Satelite tv for a caravan

THANK YOU VERY MUCH I have been looking at the sat King and I have been wondering about the wind factor on a square surface and also about the gears in the pivot point and what they are made of are they plastic or metal

Be advised that the small square dish might be OK on the eastern coast but will disappoint you one you are further west.

The best dish is the 85cm dish especially on the west coast.

I have travelled WA extensively in the past 2years and have not had any loss of signal anywhere with the Sat King setup.

There is NO issue with the Satking and the wind on the rectangular surface.
Brodie H3 you don't have to worry about the gears at all and if they are plastic - which they are. Don't know why you have an issue with plastic gears - well they ain't plastic they are usually Delrin or Teflon or along those lines. You won't destroy the Satking Promax if it is mounted correctly. Ideally they should be mounted from the axle position forward, not on the very back of the caravan as you normally see.
Kazza055 there is *NO* issue anywhere around Australia with the Satking Promax rectangular dish.
You definitely DO NOT need an 85cm dish anywhere in Australia. Do you realise the bigger the dish the harder it is to align to the satellite.

Hi Dave,
just a simple question but the answer might be a bit harder to get, but I am going to ask anyway do you have the rectangular dish or a round one, if rectangular, how far above the roof line does it sit when it is in the travel position, as I am very concous of the height of the dishes as I am limited to space above the the van, for getting it into our shed,
thank you .

They only go around and around and around and around because they don't read and follow the instructions.
The Satking Promax because of the advanced GPS fitted with quick acquisition locks onto the satellite very fast.

Yes there is a tripod auto dish available.
Travel Vision R6 Portable Fully Automatic Satellite System
As with all auto dishes it is not cheap.

I do not have one, I have used a manual dish for many, many years and have no troubles setting it up.

From their blurb "-Easy to connect with only one cable to your tuner (18m included but can provide a bigger length on request)"

Yes, there is a portable automatic system and they are *crap* from what I have seen and well over priced for what they are.
Nothing stopping you using a Satking Promax as a portable unit if you wanted to. I have a friend with a Iveco motorhome that uses a Satking Promax as a portable unit. Slides out from the back as he is disabled and cannot use a dish and tripod. All his roof space is taken up with solar panels.

I use a 65cm dish and tripod and always have my dish locked onto the satellite within two minutes.

Dave, can you expand on why you think the portable automatic system is *crap* from what you have seen and well over priced for what they are. The one I have seen advertised appears not much different to roof mounted ones and costs less.

I looked at ones that are usually fixed mounted but the problem was that they have short operating cables and could not be used as a 'portable' system very far from the van. The Travel Vision only has one coax cable to supply both the signal and operating power. There is a 'fixed' system, Outback TV, that also only has one coax cable to supply both the signal and operating power and could be used as a 'portable' system some distance from the van.

I use a 85cm dish and tripod and always have my dish locked onto the satellite within a few minutes as well. Looking at auto systems was just a whim I had at one stage.

Hi Rod, Just a quick question is your system automatic or manual and what was the deciding factor for you to go with your system. I am a complete novice when it comes to satellite systems but I am willing to learn.
thank you

G'day Brodie. I have a manual system. It is an 85cm dish mounted on a tripod. To set up I use the 'sat dish pointer' function in Wikicamps. It gives the required angles and also has a camera function to show if there are any line of sight obstructions. I set the elevation and skew first which makes it easy to find the direction. Use a good sat finder which is programmed to only locate the C1 sat to indicate a lock on.

The reason I went for a manual system is the cost of an auto system and, as you have alluded to, the problems of line of sight with a fixed system.

As to height of fixed systems, you should be able to get the specs from the web but generally they would be less than a roof mounted aircon.

Rod N go and have a play with the 'automatic' stand alone systems and you will soon see why they are crap.
The roof mounted manual systems are also lousy.

Broodie H3 the dishes that sit on the ground in a triangular base are *AWFUL* in every way. The tripod is by far the easiest to set-up with a 65cm dish:
https://www.satplus.com.au/products/phoenix-satellite-tripod?variant=735025419
85cm dish is too difficult to align and totally unecessary. The other issue the 85cm dish has nearly twice the wind loading.
This satellite meter only picks up C1 and is the best and easiest used:
https://www.satplus.com.au/collections/satellite-meters/products/satking-sk500-digital-posi-id-satellite-meter?variant=1216050259
I would like a Satking Promax but don't have anywhere to mount it, and don't have issues tuning in the dish as I have extensive experience and being using satellite TV mobile forever - long before we had digital tuning meters. Having a dish like the Satking or Promax sure makes life easy especially when wet, and don't have to bother with TV aerials. Again with MySwitch TV information, makes it substantially easier to know where and which direction the TV transmitters are, along with the ACMA information.
Aurora was the satellite TV system before VAST. VAST is a 1,000% improvement.

Dave, "the dishes that sit on the ground in a triangular base are *AWFUL* in every way".
Really? I have an Optima 75 from Satplus that is the original folding one with the triangular base and have very little problems with it and it is so easy to pack away. So little problems in fact that on a recent trip we were alongside someone struggling with theirs on a tripod base that just as he had given up on it I was setting up ours and had it working in a couple of minutes. We then setup his quite quickly but struggled a bit with his tripod and his real cheap detector. Combined with the basic data sheet from Satplus covering a lot of locations, my mobile with Wikicamps and the older "marriage saver" sat finder I have had almost no problem anywhere on mainland Australia. Only 2 places have stumped me altogether. In Geraldton people with roof mounted dishes had no problem but ours on the ground had no chance, The angle was so low that some hills were in the way. The other was recently somewhere North of Toowoomba and it was very low signal strength one night and perfect the next so was probably environmental factors of cloud cover, very low temperature and maybe closeness to a large transmission tower.

I've seen people with drawbar mounted dishes and ones on rear bumpers having to realign their van a couple of times in getting the angle right as well as people with cheap meters with varying degrees of difficulty. Then again others that have used the same for a while have little problems so I guess it's a lot to do with your own experience with what you have. Some people can make do with just a compass. So I don't rubbish other peoples systems as which is best is what's works for you, and that may not work for someone else.

There is one thing though that I have had problems with, and that's some mobile devices and Wikicamps. I've had 2 phones with compass issues and it was to do with the magnetic sensors needing resetting. I've seen references to going through a figure 8 movement to reset the phone but it didn't work. I don't know about Apple stuff but there's a hidden menu, maybe in all Android ones but not sure, and you can rotate the device through 3 axis and reset it. It worked for me.

I'll second the Oyster set up. In 3 years on the road it's only been a very few times we haven't had signal because of trees etc. We find it easy to park with a clear signal shaft to the NE. We seldom use caravan parks. The Oyster 85cm dish has always got a signal even in the low recptn areas of the Kimberley etc.

Agree.

A big diameter dish is important.

We get good reception way down in Augusta, WA, about as far away as you can get from the satellite on mainland Oz.

65cm dishes are all that is needed around Australia on VAST. On Aurora you needed 85cm dishes supposedly, but I got satellite TV everywhere on the west coast and northern Australia on Aurora on 65cm dish. VAST signal strength is twice what Aurora used to be.

Hi Dave ,
can you tell me the differences between the vast and Aurora system please as I thought the was only the vast system???
Thank you

Forget about the Aurora system. The only sat TV systems now are VAST (FTA) and Foxtel (Pay TV). Aurora was replaced by VAST and is only known to veteran/old sat TV users.

Thank you Rod and every one else that has replied, It looks as though the Sat king is going to be the choice mainly because of pricing, if it doesnt do the job i'll complian to the management and probably get told it was my choice,gentlemen thank you very much