Mission Accomplished, Once Again

So the new elevation motor for our F2 satellite dish finally arrived. Many thanks to Solar Mike for letting us use his address. But of course the package did not include any of the insulated Scotch Locks I was promised it would. Big surprise, it was hard enough getting a tracking number from MotoSat.

MotoSat F2 Motor Repair in Slab City

“If you’re near a Lowe’s or home Depot…” the MotoSat tech started to tell me where I could get some Scotch Locks. I cut him off with a laugh, “Yeah, right!” A couple standard insulated wire connectors I had would have to do the trick.

After a day of brief flash floods, and too many days of sharing our MiFi wireless internet connection, I was able to quickly and easily replace the motor set – thus completing yet another repair on our dish. All seemed well as the dish successfully completed its calibration. Then upon search, it returned a motor stall error, azimuth this time. Big Surprise.

Sending the dish up again resulted in success. A fluke? Perhaps. But something didn’t seem right. When the dish went down, it’s azimuth was way off. While the D3 controller reported 0º azimuth, the dish was clearly out of alignment. After a couple more tests we could could not reproduce the error. So we are back online with good ol’ satellite 91 West – telling ourselves again that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Deep down we are hoping we don’t have another motor going bad, however, because MotoSat informed us of an interesting clause in their warranty agreement. All replacement parts are only covered under warranty from the original system purchase date. So the replacement motors – yes, motors plural – we have installed, are only covered until our original warranty is up. A date which is quickly approaching. As I said, big surprise.

8 thoughts on “Mission Accomplished, Once Again”

  1. I had to replace the EL gearbox on my F2. Motosat was no help except they sold me a gearbox for $600 (worth about $100) came from a farm sprinkler supply vendor. Before that I asked for a part list and the vendor they got it from. They said they did not know. the F2 was too long ago.. when I got the gearbox all the info was inside it. If I could have gotten my hands or the sheet I could have fixed it for less than $150..
    Very poor customer support.
    If you want to see just how poor it is, check out this link…
    http://www.datastormusers.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/ubb/get_topic/f/23/t/000272.html

    Reply
    • Thanks for the feedback, misery loves company! 🙂

      Haven’t had to fuss with the ol’ F2 for a while now, but every time I do everything within my means to avoid calling Support. Sure would like to get my hands on a parts supplier list too!

      Reply
  2. Well the upside is now you can become a MotoSat tech/mech if you ever really need a day job. Independent of course, you could travel from campground to campground and fix all those damn dishes over and over. 😉

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    • Don’t think we haven’t thought of that! We originally thought about becoming resellers and doing installs, until we discovered MotoSat wants you to purchase and stock three complete units. :-\

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  3. I have read about several unhappy MotoSat customer complaints through personal blogs lately. It just reassures me of why we got rid of ours when our contract came due. Buying into their faulty equipment and poor customer service is one of the biggest mistakes we have made. I’m so glad that you are posting about your experiences with MotoSat so that perhaps we can save someone else from repeating this same mistake. Thank you for sharing this with us.

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    • We’ve had such a love/hate thing with the dish since we got it. I don’t regret getting it though. On the one hand, I hate all of the breakdowns and connectivity issues that go along with it. If we didn’t have a full RV warranty to pay for some of the issues we’ve had, we’d be hosed. On the other hand, if we had to rely on our Verizon signal, we would be so limited as to where we can go (no cell signals like this in SouthWest TX, one of our favorite places). Since we like to get away from things, the dish is the only solution. Until the day that the US has ubiquitous connectivity for cell towers (sure), seems like the satellite monopoly has us vagabonds by the, uh, …you know.

      Reply
    • Thanks for the comment! There are certain necessary evils in life we all must accept to enjoy the life we do, the secret to which is rolling with the punches you’re dealt.

      Reply

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