Okay, so I was still battling this issue. My walls are THICK!
So, after making a jumper cable, extending my antenna, and using a parabolic reflector, I still wasn't able to penetrate through 2 walls of 1.5' thick adobe. (The tv2 is only 25' away!)
So, I started to research this. The antenna is operating on a 2.4Ghz frequency. I figured any wifi antenna should work with this receiver. So, I built a Double Biquad antenna, following the instructions on this page:
Biquad Antenna Construction
I think the main reason why dish put a proprietary connector on the back of the unit, is because regular RG6 has an impedance of 75 ohms. I'm assuming that this antenna was designed for a 50 ohm impedance, and that's why we can't combine it onto the RG6 like we did with our old receivers. With a higher impedance, a lot of power is wasted as soon as it hits RG6.
This didn't stop me from giving it a shot. I built a double biquad that has a gain of around 13-14db. I don't have any 50 ohm cable yet, but I used regular 75 ohm RG6 because I figured the gain would probably give me at least a little bit of improvement.
It finally worked! I know this is going to the extreme, but it was a fun project, and I think the double biquad looks pretty good on my wall! I'm going to order some 50 ohm LMR-400 cable to get the best bang out of it.
So, after making a jumper cable, extending my antenna, and using a parabolic reflector, I still wasn't able to penetrate through 2 walls of 1.5' thick adobe. (The tv2 is only 25' away!)
So, I started to research this. The antenna is operating on a 2.4Ghz frequency. I figured any wifi antenna should work with this receiver. So, I built a Double Biquad antenna, following the instructions on this page:
Biquad Antenna Construction
I think the main reason why dish put a proprietary connector on the back of the unit, is because regular RG6 has an impedance of 75 ohms. I'm assuming that this antenna was designed for a 50 ohm impedance, and that's why we can't combine it onto the RG6 like we did with our old receivers. With a higher impedance, a lot of power is wasted as soon as it hits RG6.
This didn't stop me from giving it a shot. I built a double biquad that has a gain of around 13-14db. I don't have any 50 ohm cable yet, but I used regular 75 ohm RG6 because I figured the gain would probably give me at least a little bit of improvement.
It finally worked! I know this is going to the extreme, but it was a fun project, and I think the double biquad looks pretty good on my wall! I'm going to order some 50 ohm LMR-400 cable to get the best bang out of it.