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Antenna broke off, solitude GK310

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  • Antenna broke off, solitude GK310

    How do i replace antennae? With what antenna?
    2018 solitude

  • #2
    Originally posted by Charles swain View Post
    How do i replace antennae? With what antenna?
    2018 solitude
    I have moved your post to the appliance section to get you a little better help.

    I believe that you should have the King Jack antenna , a boomerang shaped one. If you have pulled it off of the roof with nothing left you could start all over with just about anything. If the base is still there you could get the same one and just use the top part to replace what is broken. Be sure to check that the sealant is still good around the base if you choose the easier route. I have not had any issues with our King Jack and it seems to perform as well as the batwing we had on our previous TT. The new Winnegard air 360 seems to have some pretty good reviews.

    By the way welcome aboard.

    Brian
    Brian & Michelle
    2018 Reflection 29RS
    2022 Chevy 3500HD

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Charles swain View Post
      How do i replace antennae? With what antenna? 2018 solitude
      Welcome to the forum.

      I have the same trailer, and replaced mine with the antenna that Grand Design is now installing on many of its trailers, a flat-dome omnidirectional antenna called the Winegard 360.

      https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-Comp...5512689&sr=8-3

      The King Jack came off easily. I very easily scraped the sealant off the six screws holding it down and removed them. I was then able to gently and slowly push the antenna out of the rest of the sealant to remove it (careful though, that roof membrane is THIN!)

      A single super-thin coax cable was the only connection to the antenna batwing that had been broken off - it was adapted to a regular RG-6 coax just beneath the roof. An extension of hard plastic rose out of the hole - the physical extension of the rotation knob inside the bedroom. I removed most of that and reinstalled the control assembly on the bedroom ceiling rather than deal with patching the holes there.

      There was enough - just enough - RG-6 under the roof to attach to the Winegard's TV antenna connector. However the Winegard has a separate FM antenna inside the dome that requires a second RG-6 cable connection. Apparently the King Jack feeds both FM and TV through the single cable that GD installed to the antenna? After searching I didn't find a splitter that could combine the two antenna signals onto one cable (is there one?). I tried a "backwards" use of one of the available-everywhere two-way cable splitters but it eliminated most of the TV channels. So I simply ran a short cable from the FM antenna to the inside to be used later for FM somehow. We don't use the junk factory radio anyway so not a big deal for us. With only the TV antenna connected the radio does receive a few local stations, which it might do without any antenna.

      By mounting the Winegard off-center from the original King Jack's hole I did my best to satisfy Winegard's instruction that the antenna be 18" from any obstacle (the bedroom air conditioner) and 18" from the wall of the trailer. I had to remove some of the lap sealant from the King Jack installation to place the antenna dome where it needed to be, but that was surprisingly easy after reading many posts here about how hard it is. Just rolling it slowly and gently with my thumbs I was able to peel it completely from the roof!

      Finally, the antenna comes with its own wall plate and booster switch. It looked identical to the GD-installed booster system for the King Jack, but since its circuit board was screened with the Winegard logo I decided to install the new one anyway just in case there are differences.

      So, does it work?! In our current location yes, pretty well. It pulls in 24 stations vs. the 27 stations the King Jack had given us. Some of them are not very stable, just like the King Jack, and it may be that the completely-missing three were unwatchably-weak ones on the King Jack (sorry, I didn't record or do this very scientifically). Most of the stations appear excellently on our GD-supplied TCL TV, at least as clear and sharp if not more so than we got from the King Jack.

      Not having to fiddle with rotating the antenna to get good signals, and having one less thing on my roof to be taken off by low-hanging trees, are nice bonuses. So far, it looks like the misfortune of losing the King Jack to a branch somewhere may be good fortune after all.
      Mark - 2018 Solitude 310GK - Ford F-350 SRW diesel short box - Pullrite Superglide hitch

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