Hi all.
I need some assistance. I read a bunch and tried to go it alone but failed to cut the cord smoothly. Now I've got a house of people rooting for me but slowly becoming discouraged after a week with no television and an unusable living room full of cables and empty boxes and tools.
TL;DR: I need a UHF only antenna with good-excellent <20km and good-excellent 10-50km range that can pick up everything <50km facing SSW and one station 16km to the NNE, nearly 180degrees from the other stations.
I have a fairly decent looking tvfool map. @8ft (just above my TV set) & @25ft (just above my gutters)
I practically live under the antennae of abc, cbs, fox and nbc and could probably pick them up with my pants unzipped. There are also a number of local, local stations; various religion and foreign language focused as well as an indie or two which fall into the same category.
According to my tvfool report, my local pbs station (wosu/ch. 38) and cw affiliate (wwho ch.46), though more distant, are fairly powerful stations to which I have LOS.
I forgot to add that all of my local stations are UHF.
So, armed with the information above, I figured I'd only need a store bought cheapo antenna. I bought an RCA rabbit ear and loop combo and hooked it up to my recently acquired tivo hdxl.
Magic! Many stations came in with near 100% signal with the antenna set on a small shelf just above the tv. Except for wosu(38) and wwho(46). With a little movement of the small loop and with the rabbit ears fully extended, each nearly 45 degrees from vertical, don't know why the Vhf antenna played a role, but they did, I was able to pick up wwho(46) at about 75% and wosu(38) at about 60-65%. This was all done at night BTW.
The following day, wosu(38) was unwatchable, wavering between 0 and 75% often enough but hanging around 40-70% most of the time. The image was pixelated and full of drop outs along with the sound. The programs I had recorded for my kids were all unwatchable.
I scoured the internet for pay and diy solutions, came upon this forum, read a ton, studied the antenna decision chart and decided that my situation required the SH289 because of the bi-directional nature of my tvfool report as PBS, wosu(38) {an absolutely necessary station for familial harmony} was pretty near 180degrees from all the rest of my desired channels.
I built the SH289, or the close variant mentioned in this youtube vid and referenced by ota-canuk, out of 4 gauge copper grounding wire.
I built it for indoor use, hoping to mount it in my attic if it worked at ground level but found that it performed worse than the cheapo, but still not useful, rca rabbit/loop i bought.
Here are pictures of my build in an album with notations.
What did I do wrong that the rabbit/loop works better than the SH289 even when randomly placed anywhere in the room to compare performance?
Did I choose the wrong antenna to build?
Should I have chosen the SBGA instead?
I have an average of comparison numbers for each station with the two antennae at random points 8ft above ground level (excluding the position above the TV) if you think it would help. There were a lot more seesawing between a greater range of %'s with the SH289 [ie: 30-40 %age points with corresponding no picture at any point of the fluctuation]
The three most important averages are:
Strong major (avg.%) abc/cbs,etc.- El Cheapo Ant-96% || My SH289 87%
WOSU(38) PBS- El Cheapo Ant- 61 to 67% w/ constant dropouts || My SH289 0-40,50&60% seesawing w/ constant dropouts
WWHO(46) CW- El Cheapo Ant- 18% no pic || My SH289 0-20% seesawing, no pic
Thanks in advance,
Failhawk
I need some assistance. I read a bunch and tried to go it alone but failed to cut the cord smoothly. Now I've got a house of people rooting for me but slowly becoming discouraged after a week with no television and an unusable living room full of cables and empty boxes and tools.
TL;DR: I need a UHF only antenna with good-excellent <20km and good-excellent 10-50km range that can pick up everything <50km facing SSW and one station 16km to the NNE, nearly 180degrees from the other stations.
I have a fairly decent looking tvfool map. @8ft (just above my TV set) & @25ft (just above my gutters)
I practically live under the antennae of abc, cbs, fox and nbc and could probably pick them up with my pants unzipped. There are also a number of local, local stations; various religion and foreign language focused as well as an indie or two which fall into the same category.
According to my tvfool report, my local pbs station (wosu/ch. 38) and cw affiliate (wwho ch.46), though more distant, are fairly powerful stations to which I have LOS.
I forgot to add that all of my local stations are UHF.
So, armed with the information above, I figured I'd only need a store bought cheapo antenna. I bought an RCA rabbit ear and loop combo and hooked it up to my recently acquired tivo hdxl.
Magic! Many stations came in with near 100% signal with the antenna set on a small shelf just above the tv. Except for wosu(38) and wwho(46). With a little movement of the small loop and with the rabbit ears fully extended, each nearly 45 degrees from vertical, don't know why the Vhf antenna played a role, but they did, I was able to pick up wwho(46) at about 75% and wosu(38) at about 60-65%. This was all done at night BTW.
The following day, wosu(38) was unwatchable, wavering between 0 and 75% often enough but hanging around 40-70% most of the time. The image was pixelated and full of drop outs along with the sound. The programs I had recorded for my kids were all unwatchable.
I scoured the internet for pay and diy solutions, came upon this forum, read a ton, studied the antenna decision chart and decided that my situation required the SH289 because of the bi-directional nature of my tvfool report as PBS, wosu(38) {an absolutely necessary station for familial harmony} was pretty near 180degrees from all the rest of my desired channels.
I built the SH289, or the close variant mentioned in this youtube vid and referenced by ota-canuk, out of 4 gauge copper grounding wire.
I built it for indoor use, hoping to mount it in my attic if it worked at ground level but found that it performed worse than the cheapo, but still not useful, rca rabbit/loop i bought.
Here are pictures of my build in an album with notations.
What did I do wrong that the rabbit/loop works better than the SH289 even when randomly placed anywhere in the room to compare performance?
Did I choose the wrong antenna to build?
Should I have chosen the SBGA instead?
I have an average of comparison numbers for each station with the two antennae at random points 8ft above ground level (excluding the position above the TV) if you think it would help. There were a lot more seesawing between a greater range of %'s with the SH289 [ie: 30-40 %age points with corresponding no picture at any point of the fluctuation]
The three most important averages are:
Strong major (avg.%) abc/cbs,etc.- El Cheapo Ant-96% || My SH289 87%
WOSU(38) PBS- El Cheapo Ant- 61 to 67% w/ constant dropouts || My SH289 0-40,50&60% seesawing w/ constant dropouts
WWHO(46) CW- El Cheapo Ant- 18% no pic || My SH289 0-20% seesawing, no pic
Thanks in advance,
Failhawk