Hey Flavoie... Thanks, but I tried that setup first at 246° and I did not get 6.1 at all.. I settled on 256° as that brought in all the channels.. I am also surrounded by tall trees that avg 75 feet in height, and I hope that signals will be better in the winter when there are no leaves.

My next step is to add a rotor on top of my 10 foot pole and install a VHF/UHF yagi directional antenna and leave the DB8 below with a dual-input pre-amp. That way I can pull in the US stations that are between 70 and 90 miles away in upstate NY. I figure the yagi will be about 47 to 50 feet off the ground in the final installation. I have not decided which yagi to buy yet, but I'm leaning towards the Winegard HD8200P or CM3671.

LG47DB8, a dual input preamp is for 1 UHF antenna and 1 VHF antenna. I bet your DB8 will do better for the UHF channels for upstate NY than those big UHF/VHF antennas. What i am referring is using an VHF antenna for 6,9,13 locals since all these 3 channels originate from the same tower. Then your current, excellent UHF antenna for the rest of the channels, and that can include the UHF channels from upstate NY. Not too long ago, I had my 4228hd pointed at South Colton and was getting the other channels pretty well.

Hey LG47DB8. You are welcome to see my setup in Navan. I too am surrounded by 75ft trees, yet I receive 21 DTV channels 24/7. Navan is a prime reception spot. You really should be receiving the PBSs, CBS and FOX. A DB8 and preamp should suffice for all the UHF channels.

It seems that as of a few days ago, CBOT-DT is broadcasting in 720p instead of 1080i and also I am not getting program guide or programming information at all anymore.

Is it going to stay this way? Seems to me it was better the other way - particularly with program info which is now missing.

Any ideas/information on this?

Search: CBC HD Switches To 720p From 1080i (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=144794). Hopefully they should restore PSIP info at some point...

Hi Backpackster.. I sent you a PM yesterday.

Post cutoff date now getting in the Kanata north Beaverbrook area channels 4-1 CBOT, 6-1 Global ,11-1 CHCH, 13-1 CJOH, 14-1 OMNI 2 , 24-1 TVO, 30-1 CIVO, 40-1 CHOT, 42-1 CTS, 43-1 CHRO, 60-1 OMNI 1, 65-1 CITYTV.

Test channel 46-1 CRC

US channels at night ( varying weather conditions apply ) :
16-1,2,3 WPBS
18-1,2,3 WNPI
28-1,2,3 WWNY
57-1,2,3 WCFE

All channels are recived using XG-91 Antenna with CM Titan II model 7777 pre-amp on top of flat roof with tripod giving 40 ft height and pointing to Herbert's corners in Manotick.

Those are also my reception results, except add to that the occasional appearance of 21.1 (virtual channel 50.1) which is an ABC network station. My US stations seem to be coming in during the early morning rather than in the evening these days. The US stations are only coming in for me once I added the CM 7778 pre-amp to my setup. I had to overcome signal loss caused by an automatic switch and by combining a DB4 with rabbit ears using a splitter. Now I use the pre-amp to combine and had to open up the unit to switch the setting to "seperate". I've had signal strength improvements accross the board and no tuner overload problems with the Aquos.

Any thoughts on which antenna or antennas for in Osgoode.

My thoughts were either the CM4228 or the DB-8 along with a CM7778 amp. I am going also with the rotater but really not sure which VHF antenna.

My TV Fools report is on post 1139 , just a couple pages back.

Thanks

flagguy;

I wouldfirst try an outdoor antenna without a rotor. A DB8 pointed at Colton, NY should easily give you PBS & Fox/CBS. You *should* be able to get all of the CF and CF stations off the backside of your antenna, even the VHF ones.

I get PBS quite often with an indoor 4 bay no-name antenna pointed at Colton, and ALL the locals, even 6 and 13. I'm going to try a homebrew 4 bay on the roof to try and pull in WNYF.

Careful choice of preamp may be warranted, though your situation with the close HC stations is better than mine.

6.1 is bad this eve for me.

Post cutoff date now getting in the Kanata north Beaverbrook area channels 4-1 CBOT, 6-1 Global ,11-1 CHCH, 13-1 CJOH, 14-1 OMNI 2 , 24-1 TVO, 30-1 CIVO, 40-1 CHOT, 42-1 CTS, 43-1 CHRO, 60-1 OMNI 1, 65-1 CITYTV.

Test channel 46-1 CRC

US channels at night ( varying weather conditions apply ) :
16-1,2,3 WPBS
18-1,2,3 WNPI
28-1,2,3 WWNY
57-1,2,3 WCFE

All channels are recived using XG-91 Antenna with CM Titan II model 7777 pre-amp on top of flat roof with tripod giving 40 ft height and pointing to Herbert's corners in Manotick.
28.3?

With my gear I get 28.1 and 28.2...57.1.2.3 and 18.1.2.3 all the time regardless of weather so far. Occasionally 50.2 and 50.2...and I even got VPN...Vermont public network once.

I almost never get 16.1.2.3 or 7.1..etc with my cm4228 plus vip302sr combined with cm 7777 from the top of beacon hill.

I'm currently rethinking how I could improve my reception off the back of my roof mounted cm4228hd with cm7777 on a rotor. The rotor is there just for fine tuning. I'd like to continue aiming at South Colton but post transition CHOT digital is not very good off the back of the 4228hd. So I'm temporarily set between CF and HC. tvfool under my profile homepage

Are there other similar antennas like the DB8 or hd8800 who would give me better off the back reception ? Is this where front to back ratio becomes important ?

Yroc.. yeah 6.1 is bad tonight especially while watching Ironman with all the action and explosions.

I'm currently rethinking how I could improve my reception off the back of my roof mounted cm4228hd with cm7777 on a rotor. The rotor is there just for fine tuning. I'd like to continue aiming at South Colton but post transition CHOT digital is not very good off the back of the 4228hd. So I'm temporarily set between CF and HC. tvfool under my profile homepage

Are there other similar antennas like the DB8 or hd8800 who would give me better off the back reception ? Is this where front to back ratio becomes important ?
If you look at http://imageevent.com/holl_ands/multibay/8bayrefl/cm4228hd (specifically at the polar diagram for 590 MHz), you will see there is a null at 135 deg from the peak response. Your separation between S Colton and CF is 134 degrees, so CF would be in this null. It appears from the diagram that you could turn the array a few degrees (say 10) clockwise without losing very much gain from S Colton, but adding quite a bit in the CF direction. If your strength from S Colton is good, then you could turn it 15 degrees to get the best from that back lobe.

Thanks DXer. As you might have noticed in this same thread a couple of posts back (post 1131), I asked some feedback about rotating 10-15 degrees as I saw the same kind of null in this same chart from holl_ands. Rotating 10-15 degrees east did not improve reception enough for CHOT. I was still getting about the same SNR of 22-23 with the occasional errors reported, and not good enough playback. This may be more of a multipath problem that some tuners are better to handle than others. So I decide to have a look at CFGS to confirm the analog signal was completely messed up unless I rotated to be facing CF instead of being back from CF. That's why i'm now asking about better Front to Back ratio antennas... Can I monitor signal quality or these probably multi-path problems from special software ? I guess i'll ask in the HTPC Tuner thread...

Old Sparks

Thanks for the reply. That was the antenna I was leaning towards. I may still go with a rotor since I don't want to keep climbing the tower to make adjustments. I'd like to install the antenna on the tower with the tower leaning against the house, then finish raising the tower to avoid climbing. I'll test the antenna on the roof 1st before final install. Now to make time to take the tower down from a buddys house who wants it gone.

flagguy, I have a rotor myself for the same reason. I don't want to go back to the roof just to make antenna aiming adjustments. You also get way better aiming this way in my opinion... The price was worth my time.

Yroc.. yeah 6.1 is bad tonight especially while watching Ironman with all the action and explosions.

Ironman was not good enough to watch for me, but by 11 pm it returned to a perfect signal. Boggle....

I had no issues with ironman, what is your SNR? Do you have a strong signal?