Having a hard time picking up channel 8.1 and 10.1



Quote:
Originally Posted by Plasma_Plasma /forum/post/0


I have an old antenna that came with the house that I'm renting (must 10-20 years old). I bought a Samsung H260 and had it hooked up to the antenna. It picked up most of the channel except 8.1 and 10.1. I really want to pick up these two channels. Any recommendation for a new antenna? My zip code is 33714 and the house is surrounded by big trees (possible 30-50 ft tall).

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It looks like you're seeing two different effects:



1) Channel 10.1 (WTSP) is coming from a different direction than most of the other transmitters. Most of the transmitters are to the east and that's probably where your antenna is pointing. WTSP is coming from the north, so I imagine that your antenna is not set up to get channels from that direction.


To fix this, you can a) install a rotator to turn the antenna, b) install an omnidirectional antenna, or c) install multiple antennas and combine their outputs.




2) Channel 8.1 (WFLA) is actually broadcasting on channel 7 (it gets mapped to 8.1 on your display, but the signal is actually sent on channel 7). Channels 2 thru 13 are VHF channels (lower frequency, longer wavelengths) and channels 14 thru 69 are UHF channels (higher frequency, shorter wavelengths). If your antenna was designed only for UHF channels, then you're probably not getting WFLA because of that. VHF antennas need to be quite large because of the longer wavelengths. If your antenna is not that large, then it's probably a UHF antenna.


To fix this, you can a) add a VHF antenna to your existing setup and combine the outputs, b) replace the current antenna with a VHF/UHF combo antenna, or c) replace the current antenna with a UHF antenna that also has a little bit of VHF pickup. The transmitters seem to be pretty close, so even the partial VHF effectiveness of the Channel Master 4228 UHF antenna may be good enough in this case.




Before deciding anything, you should definitely get an analysis for your exact location. The signal strengths and angles to each tower may be different than what you see in the generic zip-code level analysis. The angular spread of the channels and their strengths will determine which options are best for you.




Best regards,

Andy