The Official AVS Antenna and Related Hardware Topic! - Page 504

Hi,

Try again, I get ~ 10 different images for your location. Move your mouse to the upper left corner of the photo. A slider should appear. If not, check if you have the latest Google Earth or you need to wait for your slow ISP (What is your new speed, anything close to DSL 1.3 which is what I have.).

PM me if you can't find the slider, use the arrows at either end to jump when you have it.

It might be the exact Lat. Lon. I used and saved after I found your tower before, I will not give that out in any public place thus the PM.

SHF

Sorry. I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that 1998 was the only image. I meant that the images for this area only went back to 1998. I know there are a bunch of images and some are pretty low res.

Chuck

Mr. Calaveras, looking at the photo in your avatar, you have one of the premiere antenna set ups available today. Looks like 2 91XGs for UHF and 2 Winegard 1713s for HiVHF. What type of splitters did you use to connect the duplicate antennas, and what type of preamp are you using? And did you use a UVSJ?

"Chuck" is good enough.

The VHF antennas are a pair of homemade log periodics. The 1713 doesn't have a very good F/B ratio and that was all important at my location. Details are here although the page needs a little updating:

http://www.aa6g.org/Lp/lp.html

What's not visible in the avatar is an FM antenna below the TV antennas that is part of the system.

I spent a lot of time optimizing the antennas for the best system noise figure I could get. I am not using a standard ferrite power combiner to combine the antenna pairs. Instead I use 1/4 wave matching sections of 50 ohm coax to transform 37.5 ohms (two antennas in parallel) to the 75 ohm preamps. The matching section and the coax from each antenna is soldered together inside a small metal box. I measured the loss and there is no loss beyond that in the coax itself unlike ferrite combiners which add 0.5 to 1 dB loss.

I also eliminated the 91XG transformers by using a 4:1 coax balun made out of 93 ohm coax. This picked up another 0.5 to 1 dB since the coax balun loss is only 0.1 dB or so.

On UHF I'm using a 30 dB gain 2.0 dB noise figure Tinlee preamp. Philip Lee at Tinlee told me the noise figure typically measures 1.5 dB. On VHF I'm using a Kitztech 0.4 dB noise figure preamp. I can get away with a preamp with no filtering here because I have no very strong VHF signals to overload it. I'm using a Tinelee 16 dB gain preamp on FM.

I'm using Tinlee diplexers which pass DC on all ports. The FM and high VHF antennas are combined through a diplexer that splits the bands at 156 MHz. One port passes <156 Mhz and the other 156 to 800 MHz. The output of that diplexer goes into the VHF input of a standard Tinlee VHF/UHF diplexer. The 91XGs go into the UHF input. The output of that goes down 575' of coax to my house, 430' of that is Trilogy M2 1/2" CATV hardline. It's the only way to get the loss low enough to get the system to work.

In the house there is one power inserter to power all three preamps. I have a second 156 MHz Tinlee diplexer to split off the FM signal to a tuner and high VHF/UHF to the TV. I also have a Tinlee channel 18 notch filter to knock KUVS down by 25 dB which is my one really strong local station that would otherwise overload the TV.

Experiments have shown that the Tinlee 30 dB UHF preamp is not overloaded by KUVS which has a noise margin measured at 69 dB!

Chuck
Edited by Calaveras - 8/3/12 at 11:21am

Wow!

Well, thank goodness for OTA! The other day we had a thunderstorm with considerable lightning. We were watching the Olympics on our cable and there was a nearby flash, with immediate clap of thunder. The TV went black. Cable box was still good. After doing some trouble shooting, determined that the Denon 1312 A/V receiver HDMI input for the HD cable box signal got fried. Moved the cable input to the Gaming input port and every thing was peachy - no big deal. 30 minutes later, another lightning strike nearby did the same thing, the port was toast.

The cable box was still operating fine - I could connect the HDMI cable direct to the TV and it worked like a champ. You'd have thought the box would have been trash before the A/V receiver given the long RF cable from the house entry point to the cable box. Apparently the receiver input circuitry is very sensitive to transients. The HDMI Cable was 6 feet. Its interesting to think that a fairly short HDMI cable would have had enough voltage/current induced on it to fry the A/V receiver front end. Apparently the TV has better filtering or is less sensitive to EMI. There is a 6 ft HDMI cable from the A/V receiver to the TV. There was never a problem with the TV (42 inch Panny plasma).

So after the second event, moved the cable to Aux port (which still worked) and connected the rabbit ears to the TV (I have a strong signal from Cheyenne Mtn here in Colorado Springs 12 miles away). I went back to watching the Olympics OTA in the midst of a thunderstorm with no more outages. Hurray for OTA!

Thanks for the details on your antenna system and the link for further information.

Excellent design, Chuck!

73,
rabbit
Edited by rabbit73 - 8/4/12 at 11:38am

Calavaras - I was wondering about your location. Your handle and location implies Calavaras county and brings back fond memories of growing up in CA. My grandparents used to live in Murphys (back in the 50s and 60s) just off Hwy 4. Visiting was something I looked forward to - the drive was always fun. My other grandmother lived in SF, at one time near the corner of Haight-Ashbury and other times in the Mission District on Social Security no less. My mom couldn't stand going to H-A because of: "all those dirty hippies". I thought it was a hoot. Mission district was cool. She had a nice view of the city from her flat. She left SF before Sutro Tower was built. I remember the contraversy about it and Herb Caen's columns in the Chronicle. My Meteorology Dept at San Jose State had instruments at various levels in the 70s. Some pretty amazing temperature inversions associated with the marine layer and fog were observed. I often wondered how that could be translated into anomalous propagation (ducting) of the TV signals. The depth of the marine layer varies. Sometimes the top of the tower was above it, sometimes in it. Interesting. Several generations of us are native Californians. I spent the better part of my youth growing up in Cupertino - though it was mainly orchards when I was a kid back in the 60s. CA and the SF Bay area was a great place to grow up. What an experience! Now I live in CO - not nearly the same thing. *sigh*
Edited by Satcom15 - 8/5/12 at 7:30am

Yes, I live pretty much in the middle of Calaveras County, about 7 miles NNW of Murphys. I went to elementary and junior high in San Lorenzo in the 60's when KQED had translators in Hollister on UHF channels in the 80's, TV Guide listed Sacramento and Redding, and KSBW carried the blacked out Raider games. I went to high school in Fremont and lived in Sunnyvale and Fremont when I was working. I did a lot of TV experimentation when I lived in Sunnyvale since it was a pretty good location to receive out of the area stations. Even though I don't live in the Bay Area anymore I have a long history there and still have an interest in what goes on in the Bay Area TV world.

Chuck

Thanks for the memory ticklers. Do you recall the Ch 11 KNTV "auxiliary" antennas? They were handed out to get people in the South Bay area to watch (it as an ABC affiliate then). The transmitter was on Loma Prieta, about 180 deg from all the transmitters in SF (San Bruno Mountain for the most part). Unless you had a rotator or poor F/B ration on your antenna, Ch 11 reception was not good - I don't believe they had a lot of power. You could get the antenna free (a two element driver/reflector design) with instructions: first cut the 300 ohm twin lead, strip the wires, connect the TV end to one set of connectors on a weather sealed blue box and the antenna end to the other set. Then you'd point the antenna at Loma Prieta per the little diagram in the instruction sheet which showed the ridge line with Mt Umunhum to the right. I remember being on the roof helping my dad doing the installation. And, how could I forget the Moffitt Field bound aircraft induced fence post multipath interference on our tube electronics B&W TV. Or, the periodic buzz on AM radio from the Mt Umunhum radar beam as it swept by. Blacked out football games, thanks for the reminder - I was a 49er fan It was a different era that's for sure.
Nick

No. In San Lorenzo it was not necessary to receive KNTV as we had KGO for ABC. KNTV was always an "odd man out" station in the Bay Area until they moved to Mt. San Bruno and became an NBC affiliate. I always thought of KNTV as a Salinas/Monterey station.

This is OT here so if you want to continue this we should move to the SF local thread. Maybe the Mods could move these last 4 posts over there.

Chuck

Got my double bay hoverman installed in the attic, pretty decent connections from where I am at 50%. Going to add the tinfoil backer tomorrow. What are the dimensions and pacement from the antenna? Some of the channels are down below 30% and big signal loss


I have two VHF channels that I need to get, thinking of doing this one
https://sites.google.com/site/maycreates/ota-setup/diy-vhf-loop-antenna

what combiner should I get?
Edited by stgdz - 9/8/12 at 9:15pm

Better than Flatwave?

Right now, I am using a Winegard Flatwave, purchased from Costco with my LG HDTV. I am quite happy with the results, and seem to receive stations that TV Fool indicates would be fairly difficult. I am blessed with an advantageous location for TV reception, I guess.

Most of the channels I get are UHF and there a couple that I really enjoy, that are somewhat intermittent. Would there be a better choice for an indoor antenna? Specifically, the Antennas Direct DB2e? Or any of the the dual bowties?

haenck,

If you provide both your TVFool plot and a summary of the problem stations, your question can be better answered.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5ed6a6ddd6a31d <--may have been a bit conservative with my height. am on 2nd floor.

The problems are CIII and WGTE.

I realize CIII is a very long shot, but I get it maybe two days per week. WGTE- the other Toledo stations come in reliably.
Edited by haenck - 9/12/12 at 9:13am

CIII looks pretty hopeless to me. You're likely getting a lot of help from atmospheric bending of the signal when you do receive. I wouldn't expect you'd be able to receive it reliably even with a good outdoor antenna.

You have an adjacent channel 21 transmitter, WMYD, whose field strength is over 50dB stronger than is CIII channel 22 in your tvfool analysis, and within 34 degrees of being on the same targetline. To even have a shot at reliably receiving CIII under those circumstances would require constructing some kind of phase cancellation array to reduce the strength of WMYD.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5ed641699972e3

The above link is based on a better estimate of my antenna height...

I kinda figured 22 was hopeless... but several times a week, both 16 (CHWI) and 22 (CIII) come in... and it is cool getting stuff from Ontario.

What about WGTE? I get most other Toledo stations- 11/13/24 reliably, 36 less so. Would a swap to some other antenna help here?
Edited by haenck - 9/13/12 at 10:00am

TVFOOL Link: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5ed6ddd7c96875

Hi Everyone, I am new to the antenna world, but I cancelled cable so here I am. I jsut tried a LEAF indoor antenna that I got off amazon last night and the only channel that really came in was one of the spanish channels, but it came in beautfiully.

Looking at my tvfool report, it shows most of the channels are 45 miles away and a few that are 15. Given that distance and the fact that I had horrible luck with the LEAF, would you recommend an outdoor antenna on my roof?

My house is a single family-single floor

Wow, you have a ton of stations showing green on your TVFool and green indicates they should be good with an indoor antenna. Before you give up on the LEAF, you might experiment by trying different placements using a coax extension. You might try putting it on a north-facing wall, or better yet, window. Sometimes, moving an indoor antenna just a couple feet makes a world of difference.

If that proves unsatisfactory then a good outdoor-type antenna may be necessary. However, that type antenna placed in the attic often suffices (that's where I have mine). Again, it doesn't take long to experiment. If the attic installation works OK for you, it has advantages (protected from wind, no worry of lightening strikes, simple to mount). Of course, a rooftop installation will almost always provide the best reception, though it is a little ugly perched on the roof.

Most of the signals are in the green area of your TV Fool report, so you shouldn't have any problems receiving the stations with a medium sized roof top antenna. All of the stations you want to receive are transmitting from three locations that are all in the same general direction: the hills above Fremont, Mt. San Bruno - just south of San Francisco, and from Sutro Tower in San Francisco.

I would recommend something like the Winegard HD7696P. It's got sufficient gain to give you reliable reception even when conditions are not the best. Here's a link to information on the antenna from the Solid Signal company:

http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?mc=03&p=HD7696P&d=Winegard-HD7696P-High-Definition-VHFUHF-HD7696-Series-TV-Antenna-%28HD7696P%29&c=TV%20Antennas&sku=

You'd point the end of the antenna with the short elements north-northwest in the direction of San Francisco. You'll, of course, need a mast, mount and coax, which you can buy at the same time and place as you buy the antenna. A five foot mast should be enough for you. You don't need to put the antenna up too high in San Jose to get a good shot at the transmitter sites. Figure out how much coax you'll need to go from the antenna to the back of your TV, allowing for bends around corners, etc., then get a roll of it that is the length that is the next highest. It's better to have a little extra than not enough.

There's no place around the Bay Area that sells a good variety of antennas, so you'll probably have to order on line and have it shipped to you. Frys Electronics stores have a few antennas, but they don't have much of a selection.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Larry
SF

Thank you. I actually just went to Fry's on my lunch break and purchased a $30 RCA amplified indoor antenna to try as well. I should say that my living room setup doesn't lend itself well to the leaf design. I tried two different ways to get reception last night. I have a tivo with a lifetime subscription on it, so I hooked it into that antenna port and did the channel scan. That received the "best" reception, although like I said only 1 solid clear channel, and a few static ones.

I also tried hooking it up to the TV directly. That TV is on a different wall, I believe facing west, (tivo is on north facing wall) and when I used the TV scan function that didn't find a single channel. I was surprised given the good things that I have heard about the leaf.

We don't have anything hanging on our walls yet so the leaf would actually be an eye sore. This rca model could blend in nicely behind our picture frames on a cabinet if it works out better. If not I will return it and go with the roof antenna that you suggest.

Edit: the model number is ANT1251
Edited by perfy - 9/14/12 at 2:11pm

If you want to try a flat panel antenna, I would try the Mohu Leaf, Walltenna, or the HD Blade from Solid Signal. These versions have received better performance reults.

And they also say the Winegard Flatwave sold at Costco works well, but I don't like the 15ft cable attached to that one.

If you've tried a couple of indoor antennas in various locations and they have not worked then you need an outdoor antenna. Your TV Fool report shows all the major stations as Line-of-Sight, but are they really? Do you have trees and other buildings blocking the view? An antenna such as Larry recommended up in the clear will receive all the stations you're looking for.

Chuck

Any experience with Jack antennas? I replaced the Winegard Wingman on my RV with a Jack antenna. I live 14 miles from the local towers with line of sight and get 12 digital channels (5 stations from 13-44 actual). I scanned with the Jack and picked up 6 additional. I looked them up on TVFool and was astounded to see they were 155 miles away. The Jack is versatile as it can be RV mounted or pole mounted and comes with its own amplifier. It is also small enough to use as an indoor antenna. I've ordered another one to replace my roof mounted DB4 as I do get some weather fade. It is under $50 from Amazon.
Edited by SkiSmuggs - 9/16/12 at 9:50am

The Jack antenna is a small antenna with a single (short) VHF dipole and a small UHF LPDA array. In general, a low-gain, not very directional antenna usually suitable for short range usage. In all, it's a good compromise for an RV due to its very compact size.

If you're getting stations from 155 miles away, it's not because you have a stellar or magic antenna, it's because you were experiencing exceptional atmospheric propagation of a signal that originated from well beyond the horizon. Google "tropospheric ducting" for details. Those stations won't be around long so have fun with them while they last.

I've cut the cord. I'm getting a couple of channels with my Radio Shack Antennacraft 5MS921. I ready to step up. Here is my TVFool output.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5ed6b73bd72b45

I'll be mounting the antenna on the roof where the Disk antenna was so it'll be about 15 feet up. Thank you for your time.

You have a challenging situation. Your stations range from extremely strong to extremely weak, LOS, 1 & 2 edge, VHF and UHF and in different directions. I'm assuming you'd like to receive all the main networks.

I'd suggest a Winegard HD7698P high VHF/UHF antenna or separate VHF/UHF antennas, the Winegard YA-1713 and CM4228 for example.

No preamp. It'll almost certainly get overloaded by those stations with a 69 dB noise margin.

A rotor will be required for the stations in different directions or multiple antennas pointed in different directions.

The antenna must not be down behind tress and buildings or you'll have little hope of receiving the weaker stations. 15' sounds kind of low to me. You need to clear all local obstructions.

Assuming you can receive the weaker stations, be prepared for dropouts on the 2 edge stations due to changing atmospheric conditions.

My TV Fool report is worse than yours and I receive all my stations most of the time but it requires good antennas in the clear so there is hope. See my avatar.