OTA antenea

[dclutter]

Hello everyone:  i live in wales and right now i have my antenea pointing to madison and receiving 15, 27, 47, 3  well.  I even receive  12 out of milwaukee ok, but no other channels. Is there an antenea out there that will let me receive Milw and madison without a rotor on the antenea.

Thanks for all your help?

[gwhinwi]

I'm curious about this as well.

I live in Sun Prairie, about 20 miles from the center of Madison and needed to get a pretty big antenna to receive the Madison channels and I was wondering what I could do, short of a rotor to get the Milwaukee stuff in as well.

Thanks,

Glen

[Greg Oman]

At the ranges that both of you are talking, you need to point whatever style antenna you get at the source, where the reception pattern usually is best.  Polar patterns generally indicate what the reception lobes look like, few anntenna at the distances you're considering have a unidirectional capability, and therefore must be rotated.  Look at the following example, this is one of Winegard's largest models, specified for "deep fringe" locations.  You do need Acrobat to view this:

http://www.winegard.com/images/pdf/Pr-7052.pdf

gwhinwi-- looking at the map-- you're about as far from Milwaukee as I am from Madison.  Not only are you probably going to need a fair amount of scrutiny of components and losses associated with splits & cable runs.  I'm using a CM 4228 and get Milwaukee well, Madison pretty well most of the time.  Terrain and site issues like tree line, surrounding buildings, etc. will also be factors.

dclutter- If you're getting 12 and Madison without rotating what you have, I'd have to think terrain isn't as much of an issue for you.  What are you using now, and does your receiver give you any signal strength indications for 28 in Milwaukee?   You may also have luck with 8 as that's PBS and VHF.  What kind of antenna are you using presently?

Greg O.

[dclutter]

thanks for replying.  I have no idea on what antenea i have.  i have a samsung 151 and decided to try the existing antenea before i invest in a new one.  i remeber reading in other posts that the samsung signal strentgh meter is not a realistic reading?

[cgardnl]

After a good deal of investigation, I came to the conclusion that no amount of research is going to tell me what I need for my location (Delafield).  I too brought the HD set home to see what I could pull in over the air with the antenna in my attic that I haven't used in the ten years we've had cable.

PBS came in wonderfully (VHF), others were sporadic, and CBS didn't come in at all.  I contacted Larry Nueuns at KemmerTV-Antenna and it was clear from the questions he asked that he knew what he was doing.  He came out with a Hughes spectrum analyzer, and in an hour he had the Milwaukee signals at 100 on his meter by adding a preamplifier to my attic Yagi.  Sounds simple, but without his equipment and experience, how do you know?

Now the good part is that although the Yagi is pointing due east, I watched NCAA in HD over the weekend on 3.01 out of Madison.  Larry cautioned me not to count on it, but it's suffered only relatively few dropouts over the last three days.

Since antenna performance is so location-dependent, I'd recommend you get someone out to help.  If you want to learn more, try this: http://hometown.aol.com/kq6qv/HDTVprimer.html