[krbennett]

Hi,

I have a reception problem in Hooper (west of Ogden). All the reception charts/maps show that I am in a yellow (very good) reception area that should supposedly work with a simple indoor antenna. I started with an expensive Terk non-directional clip on antenna that attaches to my dish. It did not work at all. So, I drug out my old super duper size radio shack antenna in the attic. It works (I get 80+ signal, never over 90) for a time and then some channels will stop working. I found that if I disconnect the cable from the back of my DISH 811 and reconnect, being sure to try and 'scratch' the wire on the cable against the inside of the connector, it starts working again. I thus started playing with different connectors and ultimately found the most success with no connector, simply pushing the bare center wire into the hole. I then notice that some channels seem to work best if the shield is connected, others if it is not. Does anybody have any idea what might be happening here and how I can ultimately solve it? I have even tried amplifiers to no effect.

Thanks,

KB

 

[kenglish]

It sounds like you have a bad connector somewhere, or (maybe) you don't have UHF capability on your antenna.

The Terk is going to be pretty worthless at that distance, and with the mountains around you.....it's basically a "sort of" figure-8 pattern.


Be sure your antenna has UHF elements (short horizontal elements, about 4-8" long, at it's front). Make sure the connectors are all installed properly. Snow on the roof will attenuate the UHF signals quite a bit, so see how the analogs come in (Channels 14, 20, 30).

 

[krbennett]

THanks for reply.

I do have uhf elements on the antenna. It is the biggest rooftop that radio shack sold at the time I bought it. I just picked up a $7 rabbit ear/loop combo at walmart just to see what would happen. It works much better than the big radio shack in attic. I get over 90% on most channels now. It does fade in and out sometimes on some channels. It may be something in the tuner (DISH 811) but I get the feeling, it takes a weak signal, starts to lock on it when it gets a high spike on the signal strength and then gets better at locking on until it gets better and better. It takes 3 or 4 seconds sometimes to vascelate from 40% to 70% to 45% to 80% ... until locked at 80+%. Analogs have always been crappy. That is why I bought the big rooftop years ago and ultimately gave up and went for DISH. The Terk that the dish guys sold me actually worked better than the radio shack for analog. Doesn't work at all for digital.


Any insights as to why the big RS one is not working as good as the el cheapo rabbit ears/loop and how to remedy it? I would like to get the big one in the attic to work. I want to avoid getting it on top of the roof in the wind (bouncing around always messed up analog, I suspect it would do the same for digital). The rabbit ears in the house are functioning, but are not 'fitting in with the decor '. They also get hosed when someone walks in front of them and disturbs the line of site to broadcast tower.


Thanks.