BillAdams

Very nice!

If you say so. Level roof you say and then you say trees were blocking. The apps don't give perfect info, just good guidelines. You refer to a tripod and you are absolutely correct if that were the situation. This just happens to not be that situation. The OP has the info he needs.

The meter will help the most since it will give instant reading even if you are moving the antenna too fast. Pay attention to the elevation as well as sometimes when you turn the azimuth the elevation setting can change as well making locating the satellite nearly impossible. If your antenna has the Digital Magic box you should easily be able to see if the elevation remains steady.

The phone apps you describe is only as accurate as the phone compass so while it will give you a good idea of where the satellites are you can't use it to find a tiny gap in the trees. Also, he mentioned that he has a roof mounted manual antenna so no "pole" is involved.

Cell phones have notoriously bad compasses so you should start there is a good compass. Not expensive, just good. Camping World and most RV parts dealers sell the Winegard compass and signal meter. The nice part about having a signal meter in-line is that it gives an instant reading of signal while there is a delay between finding a satellite and the receiver showing a signal. The meter still won't tell you that's it's the correct satellite (unless you spend a lot more money) but you will know when you are in the right area and go from there.

I would seem that you just were not able to get it pointed properly at the campground since you were able to get it working when you returned. I can't explain why you had problems away from home other than possibly your compass was off at the new location or you made some incorrect assumptions. It's really hard to trouble-shoot problems with a manually pointed antenna as you are the only one who knows what you did. I would check the cables on the roof at the LNB and ensure the center conductor inside the end connector (F-connector) is shiny cooper colored. When you re-install put a dap of di-electric grease as well to ensure it stays that way. Visually inspect the coax cable for wear as well but don't be concerned about minor cracking. If that all appears well then I doubt you have an issue with the antenna itself.

More info needed.

Your antenna does not need to be "re-worked". To change a Winegard dome from DirecTV to Dish you just remove the dome and flip a couple of dip switches. Takes a couple of minutes and you can do it yourself.

Ranger has it right. Dish pay as you go (PAYG) service allows you to sign up for as much or as little as you like (30 day min.). You have to buy the receiver(s) but otherwise you just pay for the services you want and pick the time period. When that time period expires you don't have to do anything, the service just ends unless you request that it be extended. Sounds like a perfect option for your needs.

You are correct that there is no difference between finding 119 or 101 but there is a big difference between the Dish and DirecTV services and most of that revolves around the kind of antenna you are using. If you are using a single LNB antenna (or any dome by any manufacturer) that antenna cannot receive the DirecTV HD programming at all. It also cannot provide you with all of the Dish programming (unless it's an auto search dome). Additionally, if you want full programming from either service then you need to be able to receive programming from 3 satellites and not just 2. DirecTV would require 99, 101 and 103 and Dish you would need either 110, 119 and 129 (Western Sats) or 61.5, 72.7 and 77 (Eastern Sats).

Not sure how this did not get answered, but the answer is yes, you can watch your recorded programming even when not connected to satellite. DirecTV issues some new software that "broke" this option but later updated the software to allow this once again.

Top line is that there is no reason at all to choose an RV TV. Considering you mention getting your TV's from Circuit City, I can only speculate that you did this many years ago when this company still existed. We have bought household TV's from Target and Best Buy without any issue after installing the units in our RV. We currently have a 32" Vizio up front and a 22" Vizio in the back. Unless you are going to go completely solar and stay "off the grid" for extended periods of time a 12V TV is not necessary for the majority of RVers. Hook up with a good LED LCD TV, secure it properly and enjoy!