite 950-2250 MHZ) DC pass thru splitter. sense i use dish, i have not tried putting a receiver in both places. i don't think it would work (dish uses switches instead of splitters). i plug the sat dish into the outside sat connection and plug the receiver dish connection to the sat connection inside the trailer. the output of the sat receiver i plug directly to my tv and take one of the other outputs and transmit it to the tv downstairs. (i have the sat receiver upstairs because the ride is smoother there).

[KarenS144]

I'm no help with this as I have yet to figure out our system. Inside, we have the switch box with antenna-cable-sat/aux and wire in from each and a TV out cable (total of 4 cables from the back of the box). In the same storage area (next to the TV) is a totally separate bundle of wires taped together with a "satellite" label. There are no ends...just raw hacked off wires. I cannot find a separate "sat-in" receptacle on the outside of the coach anywhere. In the storage bin where the electric is, there is a "park-cable in" and in a bin on the other side of the coach is another "park-cable in".

I can't find anyway to put the receiver inside so it feeds the TVs from there. We can get sat TV only if the receiver is located outside and the "out from TV" on it goes into the "park cable" receptacle outside. Of course, that makes changing the channel a challenge from the inside! It's not that we HAVE to have TV. It has become more of a battle of wills and right now the wiring is winning.

I hoped someone reading this thread might have the answer! I can't figure out why the wiring is there and apparently separate from the wiring that's hooked up but there's no outside plug in nor a way to attach to the receiver. (We're using a Winegard Carryout.)

[fast murray]

KarenS, what I did with installing a new wire was easy and only took about an hour. It may not be the most versatile setup but we'll never camp anywhere that has park cable and ever since the digital tv conversion happened, I can't really pick anything up on antenna anyways. Now that my new wire goes straight from the park cable connection to the sat receiver, I hook the dish to the park cable in jack and aim. BTW, I just made one of those inverted dish tripods and it's awesome.