Need Some Hi End Tech Assistance

JDarst

Member
Original poster
Dec 23, 2012
7
0
Illinois
I am new to this site and know enough about satellite tv to just mess things up.

This story is kinda long, would shorten if I could figure that out too.... so sorry to be so long winded with this request for help.

For a month or 2 every winter, I take my motorhome to my brother's heated shop (yes, I have to cut firewood). In the past, I have always set up a portable dish out side the shop and run cable into the bus.

This year, decided to set him up with a big screen tv, VIP211k, a 1000.2 west arc dish and cable the building.

With everything installed except shop tv and 211k, I connected my bus to the cabling and 1000.2 west arc. EVERYTHING worked peerfectly.

Couple days go by and I have finished making the mount for the BIG screen. Now with TV mounted and the VIP211k connected, I call into DISH and have them add the new box to my brothers account. Brothers house dish was an East Arc set up. So, when DISH added this new box, they set it up to receive signals from the EAST ARC satellites.

This VIP211k is attached to port 1 of the 1k.2 lnb and now is on-line.

Once the VIP211k was activated and on line, the VIP211k's in my bus started intermittently acting up. Kept getting worse. I would go unplug the newly added shop VIP211k and the bus VIP 211k's would work ok again.

With these new problems, I changed my brothers dish down at his house to a WESTERN ARC set up, and called dish and had them change his programming over to the new WA.

Now, the shop VIP211k was getting all the Western Arc channels and working like it should.

However, the bus VIP211k's have gotten to the point that they barely will acquire a signal, and maybe not from all 3 satellites. It varies which signals they are able to maintain. Sometimes while watching programming, I will get a "Complete Signal Loss". To get my show back, would go into the MENU and select the GUIDE and change channels 1 up or down then back to my program and, the show would come back on.

Today, I found a DISH satellite sub-contractor/installer and had him take a look at my stuff.

He attached a test machine to one of my cables and determined that the LNB was bad. Keep in mind the shop TV and VIP211k have continued to work flawlessly while this test was going on.

The tech replaced my LNB and the shop TV keeps working perfectly- both before and after the LNB change.

However, I continue to have problems with the bus VIP211k's communicating well with the LNB.

The bus has some RG-59 cable in the walls as it is a 1985 Bluebird Wanderlodge. The tech indicated that those would definitely have to be changed out.

They(RG-59 cables) have been handling all of my satellite tv needs for the last 8 years.

As far as the bus goes, I have been using all of VIP211k's(3 of them) and all the same components for the last 2 years with out any problems.

Now that I have connected my receivers to the same dish as the shop receiver(which started out looking for the EA for at least 2 weeks), things have gone to hell.

Do I need to replace the receivers on the bus that were kind of "fighting" with the shop receiver when it was trying to get signals from the EA?

Back when the shop box was looking WEST, ran a check switch test and got a SW64. The box and LNB combo should have given a DPP1K.2 switch if it were set up properly to begin with.

Would this mistake cause my VIP211k's on the bus to be compromised?

There is some RG-59 cable in the bus. There are 2 A-B switches which help switch from the roof top KVH in-motion to an EXTERNAL dish outlet on the exterior/side of the bus.

The bus system has always worked perfectly until connecting it to the same satellite dish as the shop VIP211k with EA setup.

Due to the nature and complexity of this question, I really appreciate if a very experienced technician could provide some insight...

Thanks for taking the time to read this extremely lengthy post and possibly providing quality technical assistance.

:confused:
 
Claude, Thanks for that quick response. I will remove all of the RG59 and any crimp fittings. I need to have a method to switch from roof top KVH to external remote dish.

Heck this whole system has worked fine for 2 years. What changed?
 
Well, the specs for satellite systems call for RG6. You could have bad RG59 cables, or bad barrels, or just too much length of RG59 going to the shop antenna, making your motorhome 211 reception spotty. There could also be improperly grounded power, causing noise to be injected. I'd say bypassing the RG59 and barrels are a good diagnostic step. Next (if that doesn't fix it), I would plug all 211 power into the same source.
 
We've seen receivers that are plugged into different power sources and connected to the same dish behave this way.
 
I need to have a method to switch from roof top KVH to external remote dish.
We use some high quality coax switches to toggle between our roof dish and the ground tripod. Works fine.

There is some problem with math here. If I read the posts correctly, there are three VIP211Ks in the Bus. Ignoring the external 1000.2 for the moment, how does a KVH drive three TVs? A single LNBF can only drive two receivers unless there is an external 3x3 or 4x4 switch involved.

Back to the 1000.2, you stated the the Shop TV receiver is connected to Port 1 on the 1000.2. Are you running cables from Port 2 and 3 to the Bus?

Are there some rules about where external switches can be added. I.e. if there is a switch in the bus, can it be attached to Ports 2 & 3 a receiver directly to Port 1?
 
Can anyone tell if there is a HIGH ISOLATION A/B switch that works great with HIGH DEF satellite signal cables (2,300GHz)?

In my effort to make my bus DISH friendly, I need toi replace the current 900MHz switches with HIGH ISOLATION switches.


I would like to post my schematic of the current set up in my bus, maybe someone can point me in a better direction to accomplish the same result....

Thanks much
Jay
 
I have no clue what these A/B switches are? You have 4 receivers and a 1000.2 dish, so get a DishPro Plus 44 switch, connect the lnb to the switch with port 1 of lnb to port 1 of DPP44, and so on. Then connect the DPP44 power adapter to port 1 of the DPP44 output and you can connect a receiver to the other end of the power adapter, then connect the other receivers to the output of the DPP44. As for your Antenna get a 4 port splitter and connect each receiver to the splitter for Antenna. Looking at your diagram I'm boggled why these A/B switches are used. Don't forget to run Check Switch on the receivers afterwards.
 
I forgot to add that you should replace all RG59 cable with RG6 cable that has been swept to 2.5ghz or 3ghz.