New Dish setup for camping

[Scoutlover]

I used to take Dish camping with us prior to us getting the Hopper setup at home. I would take a Dish 500 and a tripod and could get signal almost anywhere. The majority of our campgrounds are heavily wooded but I had 300+ feet of coaxial and could always find a small hole somewhere. Once we upgraded to the Hopper we turned in the old reciever and gave up on portable satellite for a while. We have since gotten back in to it and purchased a Wally and added it for $7 a month and we can turn it on/off for the months we camp. I started using my parent's Tailgater 1 and it's a love/hate relationship. I love getting HD channels now and the auto pointing, but I hate that I have to be in a wide open field to get signal. I also hate that I'm apparently limited to 50 feet of cable due to it powering the dish to look for signal. My questions are:

1. Are there any major upgrades with the newer models of tailgaters (or any auto pointing dish) that would allow me to use longer coaxial and get farther away from the camper or make it easier to point through small windows in the trees?

2. If I have to go back to a traditional dish and point it myself, what model dish would I need to work with the Wally, and what satellites would I be looking for? I'm on the eastern arc and used to point at 110 and 119 with the 500. Also, will the Wally give the pointing info I need for the dish based off zipcode like the old reciever I used to have?



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[NYDutch]

The best automatic aiming portable dish currently is the Winegard Pathway X2 that can be used for both the eastern and western arc sats. That makes aiming on treed campsites much more flexible than the Tailgaters and other western arc only dishes. I don't know what the max cable length for the X2 is, but I have seen one running on 100' of coax. Personally, I use a low cost tripod and a Dish 1000.4 dish equipped with a triple sat LNB, swapping it as needed for either arc for our RV's Hopper w/Sling. For the eastern arc you'll aim for the sats at 61.5 and 72.7 with a 1000.2 dish and twin LNB, or additionally the 77 sat with a 1000.4 triple LNB. The 77 sat duplicates a lot of the channels on 61.5 in SD, and it can be handy in tight spots where it's possible to hit 72.7 and 77, but not the wider spaced 61.5. For the western arc, the triple LNB on either dish will use the 110, 119, and 129 sats.