reception

here is the link for my house
TV Fool

I put up a LAVA HD2605 antenna in my attic today and I am only able to get 30% signal strength and 3 stations. I am new to the antenna world and I am not sure if the poor reception is the antenna or being mounted in the attic or both. My roof has fiberglass shingles on it and is built with boards rather the plywood. any help will be appreicaited.

Thanks Tim

Tim,

You have one of the world's worst antennas for TV reception in the Americas and I am not surprised it doesn't work well for you. It is a Chinese built antenna meant to receive Chinese channels in China on entirely different frequencies than are used in Western Continents. The good news is your TVFOOL report is promising --- assuming you have an appropriate antenna.

Please join our Forum and we can probably help you get many more channels to watch.

Jim

Please note that your NBC and Fox stations are high VHF and everything else is UHF. You will need a US designed antenna designed for US radio frequency channels 7 and up. There are excellent low cost US designed antennas such as the Antennacraft (Radio Shack) HBU22 or HBU33 or the Channel Master CM-2018 or CM-2020 that should work great.

Yep, that's a sweet TVfool right there. Everything you want is @ 45 degrees, only problems are FOX on channel 9.1 and NBC on 11(VHF-hi) and ION 40 is @ 3 degrees.

I would try a 4 bay bowtie antenna pointed to about 20 degrees, and see if it gets that ION. You may get FOX 9 with a 4 bay, though it's designed for UHF only, they do okay on VHF-hi, and your FOX 9 is in the green (fairly strong) on your TVfool.

dkreiken's suggestions for antennas will also work, too.

If you have problems with 9 or 11, you can always add a VHF-hi antenna later with a UVSJ, and you'll be good to go. And if you don't care about ION 40, just point your antenna straight at 45 degrees.

No amplifier needed if you are driving less than 2-3 TV sets. That's probably one of the biggest reasons the LAVA works so poorly: it has a very noisy, cheap amp built in. And also, you don't need a rotor for your location.

Use RG6 coaxial cable, not the cheaper rg59.

Please register and we'll give you all the help you need.

I might also add the Winegard HD7694P antenna to the list of antennas suitable for your location. About $60 from several sources.