Our little tug does have a tv in it, but we have not used it for a couple of reasons. One, our antenna for over the air reception does not work very well. In the San Juans, the only station it will pick up is a low power station on Orcas Island that only broadcasts black and white reruns of "I Love Lucy" and similar vintage shows. The other reason is that the boat is small and we do not have a comfortable place for both of us to sit and be able to see a tv at the same time. For two summers now we have not felt the need to have a tv, we have occupied our end of the day time in other ways mostly by reading. We read books on our iPads, we get our news from our laptops, keep up with our friends on email and go to bed early most nights.
This winter I (not Willie) decided that I would like to have television on our boat. After looking at various alternatives, I decided on the Intellian i2. The i2 has a 13" dish which is a bit larger than the KVH M1 which has marginal reception in the Northwest. We also added a Samsung 19 inch HD receiver to the berth area. I am not much for watching tv in bed, but in a R27 you do not have much choice. An undercounter mount for the tv allowed placement at a great viewing angle for both of us. Jake does not care. I fabricated a bracket from stainless angle and flat bar. A local speciality welding shop stainless welded the bracket for me at no charge. A very interesting local craftsman that lives in our neighborhood. Placement of the interior boxes and routing of the cables took a lot of thought and time. We have two GPS antennas, one for the Chartplotter and one for the AIS. I relocated them to the grab bars one on each side of the boat behind the navigation lights. This cleared the mast for better satellite visibility.
A trial of the setup in the choppy bay and 4 foot swells offshore gave solid reception thoughout. We never expect to have the system running while underway, but it is designed for such use and we wanted to see how it performed.
More pictures of this job and other modifications can be found in our R27 Modifications photo album here.
Walldog, Willie and Jake
2 comments:
Functional, aesthetically pleasing to my eye -- I give thumbs up! Good job!
Willie of Willie's Tug
Wow, I am impressed you figured out a way to do that. I would like to watch tv at times, and can in San Diego but not at Cap Sante during the early cold season in April, for sure.
I will be interested to see how your system works, and congrats for figuring it all out!
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