San Antonio Pointing Directions

[Crashmore]

Greetings from a deep gully up the hill from WalMart on Bandera and Mainland in San Antonio. Currently using three antennae in the attic to receive every digital station. Just dying to learn if I will have what it takes to receive channel 2 (don't expect problems with 26).

Feel kind of like an expert after a couple weeks fighting my system. Have some highly recommended items for this part of town. Chief among these are the Zinwell ZAT-970A (invaluable cheap installation aid and VCR channel switcher??) and the Channel Plus DA-550 distribution amp. The specs on the latter can be misleading and confusing... ask someone with three separate antennae hooked up to its inputs and waiting to wire in a fourth.

Just for the record, none of my antennae are oriented properly when compared to my pocket compass, common sense and the directions listed at

AntennaWeb

Nevertheless, I am running in the high 80s to 100% signal quality with nearly matching signal strengths.

crashmore

 

[Thomas G]

Hi Crashmore and welcome to the site!

Three anennae?! Channel 2? That's in the VHF range right? Are any of your antennas manufactured to receive VHF range channels?

 

[Jason Fritz]

Welcome crashmore,
I know what you mean about becoming an unofficial "dtv reception expert". After experimenting and adjusting our antenna to get ideal reception at our house, I now get 80-90% signal quality on my HDTV built-in tuner, but that's all dependant on the weather (and we're located approximately 8-10 miles from the broadcast tower).

 

[Crashmore]

Our not so local channel 2 goes digital mid February on channel 5. I purchased a really hot VHF only preamp last week. An BTY-LP-LB low band VHF antenna is due in late December or early January. MCM Electronics ORIGINALLY SOLD this antenna at less than MSR but HAD a 21 day delivery. As of December 15, their price more than doubled to over $550. I am looking at the same manufacturer and a part number change from a different reseller at maybe 1.5X the old MSR.

I am currently running two dedicated UHF only antennae mounted on the same pole but pointed at right angles (90 degrees apart). A Winegard notch filter kills analog channel 26 from one of the antennae before they are coupled (splitter turned around backwards) into an extremely high gain UHF only preamp.

In another attic, I have a generic 20 year old VHF only antenna for digital channel 9 (8 actually), an FM filter and an UHF rejection filter followed by a 10dB preamp.

 

[Crashmore]

If you have access to a spectrum analyzer, you might discover something interesting. Too much signal can cause as many reception problems as not having enough signal. I actually had to detune (turn away from optimum pointing direction) one antenna to get the best reception. Before detuning that antenna, I was pegged out at 100% signal strength and 100% quality on one channel while experiencing massive freezing and dropouts on that channel.

At this moment, under all weather conditions and trees still fully leaved(??), I have absolutely no drop outs (overhead planes excluded).

 

[acwriter]

At this moment, under all weather conditions and trees still fully leaved(??), I have absolutely no drop outs (overhead planes excluded).

Welcome Crashmore to DTV USA Forum. As you can see our threads can be informative and interactive. It is funny (I know it is not what you were referring to, but) when you mentioned drop outs and overhead planes in the same sentence, a picture of parachuters dropping out of the air planes over your antennas came to mind.

 

[Crashmore]

Three anennae?! Channel 2? That's in the VHF range right? Are any of your antennas manufactured to receive VHF range channels?

Yes. At this moment, I receive PBS channel 9's digital signals on VHF channel 8. Analog channel 2 will start digital broadcasting after February 17th on VHF channel 5. I'm currently in the market for another VHF antenna specifically optimized to receive just this channel.