Technical tips and pics....

Turtle · Mar 2, 2012

ChrisGa23 said:
Post a picture turtle of how your satellite is mounted would love to see how its set up. I have a direct tv service wonder if they have anything similar. But I would be willing to change to dish network

Hopefully these'll help. Taken inside The Shop at The Yard, west side, bay door 5.

Note where the passenger seat used to be there is the desk, on top of which is the TA Uber Mug, to the left of that is a 2-drawer junk drawer with the QC mounted on top, and the back rectangle behind that is the TV.

Full size image of the wide shot (once loaded, click the + magnifying glass to enlarge)

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The VuCube and the Tailgater are designed to mount exactly in the holes of a standard Qualcomm mount, which you see behind the Tailgater here. When I got the original VuCube I had an old QC bubble and just the one QC mount, so I have my mechanic fabricate up a mount of sorts. You can see it much better on the full size picture (below), but the Tailgater is mounted to the frame, and the frame ends are screwed into to the roof. Those expanding rubber rivet type fasteners were used - the same kind they use to mount mirrors on school buses and trucks.

The Tailgater is not designed to be permanently mounted, however. It comes with rubber feet, which were too large to fit on the existing mount frame. The rubber feet are basically large pieces of rubber fitted over the head of a bolt, which screws into the Tailgater. Just pop the rubber feet off and the bolt should work fine with an existing QC mount. I got a (well, 4) double-threaded stud bolt that would screw up unto the Tailgater on one end, and then accept a nut on the other end to secure it to the mount.

You can, of course, leave the rubber feet on it and keep it portable, but you're probably asking for it to be stolen if it's not secured in some way. The Tailgater comes with a carrying handle for portability, which I removed before putting it up on the roof. The handle does have a hole where you can run a security cable to secure it. I prefer to have it mounted permanently rather than have to carry it around and deal with a long attached coax cable. That's more for RVing and, well, tailgating, I'd think.

The coax cable is the only connection to the satellite receiver box. The Tailgater gets its electricity from the receiver box.

Full size image of the close up shot