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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Winegard: Our Fix to No LNB Voltage

About two years ago we got a Winegard Trav'ler HD satellite with DirecTV.  A couple of weeks ago we had a blank screen accompanied an error message something like:  !No LNB Voltage!

I wish I had taken a picture of exactly the precise error message, but it was close enough for the technicians at Winegard to know exactly what the problem is.  Reminds me of issues we have had with our Progressive Industries Surge Protector and our Dometic Toilet flush handle.  When we described it they instantly knew what the problem was -- like they had seen it many times before I called.

The problem was a faulty 3' 'braided' cable from the connection at the base of the satellite to the end of the dish where the signal is received.  Glad I had an extra one in my 'pieces and parts' bin.  I swapped that out for a temporary fix and Winegard sent a permanent replacement.

My question is:  Has anyone else had this issue with Winegard?  

To fix it, Pam and I worked together and it took about 25 minutes to climb on top, take the end of the satellite arm off remove the old cable and replace it with the temporary cable.
Once on top with my tools and magnetic nuts and bolts tray.  I can't tell you how many times screws, nuts, bolts etc have rolled away before I started using this.
It was a little tricky, but I had to feed the new cable down the inside of the arm of the dish, connect it, and put the tip of the arm back together.
I don't now why, but even with the simplest of repairs going on, I must subconsciously not feel right about it unless I draw blood... I took a chunk out of my thumb when the little wrench slipped.  Really?  I couldn't duplicate it again if I tried 25 times... Oh well, another bandaid and I continued.

I had to use a couple of box wrenches, a crescent wrench and an Allen wrench to remove:  the four screws holding the protective piece at the end of the arm and four bolts and nuts at the middle of the arm.
The Winegard tech told me it would be a few days for the replacement cable to get here and four days later I was installing the new one.  It was one of those simple fixes once we knew what the "No LNB voltage" was.
Simple if you carry an extra three foot cable and can climb up and down on top of the roof.  I was glad to get it fixed although I remain a little sceptical as whether or not this was a good purchase for us.  Most of the time I like our Winegard Trav'ler but there are times when I wonder why it takes 25+ minutes to connect when we drive to a new location.

That's my recap of our No LNB issue -- glad its fixed and we learned some more maintenance items on the Roadrunner.

Thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles!  Love hearing from you - thanks for taking a moment to comment.

11 comments:

  1. I had to laugh, I find that no job goes well unless I draw blood somehow. Good thing I don't do repairs too often, I only have about 13 pints of blood... ;c)

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  2. Ditto on the blood draw.. My King Dome is permanently broken with bad wires in the roof, so I've never spent the bucks on a replacement.

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  3. Good quick fix, I'm sure it would have been a two day job for me.

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  4. Drawing blood when working on projects helps speed things up and keeps us DIYers focused. PS - Your roof looks great.

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  5. I haven't experienced this problem yet (fingers now being crossed), but if I do, I'll recall your post and the fix. Thanks guys!

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  6. Thanks for this post - just had this issue today and we were able to easily fix it because of your blood, sweat and tears!

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  7. Just had the same problem and picked up a temp 3ft cable from Hm Depot. How did you get the dish in the upright position? Mine won't go up without the LNB voltage.

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    1. There is an "Emergency Stop" which will stop the unit in its search so you can perform any maintenance on it. To activate that mode, just press and hold the power button, while holding power button , press the select button and it turns off power to the dish. When you are done, just press power button and it will go back to normal operation. Hope this helps you.

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  8. Randy and Pam, Thank you so much for taking the time to share this article. We had our dish back up in running in about 30 minutes. We need to get a braided cable, but we used the old temporary fix with a coaxial, that we had. Thanks again!! Sue

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  9. I'm also getting a no lnb voltage error message. I have replaced the cable from the Winegard dish base to the dish on top of the roof. Still not working. Im wondering if there is a problem inside the base of the unit where it connect from the Winegard unit to the receiver inside the motorhome. So its not receiving the signal, there's a break in between. Anyone have any thoughts? Just trying not to have to replace the whole unit. Thanks to any helpers.

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