Take DISH Programming With You

This is a neat addition to a camper. This is Winegard's Dish Playmaker. And the way this works is that once you get where you're going, you're gonna take this antenna outside your camper, connect a coax cable to it. That coax is gonna run into the camper. And the signal comes in here to a receiver.

The receiver, of course, you can connect to your devices inside the camper. What that's gonna let you do is no matter where you are connect to Dish TV. It's a really cool system. And let me show you how it goes into the camper. When it comes to install on this whole Playmaker system, don't worry about the antenna.

There's no install on the camper involved with it. What happens is once you get where you're going, you take this out, set it outside, connect a coax to it here. And we're gonna talk more about locating this outside the camper when we're done. But there's no install. This does not get fastened to the camper.

Inside the camper here, we've got this cabinet, which is set up to receive the receiver. The way it's gonna work is Wally is gonna live right in there, and what Wally needs is input. And that input has to come from outside the camper. So coax cable is gonna go in the back of the cabinet, and that's gonna terminate at Wally, at the receiver. On this end what I'll end up doing is drilling a hole here.

That's gonna get me to the outside of the camper so that the coax can run outside. The way this works, this is cool. We see this box, this connection is gonna end up on the outside on the camper wall. And the coax is gonna come in on the back of it. And when you're not using this, you snap that closed.

And that's what makes it weather-tight. That's how that can live outside. Then when you're ready to connect to it, you open it up, hook the coax up, that then connects to the antenna. And that's how the signal comes back inside. Where that leaves me now is I gotta run and get a drill, and then punch that hole through from inside to outside.

So we can thread the coax to the outside. It's always really, really difficult, nearly impossible. On the outside of the camper to locate where you are relative to the inside, it's easier to just work from the inside out. This drill bit is not the right size for this coax. Easier to start small, and then I'm gonna come back in from the outside with the larger bit.

And that just gives me way better control over what's going on here. So this part at the risk of jinxing myself is relatively simple, which is just locate where I'm gonna be, drill through. Now, outside in. Now it's kinda like, second verse same as the first, except I'm outside going in with a larger diameter bit. Easy peasy.

I brought the coax out and here's, don't you slip back in. Here's the way this goes. There's that junction that I showed you, the outdoor box that I showed you inside the camper. So that's gonna simply connect here. Then you wanna locate this, get it straight.

And screws are gonna go right here. And in order to do that, I like to punch those with a scratch awl first. And it just makes it easier for the screws to start. So that when they hit that aluminum, they don't end up slipping all over the place. And in a spot that I'm not happy with.

Then some RV caulk behind here. Now here's the way this system comes together. This is the coax that's gonna feed to the antenna. So we would do this. But, instead of connecting that and then having this drape, what I did is I picked up at 90 degree connector.

So now this can go like this. And then this will be able to go like this once you're on site at the campground or wherever. So then it just makes life a little bit easier on that coax. So it's not sticking out like this and then hanging by gravity down toward the ground, a 90 degrees is going to make that a lot simpler. Additionally, I've got one of these 90s on the back of Wally, so that instead of the coax coming out of the back of the receiver and turning in order to get here, the 90 is in place in order to facilitate that, just to make it easier on the coax.

So that takes care of this install portion here on the outside of the camper. Well, that was an easy and successful installation. Here's how the system all comes together. Once you get to where you're going, you're gonna take the antenna outside and position it, more on that in a second. You're going to connect the coax here.

And this coax of course comes into that water-tight box that's on the outside of the camper. Now positioning that, here's what's really cool. You could get an app on your phone and that's gonna help you locate potential obstructions. So that once that satellite or once an antenna is in a spot, you can look and see, is that a good spot? And you can move it accordingly.

So that's gonna really simplify the process of making sure that this is talking to the satellite. This in turn then talk to our internal components. 'Cause we've got the coax cable that's coming through the cabinet. Here's Wally, Wally has got a remote. So we can use that to control the receiver.

And then Wally's got outputs and here they are, and that's what's gonna let us connect to Wally here, inside the camper. A really simple addition in order to allow you to connect to Dish television via satellite while you're in you camper.