antennae

[jcwillia]

I currently have one of the old monster roof antennas on top of my house.  It runs a coax cable from the antenna i assume (I've never been up there) down to the basement where the mass of hysterical wiring begins to the rest of the house (why can't everything be wireless?  sorry, getting distracted)

Now I live in Bay View and all my channels come in at no higher strength than say roughly 60-70% (I think only WMLW comes in that well)  but most of the channels look pretty good (I've only had this for 2 nights now) with the exception of the WB, ch 18, I normally can only get say 2 seconds of continuous feed before it garbles again.  Fox also doesn't come in but we already beat that horse on another post.

Anywho, can I remedy this situation with a signal amplifier, or do I need to go up there and investigate?  how much do these amps cost and where should i get one?

[Kevin Arnold]

Either the antenna is aimed wrong, maybe due to years of being blown around in the winds, or the cable has some bad connections. From your location with any kind of rooftop antenna (set up and aimed) you should get top notch reception. You could start with the cable connections in the basement but if its not too much of a hassle, a trip to the roof to check it out isn't a bad idea.

[jcwillia]

how do u aim an antenna?

[StarvingForHDTV]

I use trial and error, but I'm sure there is a better method.  Especially for someone with a rooftop antenna.

If you have someone else and some walkie talkies or a cell phone plus a regular phone, you could have one person adjust the antenna while the other person watched the TV.

Good luck,

Starving

[jcwillia]

i think mine has a motor on it that rotates so maybe i'll try hooking that up first.