[jalmolky]

Here is my TVFool info
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id=f1f04989e26341

We are only abouta mile from the tower as you will see, and it is all uphill from the house. Is it possible that we are too close and the signal is passing over us or in too narrow bands?

House is split entry with TV on ground floor that is about half underground. We are having a hard time getting anything to work. We've tried rabbit ears with varying success. would have to change its position to pick up CTV vs Global. CBC would sort of work, but all channels would cut in and out sporadically. Could sometimes get better reception at night, but not in storms.

We purchased a Phillips SDV8625T/27 http://www.philips.ca/c-p/SDV8625T_27/digital-tv-antenna hoping that this would fix the problems. Even put it up on the roof on a coax line that I know is good. Used to be used with a Sat dish and I've traced it with a cable tester, but get worse reception with it on the roof, than with the rabbit ears in the basement.

Sad thing is, best reception is when the phillips and attached cable is in a heap in the middle of TV room floor on ground level, but even then we need to shuffle it around to pick up CTV vs Global.

Can anyone help understanding what's going on?

 

[ctdish]

Your signals are certainly strong. I see two issues you might be having. The first is the use of an amplifier will do more harm than good. You should not even consider using any antenna that includes an amplifier. CIHF is a high VHF channel and the other two are UHF. Indoor reception is always a crap shoot because of unknown attenuation and multipath. The solutions to these problems is to use low gain but directional antenna. On the roof is the best place for it but if you have an attic you have a pretty good chance of it working there. I would recommend an HBU 22 with of course no amplifier.
John

 

[Digital Rules]

+1 on the HBU22 suggestion with NO amplifier.

You need a REAL antenna, NOT a cute one.

 

[Calaveras]

We are only about a mile from the tower as you will see, and it is all uphill from the house. Is it possible that we are too close and the signal is passing over us or in too narrow bands?Can anyone help understanding what's going on?

TV broadcast stations use a high gain antenna with a very narrow vertical pattern. This is great for miles out but shoots over the area close to the tower. This means anyone close to the tower is not getting anything close to the signal level that TV Fool says. It doesn't take into account the vertical pattern.

The first attached image shows channels 43, 44 and 45 3/4 miles from Sutro Tower and over 1000' below the antennas in San Francisco. This is using an outdoor antenna pointed at the tower. The power varies a lot with frequency when you're far below the main vertical lobe. Compare those signals to the second image where the signal is flat like it is supposed to be. This can cause problems especially combined with the multipath issues of an indoor antenna.

I agree with the suggestion to try a low gain outdoor antenna.

 

[jalmolky]

OK thanks for the suggestions. I had heard that (after the fact when I was trouble shooting) about amplifier can be bad when close, but where it did seem to work sometimes I was confused.
Will try and return this thing and get a low gain antenna.

 

[AntAltMike]

Three of the installation pictures show it vertically oriented. I hope you have it horizontally oriented.

As others have said, you do not need the amplifier and surely are being harmed by it. I bet if you break open the case, rip out the amplifier and pigtail some kind of connection to maybe a 300 ohm to 75 ohm balun, you will get good enough reception to watch your local channels.

While as others have pointed out, the beam pattern will result in your actual field strength varying substantially from TV Fool's calculated strength, it means that on some channels, you might only be getting ten thousand times as much signal as you need rather than a hundred thousand times as much.

Note that one user review of that product says they got better reception with rabbit ears and a loop.

 

[jalmolky]

Three of the installation pictures show it vertically oriented. I hope you have it horizontally oriented.

Out of curiosity, why? In the instructions is says can be installed vertically in certain situations for better reception. I'll explain my findings below.

I have some new info to add tot he mix, I have some exercise equipment on the other side of the house where I was able to install the Phillips antenna as if on a mast using a long piece of coax I had lying around . Give this floor is half under ground when installed I put it at about 2 or 3 feet above ground level.

I was just experimenting and messing around, couldn't point it directly at the tower, but its square tubing on the exercise equipment so I tried both sides (90 deg difference). What I found is this.

Mounted horizontally pointing slightly left of the tower it would pick up CTV perfectly, but Global got no signal.
Mounted vertically pointing slightly right of the tower it would pick up Global perfectly, but CTV got no signal.

Very weird in my opinion given despite the rotation and orientation the antenna was still within the same cubic foot of space.

At the end of the day this was just me playing around and is not a viable solution to run cables around the house when I have a perfectly good one already running to the roof.

 

[AntAltMike]

Three of the installation pictures show it vertically oriented. I hope you have it horizontally oriented....

Out of curiosity, why?.. .

United States domestic television transmissions are nearly all horizontally polarized. I haven't seen the numbers for UHF reception, but when a linear Ku Band probe is perpendicular to a desired wave, it loses more than 20dB. I admittedly don't know for certain whether your desired station's signals are vertically polarized or not.

 

[holl_ands]

Circular Polarization....or Elliptical Polarization (Vertical not equal to Horizontal) has been adopted by quite a few US and Canadian Stations in order to support ATSC-M/H (Mobile/Handheld) transmissions in accordance with more robust, lower data rate ATSC A/153 (Time Interleaved H.264/MPEG4) Specifications.

Latest listing are found here, but MAY NOT include latest changes:
http://www.rabbitears.info/oddsandends.php?request=polarization&type=C
http://www.rabbitears.info/oddsandends.php?request=polarization&type=E

I see THREE stations in Nova Scotia using Elliptical Polarization:

[U]Ch [/U][U]Call       [/U][U]City        Pwr-H    [/U][U]Pwr-V
[/U]35 [URL="http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=9322206"]CIHF-6[/URL] Bridgewater, NS 17.5 kW  7.5 kW
28[URL="http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=9322209"] CIHF-9 [/URL]Shelburne,   NS 11.3 kW  4.9 kW
36[URL="http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=9322207"] CIHF-7[/URL] Sydney,      NS 65.0 kW 28.0 kW

.

 

[Andrew K]

This situation is puzzling to me. I live in a similar situation where I'm only 1.0, 1.6, and 2.0 miles from the broadcast towers, and I can receive all of them with a toothpick inside my aluminum sided house. So in my situation, an outdoor antenna is overkill for receiving just these nearby stations.

 

[Trip in VA]

The problem here is probably overload from the amp plus lots and lots of multipath. (Multipath can cause signals to work better when the antenna is vertical.)

The small outdoor antenna with no amplifier is definitely going to be the most straightforward way around it, and nearly guaranteed to work. You could even go smaller than the HBU22 if you wanted.

- Trip

 

[Digital Rules]

. . . lots and lots of multipath. . . . .

Exactly . . . . . .

Lots and lots of multipath + CUTE indoor antenna=Lots of Frustration

Lots and lots of mutipath + REAL outdoor antenna= Lots of Ahhhhhh

 

[Wilbour]

I am located about 2 miles from the local TV tower. There is nothing between me and the tower and I see it clearly as we are on the same level. I cannot get any channels from this tower regardless of my type of antenna. I have tried several. I also aimed the indoor antennas directly at the tower.

 

[DrDon]

I am located about 2 miles from the local TV tower. There is nothing between me and the tower and I see it clearly as we are on the same level. I cannot get any channels from this tower regardless of my type of antenna. I have tried several. I also aimed the indoor antennas directly at the tower.

You might want to start with the Antenna Help instructions and either add all that information here or post in your television market's thread in HDTV Local Reception. Please read the thread THOROUGHLY as it contains questions we'll need answers to and various workarounds.

 

[TampBayOTA]

You need a REAL antenna, NOT a cute one.

You can consider that line stolen!

 

[holl_ands]

Best solution to TOO MUCH Signal is a Variable RF Attenuator, such as fol. from Antennas-Direct:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/store/Variable-Attenuator.html

If you want to TRY to receive WEAK stations, you may need to use SINGLE-CHANNEL Filters [Two Adjacent Channels also available] to attenuate nearby Stations, available from Tin-Lee and Jan Jenca (also on eBay)
http://www.tinlee.com/MATV-Bandstops.php?active=3#CR7
http://www.antenne-komponenty.eu/english/main/product/zlucovace.html

And if there are nearby FM Transmitters, to prevent Second Harmonic Distortion to Hi-VHF Band (Ch7-13), you should also try inserting fol. FM Band Reject Filter [sometimes TWO In-Series are needed], also from Antennas-Direct:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/store/FM_band_rejection_filter.html

And do NOT use any Preamps or Distro Amps.....

====================================================
The BEST Indoor Antenna was the Terk HDTVi with a Directional LPDA to suppress UHF Multipath plus VHF Rabbit-Ears. BUT, it is no longer available....and the HDTVa model has an Integrated Amplifier that can NOT be removed. Fortunately, there are numerous other "Silver Sensor" type Indoor/Outdoor implementations...some with VHF capability:
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-h...e-who-want-classic-silver-sensor-antenna.html

 

[Calaveras]

I am located about 2 miles from the local TV tower. There is nothing between me and the tower and I see it clearly as we are on the same level. I cannot get any channels from this tower regardless of my type of antenna. I have tried several. I also aimed the indoor antennas directly at the tower.

You're doing something wrong. We need a lot more information about your setup. It's essentially impossible in this situation to receive nothing. An unfolded paper clip stuck in the antenna connector should receive something.

 

[majortom999]

Not impossible if he is using the cable QAM tuner and not the ATSC OTA tuner in his TV, but like ya say, need more info

 

[rabbit73]

Interesting Reception Problem

Wilbour hasn't come back since his first post, but I was curious about his strong local signal.

I found his username on the small-cabin forum; I think it is the same guy.

He lives in Ottawa and has a small off-grid cabin on Wolfe Island.

Posted: 22 May 2018 09:01
http://www.small-cabin.com/forum/3_8226_0.html

I did run the fridge all night and watched a little T.V. I will need a larger antenna but there are a few channels here (mostly USA) On another thread I can discuss the disadvantage of being 1 km from the tv tower.

Posted: 23 May 2018 18:19
http://www.small-cabin.com/forum/3_8312_0.html#msg117470

Yah. I'm almost directly underneath the tower. Apparently if you are too close the signal is shot over your head.

I was just playing around with a very small set of rabbit ears from an old computer tuner. Signals are hit and miss but PBS almost always comes in.

Yesterday I bought an amplified GE antenna from Wal-Mart as it was the only thing they had. Well the $35 plus tax thingy was just glorified rabbit ears. Funny how nowhere on the package do they show this.

Well it's going back. I will be playing around with other indoor antennas over the next few weeks. I don't want to put anything outside to show that tech is on the inside. It's bad enough I will have my solar panel facing the road.

There are a few channels I get from the USA like LAFF and some other stuff but I have to tell you that most of those shows are hard to watch.

He probably hasn't answered because he works 12-hour shifts, and it is a long drive from Ottawa to his cabin.

This is an estimated report:
The CKWS tower is on the island.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id=90384ef152229e

CKWS probably overloaded the amp in the GE antenna. He could get PBS and WWTI with a UHF antenna and a UVSJ to attenuate CKWS. He would need to ground the coax to keep CKWS out. He would probably need a custom filter to get WWNY on 7, moving to 8.
https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=wpbs

Wilbour:

If your 500W inverter causes RF interference to TV reception, ground the coax with a grounding block and move your antenna away from the inverter.