Antennas......UGH

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Moderators: Greg, Mark, JD

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Kyle

Well anyway, at our mobile home in the country, we have a small directional antenna on our service pole. The owners didnt know what they were doing, because it is in a rural area and the small antenna gets us awful reception. :lol: We get about 12 scattered channels, but most are to blurry to watch. The small antenna gets reception that is just a little better than rabbit ears :lol: .
We started looking for antennas, this is the closest I can find to a large directional in our area: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... 0003+90401

If anyone hear is familiar with the antenna zoning of signals, telling you what type of antenna you need:
yellow: (closest) small multi-directional
green: medium multi-directional antenna
light green: large mult-directional or small directional
red: medium directional
blue: medium direction with amplifier
violet (furthest): large directional with amplifier

Most of our channels are in the red and blue zone, and are between 40-48 miles away. Do you think that antenna would work?
:lol: yes it is long
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Greg
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Kyle, try www.antennaweb.org/aw/info.aspx?page=more , Lots of information & charts. Greg
"If I can't fix it, I can screw it up so bad no one else can either."
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Demolition
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Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:07 am
Location: Arkansas
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That antennaweb also has a page you can enter your location and it will tell you what direction to point the antenna.
You would think pointing it sideways would get the most reception... but you actually point it with the tail of the antenna pointing to the broadcast towers.
Make sure the antenna connections are clean and snug. Use the least amount of wire possible. I dont mean streatching the wire to the max... I mean dont use 100 foot of wire if you only need 25 or 50 feet.
Also if you can have only One TV per antenna it helps the reception for each TV. I am saving up cause we have Two TV sets but only one antenna. Everytime my kid tries to watch the same channel on the other TV... my reception goes BLAH.
Call Dinwiddie Demolition we'll tear that house right down.
Sweep up every splinter n haul it out of town
riven1950

FYI I found a good supply of antennas and related at Radio Shack.

Also, our area is the first in the Nation switching to digital ( this Fall ) and I was told that when that occurs in an area the signals will all be transmitted using the uhf portion of the antenna, so if you have a large directional antenna the vhf portion will not be used. The person who told me this should know but I have not independently verified what I was told. I was replacing a rotator on my mothers antenna and he said don't worry about a couple of broken vhf vanes because after the conversion they will be useless.

Also, if you have tried it, put a rotator on your antenna this makes a huge difference in signal quality.

Good luck
Ted
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Greg
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Location: Weedsport, NY

Ted, I think the whole UHF/VHF transmission question is up in the air. There are already many VHF stations transmitting in digital, they would have to buy new transmitters to go UHF, Something that the stations could not afford to do. Greg
"If I can't fix it, I can screw it up so bad no one else can either."
Kyle

I think so too. I have had people tell me I have to buy the $200 DTV antenna for the transition, when you can use just rabbit ears. And I think alot will go to UHF, but I dont think all will.
BTW, why does it matter whether you transmit on VHF or UHF?
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flcruising
Posts: 606
Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:18 pm
Location: Florida Panhandle

There's ALOT of misconception about DTV. The biggest being that it takes some kind of special antenna to recieve them. THIS IS FALSE.

The signal sent will still be coming over the airwaves on various frequencies; if it comes in good as analog, it will come in as DTV.

Weak signals, on the otherhand, will mean dropped packets of information, and if the errors are too much, you will have no signal at all. DTV does not come in partially like analog with snow/blur, it's an 'All there or Nothing' standard.

Your best bet is to use the antennaweb.org site, and get an antenna that pulls in the signals at your distance from the stations you want. There's always variables to this, but for the most part, the right equipment will get you what you want.
[color=blue]Aaron[/color]
Kyle

flcruising wrote:Weak signals, on the otherhand, will mean dropped packets of information, and if the errors are too much, you will have no signal at all. DTV does not come in partially like analog with snow/blur, it's an 'All there or Nothing' standard.
.
Thats one thing I dont like. I could live with a little blur :lol: The TV in my room is digital and on rabbit ears, it took me about 20 minutes to get it just right so I could get all channels :D
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