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Old 02-25-2019, 09:51 PM   #1
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Cable -satellite connections.

I have a 2016 Vista. The antenna on the coach is all but useless most of the time. Its the small no crank up style. Name of unit will remain anonymous. I have tried to hook up an external antenna, but plugging into either cable or sat connectors the antenna does not work. The cable works for cable hookup, not sure about satellite hookup.
Question is why won't this work.
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Old 02-25-2019, 10:03 PM   #2
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What type of external antenna are you trying to use? Have you tried a simple inside antenna like the Leaf?

It would be helpful to know the make/model of your existing antenna with which you are dissatisfied.

i assume you have the power button (light) on when using the existing antenna?

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Old 02-26-2019, 06:21 AM   #3
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I would guess you have a King, Black Jack antenna.

Power switch is that tiny button on the face plate next to the coax connector in the cabinet. When on the ceiling rotation control should have a bright blue LED and you should see a row of other LEDs indicating signal strength. You rotate the knob to rotate the antenna to find the highest strength signal as indicated by more LEDs lit. I’m pretty sure there is another little switch or control there to attenuate the gain if it’s too strong.

I’m not thinking the Black Jack is all that great but it does work well enough. Certainly not worthless.
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Old 02-26-2019, 08:12 AM   #4
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Every day at around noon we loose all reception, except for a couple of extremely strong stations. Then for the rest of the afternoon we have no blue lights showing reception until about 7 to 8 pm then reception returns. The antenna is a King-jack. My question is why won't the connections accept an external antenna. We tried to hook up a home antenna on a pole and run the coax to the the connections in the bay but nothing, no signal of any kind, not even the strong stations. I know this sounds crazy but this is whats happening.
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Old 02-26-2019, 08:44 AM   #5
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The outside antenna would probably work if you ran the wire into the coach, removed the faceplate of the ant/cable selector and then replaced the coax from the King ant with your outside ant. On the back of that faceplate are two coax cables. One from the outside cable connection and the other from the King Jack. It would take some trial and error to figure out which coax was each. But then it would probably work fine. Though the King ant has a signal amplifier that the home ant wouldn't have.

You can't plug it into the cable connection on the outside of the coach because of the way that works when the ANT button is set for antenna it blocks the cable input and when you set it to cable it splits the signal among all your TVs reducing it's strength considerably (which is why there is a signal amplifier built into the system). I'm not positive, but it may actually filter out stray OTA antenna signal frequencies as well.

The real question is why in the world is your standard Antenna going dead between noon and 7 pm every day?? That's the weird part.
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Old 02-26-2019, 09:35 AM   #6
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We are about 20 some miles from Tampa. You would think that even without the booster or injector on the ceiling you would still get signal. Out of 35 channels in the evenings we receive only about 3 channels come in during the dead times. Doesn't make any sense does lt.
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Old 02-26-2019, 02:16 PM   #7
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Couple of things...

You can go to Winnebagoind.com and find the TV/Sat Coax Wiring diagram for your exact RV, so you can see exactly how it is done. The comments from here on are for the Vista.

The external Sat Antenna Jack does not function for cable TV or antenna TV as wired by Winnebago. This coax does go to the place in your RV with AC outlet that a Sat Receiver could be installed so you could use it but would have to modify how Winnebago wired the coaxes in your RV.

To use the TV input jack in the basement to connect cable or an outside antenna, you have to press the button on the TV jack panel and make the LED go off. There is an electronic switch in that panel that when LED is off it connects the input coax that goes to the basement TV jack. When the LED is on it connects the input coax that goes to the roof antenna and feeds 12 volts up that input coax to power a signal amplifier in the roof antenna.

There is no 12 volts fed down towards the basement TV jack so if you try to put an antenna that has a 12 volt amplifier on the basement TV jack it won't work well because the amplifier blocks most signal when it does not have it's 12 volt power source. You have to use a separate power inserter to use a powered external antenna.

On my Vista, I destroyed my OEM bat wing antenna on a low tree branch and replaced it with the Winegard Sensar IV crank up TV antenna. Huge improvement, because of it's 3 foot additional height and it's larger size that is more sensitive. If you do this be sure you mount it so that it misses the AC shroud and ceiling fan vent cover when cranked down. On my Vista if I had mounted it perfectly straight front to back it would not have stowed all the way down because it would have hit the vent cover.

On my Vista, I replaced the simple antenna panel with the button and LED with the Winegard Sensar TV Signal Meter. It allows me to rotate the antenna and see in real time the signal power. By default it reads the signal of the strongest channel but you can set it to a specific channel to maximize. The Sensar also has a built in spitter with 2 outputs so you can get rid of one of Winnebago's splitters.

The splitters hurt when you are trying to watch TV in fringe areas or when the Cable TV signal is not strong. You can try bypassing all the splitters and going direct from the antenna panel to your main TV and see if this helps. If it does if you don't watch all the TVs at the same time you can replace the splitters with a switch box.

Good luck.
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Old 02-26-2019, 02:48 PM   #8
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Best explanation yet., but why does my King jack go out every day at about the same time. As I sit here in the coach right now the reception is gone. All power is turned on and there are no stations coming in. In a few hours every thing will be working again. Crazy!!!!. When we first arrived here every thing worked fine, but for the last three week's this has happened every day.
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Old 02-26-2019, 02:56 PM   #9
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I did a Google search "why does OTA Tv stop working each afternoon" and found a lot of folks have this issue. And there were LOTs of suggestions. I didn't take the time to read them all.

I did see one that said there may be too much signal and it's overwhelming your antenna. I know the King has an attenuater knob. You could try that. Just dial back your signal power and see if that helps.

Otherwise, try that Google search and see what it might be.
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