Good questions ljnzxync, but not an easy answer - many variables come into play. Have you looked through Stampeder's FAQs? It's a very helpful primer.

1. I'd recommend either a channelmaster 4228 or 4221. Note that the 4228 has higher gain but narrower beam width than the 4221.

2. Almost for certain you'll need a rotor with a 4228, and probably for a 4221. I think you may have even a larger angle between the Toronto and Buffalo transmitters than I do in Etobicoke, and I can barely get all the channels from a stationery placement, and sometimes the aim needs to change for reasons that take too long to explain here.

For me anyway, the 4221 has enough gain (might not be true for your location though) and I like the wider beam - I barely ever need to turn my rotor and pretty much wherever I point it, I get over 90% of the channels.

Hope this helps.

ljnzxync

Welcome!

I second the motion about reading Stampeder's FAQ. EXCELLENT info there. You will also find a section about Combining Antennas. (Yes, Tenstu jumps up on the "Combining Antennas" soapbox again...)

I am at 8th Line / QEW and have 2 stationary antennas pointing in different directions with very high signal strength from Toronto and Buffalo. This eliminates fussing with anyone else in-house about where the antenna should be aimed...

Some folks do what I do AND also use a rotor (s) for fine tuning throughout the yearly weather changes.

Again, Welcome!

Stu

I am right near you (around 6th and sewell). I recently purchased a 4221, CM rotor and a 7777 pre-amp. I don't have an existing mast so I was going to go for a chimney mount. I haven't got the guts to go up on my roof with the weather lately but I assembled everything by the side of my house and dropped the mast into an old patio table.

With this temporary makeshift setup, I am able to get almost every available channel reliably with the exception of NBC and Global. I'm sure once it goes up on the roof those won't be an issue. I recently bought a logitech harmony remote and I have 3 preset positions for the rotor programmed in it that work well.

I'm sure if you have an existing tall mast at your place you will get fantastic reception in your location.

Having recently acquired an HDTV, I decided to see if I could get any OTA channels in my location (Burlington). I built a SBGH-4 antenna using aluminum foil as a reflector. Being winter and being a hot-house plant, I'm confining myself to indoors for a few more months. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I can get 21 digital channels and sub-channels with the antenna about 3 feet off the ground on the ground floor. Tilting it backwards by about 20 degrees helped quite a bit. Aiming at the CN tower I can get all the Canadian channels (5-1, 9-1, 11-1, 15-1, 24-1, 35-1, 41-1, 44-1, 57-1, 64-1 and 66-1). Steering towards Buffalo I can get 2-1, 2-2, 4-1, 17-1, 17-2, 17-3, 23-1, 49-1 and 49-2. However I have been unable to raise channel 7/39.
The information obtained from this site has been invaluable, particularly in building the antenna. My first attempt was with a loop and rabbit ears made by RCA which almost made me give up right there. However I threw this away which was probably my biggest step forward!
harryw

Hello all!
After literally spending almost all of my waking hours over the last couple of days reading through this site, I decided to make one of those DIY 4 bay coat hanger antennas. Sitting in our bedroom, and facing south, I've been able to pull in 8 channels (Sharp LCD, requires >45% to show picture):
4.1 @ 50%
5.1 @ 50%
7.1 @ 46%
9.1 @ 50%
11.1 @ 66%
23.1 @ 65%
36.1 @ 50%
44.1 @ 50%
I also get 17.1 @ 40% and 41.1 @ 30%

After reading through other posts, I have decided that I'm going to build a SBGH (jed G10), which has been recommended by a lot of you. I'm hoping to be able to at least equal Porky's reception (~20 channels) from my attic. If this doesn't work, I will try it on my roof (once the Arctic weather is over).

One question I do have is that I bought 6 gauge copper wire (4 ft for $12 from Home Depot), but it is braided wire - I haven't had time to assemble it yet, but will this type of wire work for me?

Thanks for everyone's input, you guys here are awesome!

Jeff

Hi guys,

Thanks for posting all your results here. I bought some crappy antenna from Future Shop to see what I can get and I was able to get pretty good reception for most Canadian and some Buffalo stations with some creative placement. I bought a CM4221HD recently and a small signal amp from Home Depot as a test and I was able to get in a second floor room:

2.1
2.2
4.1
5.1
9.1
11.1
15.1
17.1,2,3
23.1
25.1
26.1,2
29.1
36.1
41.1
44.1
49.1
64.1
66.1

I really didn't have time to move the antenna around for a better reception as the supreme commander needed to watch Criminal Minds but I'm able to lock with no blips with at least 15%. Have to adjust to get City and ABC but that's all I need. This will be attic mount eventually but I'm happy with what I've got. Bye Bye Cogeco! Hello 2nd HDTV in bedroom.

parity123 the amp that you bought , what kind is it? and does it really improve your channel master reception? I dont wanna overload so maybe a 10 db uhf gain could be good with very low noise level.

parity123 the amp that you bought , what kind is it? and does it really improve your channel master reception? I dont wanna overload so maybe a 10 db uhf gain could be good with very low noise level.
Hi ontherooftop,

I am using an RCA 25dB signal distribution amplifier (sorry I don't remember the code, CH something I believe). If you live in Oakville, the Trafalgar store and the Burloak store carry them last I checked. Hooked really close to my antenna, not the best setup but it works. Channels do stabilize and or come in after putting the amp in. My TV's tuner can tolerate low signal reception pretty well but I think the amp is introducing too much noise and I think I'll be upgrading in the near future. After playing with the location last night I am now getting CityTV and ABC so I'm pretty happy that I get everything now.

I recommend going to HD or The source and pick up a signal amp or preamp there. If it gives you marginal or good improvement, you can either keep it or upgrade to a lower power preamp like Stampeder usually suggests for our area. Great thing about big box stores is that you can return anything and test everything out!

I was wondering about the advantages of upgrading my rooftop antenna cable from a ribbon 300 cable to a coaxial. Would it be worth the cost? We just got a new tv and are amazed at the digital and HD broadcasts we can receive. However, we don't get the NBC or Fox digital stations. I was hoping the new cable would do the trick. Could this be a result of living in Burlington beneath the escarpment?
I am also planning to install a pre-amp. Would this help?

Hi ddkwilson, WGRZ seems to be difficult for people to get properly regardless of what gear they use, but a preamp might do the trick. Just changing the cabling from twinlead to coax will actually cost you some signal because you'd need to install a balun, which causes some loss.

If you decide to try a preamp here are your problems:
you'd need to get up as close as possible to the antenna itself to mount the preamp up there
finding a 300 ohm input preamp is easy, but finding one with a 300 ohm output is very difficult since they're all 75 ohm coax output now so your present twinlead would have to go
the good thing is that a 300 ohm input preamp with a 75 ohm output doesn't suffer balun losses
you'd then need to string new RG6 coax down into your home
If you're okay with those challenges then I'd say put up a 300 ohm input preamp like a Channel Master 0264 and run RG6 coax.

Which major street corner in Burlington are you nearest?

Thanks for your advice. I'll check into pre-amps. I have seen the name Nutech appear quite a few times and I'll give them a call.

I am close to Brant and Lakeshore. So there shouldn't be any issues of signals crossing the lake.

After building a "You-tube" 4 bay, and having moderate success (8 digital channels) I have now pieced together a SBGH (JED version). I haven't attached any reflector to it yet and have it still in my 2nd floor bedroom, but now I'm able to get 13 channels (I have marked channels that I didn't get on the 4 bay antenna with *):

4.1
5.1
7.1, 7.2
9.1
11.1
23.1
25.1 *
36.1
41.1*
44.1
57.1*
64.1*
66.1*

This is a very crude example of how much better a SBGH is than a homemade
4 bay. The only channels that I'm missing now (that I actally care about) are 2.1 and 29.1, both from Buffalo. My next step is to attach a reflector, get it into my attic, and then possibly hook it up to a pre-amp. Hopefully, that should get me the two channels I'm missing...

^After adding the reflector, I was able to get 2.1 (and 2.2) to show up with my antenna on the 2nd floor (with ~3 ft of RG6 from antenna to tv). Today, I was able to squeeze (almost butchered my work getting it through the attic hatch) my SBGH into my attic. Running 50 ft of cable from my antenna to a tv, I was able to pick up 17.1 (and .2/.3) and 29.1.

However, I now lost 41.1, 57.1, 64.1 and 66.1. I remember reading somewhere on this site how the higher frequency channels are the first to be lost due to cable length and am reasoning this is why I lost these 4. Is this assumption correct?

As I may end up having to use anywhere from 75 to 100 ft of RG6 to feed my main tv (Samsung PN50A650), I'm also assuming that I may end up losing more signal strengh (also since I'll be splitting this off to 2 other rooms) with this extended cable run. The signal strength that I am seeing is in the range of 40-75% for all my channels, so I'm thinking I may lose reception of some of those in the 40-60% range.

After all the reading I've done on this site over the last couple of weeks, I hope I'm not wrong in also assuming that a pre-amp will be in the cards for me - most likely the CM7777 (or CM7775 if I can find it). Does this sound reasonable?

I know the best case scenario would be mounting it on my roof, but it looks like I'm almost there (in my attic), and my smarter half (wife) would prefer that I kept my imitation of fiddler on the roof to a minimum...Plus, I'd also have to re-build the whole thing to get it weather proof, heh.

My brother brought his new CM-4221HD over to test what kind of reception I could get from my home in Burlington. The results were great. Without any real positioning, we just hung it out an upper floor window and hooked it up to his US Insignia converter box attached to an SD TV. Surprisingly, we were able to pick up 10+ channels, mostly Buffalo, including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and 3 PBS substations. Unfortunately, we didn't have the remote control, so we couldn't re-scan for additional channels, or see signal strength metrics.

Are these typical results for North Burlington? Based on these results, I am considering picking up a few of these to point at Buffalo and Toronto. Is the 4221 sufficient, or is it more likely to flake out in bad weather, etc.. than the 4228? Based on our little test, I can't justify the additional $$, but maybe Saturday we were just experiencing ideal weather conditions. According to a website I found, Burlington and Buffalo are 55.3 miles apart.

op

Go figure - I realized that once I had my SBGH10 set up in my attic, I had it facing backwards!:D
Now, with 50 ft of RG6 (No pre-amp) I'm getting:

2.1 86%
4.1 86%
5.1 65%
7.1 86%
9.1 65%
11.1 71%
17.1 78%
23.1 86%
25.1 40% (no big deal here)
29.1 55%
41.1 68%
44.1 71%
49.1 35% (never got this before, but no picture)
57.1 65%
64.1 78%
66.1 71%

I also found that the tuner was picking up 26.1 too, but with no picture.
As you can see,the way I'm pointing it (southwest from Milton), most of the Buffalo channels are coming in stronger than the Toronto ones!

All I have left to do is feed it (and split it) into the rest of the house:cool:

jdkent,

wow !

awesome signals.

hmmm....I don't think you need a pre-amp. But if you do add one I'm sure you will approach the high 90s for alot of you stations.

let us know the signal change when/if you add a pre-amp


cheers

Yikes! Now in the attic, with probably close to 100 ft of cable, the signal has dropped off drastically (go figure)! On my Samsung plasma, most of the "lower channels" are showing 2-4 bars, whereas most of the higher ones won't show any bars...:(
I have the signal combined and then separated from/with my BEV signal with a couple of diplexors - as a direct connection though, all of my channels are coming in, most increased by a couple of bars on average. It's not even split yet to my other tv.
Now to convince my accountant (wife) to release the funds for a pre-amp. Yay me.

jdkent,

Lower signals.....my guess is all the snow on your roof.

hmmmm....maybe your shingles are the ones with metal fibres in it ?

anyhow....looking forward to see your pre-amp results.

The thing I'm not sure about now is that now I'll be getting a pre-amp I will be initially splitting it to 2 TVs - The first, in my master bedroom, is only ~10 feet from where the main split will be in the attic and the second is my main floor tv (~100 ft). I know I'll be losing more signal going to the main floor tv than the master bedroom one - The pre-amp is mainly to make up for the lost signal being sent to the main floor one. Since the pre-amp will be hooked up as close as possible to the antenna (and before the split), I'm worried about the signal being too strong for my master bedroom TV...

Or, should I split it as close as possible to the antenna, then put the pre-amp as soon as possible on the main floor tv line?

Opilion, I've tried a few setups over the last year and the best results from my location have been with a CM-4228 pointed at the Buffalo towers on a rotor and a fixed location CM-4221 pointed at the CN tower. In the last year I've only had to move the rotor a couple of time to fine tune "Fox" as all the other Buffalo stations work perfectly. When the summer comes I think I'm going to eliminate the rotor and add a amplifier/booster to see if I can get my numbers up on "Fox".
Enjoy...

Robert

Viewing On: Panasonic TH-42PX60U and Sharp Aquos LC32D44U