Wanted: Follow me TV

[MarioG]

looking for a working unit thanks.

 

[SeaEric]

Be careful on a used unit. A customer recently told me that there's been a change in technology and some of them don't work anymore.

 

[Angela]

I have NEVER been able to get mine to work right. It has a mind of its own. I gave up and stuck my dish on a piling.

 

[whaler23]

Check with your service DirectTV or other and make sure your box has the latest downloads or it will most likely not work right. Angela, you may already have downloaded updated info from your dish on the piling so it may now work for you. Give it a try.

 

[Freestyle]

The Follow Me TV Unit doesn't have any interaction with Direct TV. It is simply a stick on a motor with a compass that knows how to find magnetic south. The owner then alligns the dish so that when the stick on a compass finds magnetic south the dish is pointed to the satellite. So trouble shooting through Direct TV will not help.

I have had 2 units and liked them but each has lasted under 4 years. They are simple, cheaply priced, and cheaply made. Eventually the salt air seizes the motor and a replacement motor is about the same price as a new unit ($800 I think).

At a dock it is just as easy to point the dish on your own stick or board manually. Only at anchor or on the smoothest days underway does Follow Me TV work.

That said, if your school is wining back to back NCAA basketball championships with a football crown thrown in it is a priceless addition to the boating life.

Bruce
Freestyle
1976 43 DCMY
Tampa

(Vanderbilt 1985, UF Law 1991)

 

[whaler23]

So how does your antennae know what to point at if there is no interaction with the receiver?

 

[Angela]

You have set it up by mounting the dish and pointing it manually until you get a signal. Then, there is a reset on the FMTV. You do the reset so that any previous settings are reset now that you have just put your dish up there and aimed it. From that point forward, the theory is that it is supposed to say locked on that position. Apparently, it's locking its own signal on magnetic south, and because you put your dish where it got the satellite signal and told FMTV to stay put, it should remain there. If you take the dish off, for a storm for example, you have aim and reset it all over again. It's not tied to the receiver anymore than the piling it's mounted on is. There is no connection between the dish/receiver and FMTV.

Mine just likes to spin and spin. It won't stay put, even if I just sit in the slip. Besides, my dish hates the slinging from side to side that we get in the slip. If I mount the dish to the boat and aim it, I lose the signal with the first boat that goes by. I'm eventually going to replace my FMTV with one of the better gyro models.

 

[whaler23]

My mistake I thought we were talking about the gyro models.

 

[Pascal]

angela,

my FMTV works great, it's coming up on 4 years now.

this is what you need to do if you cant' reset it... turn on the FMTV and press FIND button that will rotate the mast to whatever direction it's prgrammed to.

loosen up the dish and manually turn it till you get the strongest signal, then tightened it up. that's it.

the motor runs all the time, in very small increments right and left, so if you hear some buzzing and very minor movemnet, it's normal. More than that and you have some interference... Ideally you need to install it far from large metal objects, I thinks yours is pretty close to you RV style AC on the Hard top, isn't it ?

it's a no frill unit but i like the simplicity. fully stabilized antennas have come down in prices but they're more complicate, my neighbor installed a sea king and has had a number of issues with it.

 

[Angela]

angela,

my FMTV works great, it's coming up on 4 years now.

this is what you need to do if you cant' reset it... turn on the FMTV and press FIND button that will rotate the mast to whatever direction it's prgrammed to.

loosen up the dish and manually turn it till you get the strongest signal, then tightened it up. that's it.

the motor runs all the time, in very small increments right and left, so if you hear some buzzing and very minor movemnet, it's normal. More than that and you have some interference... Ideally you need to install it far from large metal objects, I thinks yours is pretty close to you RV style AC on the Hard top, isn't it ?

it's a no frill unit but i like the simplicity. fully stabilized antennas have come down in prices but they're more complicate, my neighbor installed a sea king and has had a number of issues with it.

Pascal, it won't stop spinning. It turns counterclockwise until it hits the "lock" which is a cord that keep it from just spinning indefinitely and fouling all the wires. If I turn it all the way back to the other direction so that it has room to "find" itself, it spins counterclockwise until the cord stops it. It won't set itself anywhere. It wants to keep turning counterclockwise until it wraps itself up. Take a look at it on Friday and see if you find something I'm totally missing. Still, I don't I could use it in the slip very well since the boat rocks from side to side there much more than it does when we're at anchor or underway.

Way up there on top of the hardtop, that rocking from side to side is very pronounced. Yesterday, it was so bad that it bent the door lock as it flug the back door open, pulling the metal lock completely out of the catch, and the wake was so bad that it tossed the gas grill on the flybride off its cradle and threw it in the floor upside down. Dishes flying out of the cabinets....must have been a Sea Ray in a hurry to get somewhere by taking a shortcut through the marina.

 

[exsailor]

The PO had one installed as shown in pic when we bought boat last spring. Worked great when I removed it this past summer. If interested call me 248-672-0512.

ByronS
1985 53 ED