Anyone with DirectTV on the airplane??

[CL600Pilot]

Hey everyone - just curious if anyone else here has a DirectTV satellite system on their aircraft. Back in early December we finally found someone crazy enough to buy our old Challenger 600 and moved up to a late model Challenger 604 - one of the new 'amenties' was a 2 channel DirectTV system. It has been nothing but a pain in the a** since we got the airplane!! First it wouldn't work at all and it was discovered that the receiver installation didn't allow for enough cooling air circulation and it essentially overheated and ruined the card. We fixed that - new receiver - still didn't work. It was found that the antenna on the tail was out of alignment - finally got that fixed - worked for 2 trips - now the remotes don't work. It's become a major ordeal to get the remotes re programmed to talk to the 'switching box'(we have 2 monitors and can put either channel on either monitor) as they should. Finally got everything working and then it decided to quit again on the way to LAX this week. Arrrggghhhh Now the customer service rep tells us that in order for the system to work as it should we need to call the service center 5 minutes after EVERY takeoff and have them 'rehit' the system.

This may be a great feature to make the coast to coast trips more bearable for the pax but it's been a nightmare for us since we get the brunt of the owner's frustration with the system and it becomes our job to get it fixed. Just wondering if anybody else has this system and has had similar problems? Is it really necessary to rehit the system after every takeoff??

Thanks - CL