Skyking8,
From what I have read on datastormusers.com, WildBlue is not suitable for portable use because it is spot beamed. If you move it very far you will move out of your spot beam and will not have service. Didn't know if you had checked into that aspect or not.
My only experience with WildBlue was at the Ft. Knox campground where the WiFi was going through WildBlue. It was down more than up for the 5 days that we were there. I would go over during the day and they would let me reboot the modem and it would work for a few hours and go down again. Not sure if this was a WildBlue problem or just their local modem.
I use Hughes now and have both a Datastorm unit on my roof and a tripod mounted dish for when the coach is behind a tree. I cannot say that I am thrilled with the service but I have been able to at least get connected. The download speeds vary greatly during different times of the day, from over a megabit download in the early mornings to less than 150 kilobit in the evenings when everyone is at home and on the net. It depends a lot on which satellite and transponder you get assigned to when you sign up. Some folks consistently get great speeds and some folks consistently get slow speeds. From what I hear, you would probably get the same kind of reports from Starband users.
I sometimes wish I had an aircard but I tend to camp in locations that have poor or no cell phone access. The one good thing about satellite is that if you can see the southern sky you can get a connection.
I cannot give a good answer to the folks with questions about getting both TV and internet from the same dish. The answer is, it depends. It depends on which internet satellite you are assigned to, which TV service you use (Dish or Directv), and whether you are satisfied with just getting one TV satellite or are you trying to get HD. Currently there are some folks who are getting HD Directv by mounting 3 each Bird on a Wire (BOW) units on their Hughes or Datastorm dishes. There are also some folks who use the BOWs to get HD on Dish Network. There are a lot of folks who get the basic Directv 101 satellite by using 1 BOW and they do not care about trying to get the HD or locals. There are some internet satellites, like the one I am on at 127W, that are so far west that a BOW will not work to get Directv because the angle for the signal bounce is too large and the BOW would have to be too long. Like I said, it depends on which internet satellite you are assigned to and what kind of TV service you are trying to get. I personally think that seperate dishes are the way to go for internet and TV.
If you are interested in getting both internet and TV on the same dish it would be best to get on to
www.datastormusers.com
and contact one of the dealers there. There are dealers there who can answer your questions about automatic and tripod mounted internet setups and give you specific answers about getting TV.
