I think I'm going to try tilting my DB8 slightly to see if I can get a better signal from the US stations which are around 110 miles away. I find that NBC, and ABC are cutting in and out. I'm also going to try trimming some of the branches off the tree that's in from of the antenna. A nice sunny day like today will give a good indication of best case senario.

Gajego,

When I say I got all the toronto stations and wnlo, i meant in HD.

OnDaFringe, do you mean your neighbour's pine tree? If not, is it a leafy tree or a coniferous? If its leafy, your reception could be really affected come springtime. :eek:

Stampeder,

The leaffy tree is on my lawn and it's directly infront of my antenna (about 20 ft away). I had very little choice in that I mount it on my chimney and it seem to be the best location and it gave me a direct light of sight, based on TVFool.com's. I may have no choice but to trim or even remove this tree come springtime.

The pine tree is on my neighbour's lawn and it's about 70 to 80 ft. tall. I had to position the antenna so that the CN Tower is on one side and Buffalo on the other side of the tree. I found from last night, with clear weather, if I point towards Buffalo, the CN Tower station came in with good signal as well. It's somewhat of a compromise in aiming for Buffalo and losing signal strength from CN Tower stations.

I may have to relocate my antenna to be away from both the leafy and pine trees. It's my guess that the reason I'm getting poor/unsteady signal from Buffalo may be the branches and trunk from my leafy tree and not so much from my neighbour's pine tree. Does anyone know how significant tree branches have on signal strength?

Having moved 4 km north from Yonge & Stouffville (i.e away from CN-Tower and Buffalo-and to a slightly lower elevation) , I was interested in what I would pick up here with a roof mounted CM 4221 HD (tripod - a lot uglier than the J mount in the previous location - but as I learned on this forum: Height is everything):

Pointig the antenna to 152 degrees (NBC) I got following results (my Sony TV does not give any %)

2.1-3 NBC
4.1 CBS
5.1 CBC
7.1 ABC
9.1 CTV
17.1 - 3 PBS-WNED
19 TVO (are they ever going to go digital)?
23.1 CW
26.1 CBC-French
29.1 FOX
49.1-2 MyTV (instable)
57.1 City-TV

Adding a Home-Depot drop amp ("Leviton 48210-VAB" with a 10 - 25 db variable attenuator at 10 db setting) before a four way splitter added the following channels:

11.1 CHCH (Hamilton!)
41.1 Global
44.1 OMNI 2
49.1 MyTV (now stable)
64.1 OMNI 1
66.1 SUN-TV

Channel 11.1 interestingly only comes up on my SONY TV - the Philips Harddrive/DVD-Recorder DVDR 3575H (digital SDTV-Tuner) which is cabled BEFORE the TV (cable to recorder, then from recorder to TV) has problems. So does my old TV with a digital converter box (Microgem MG 2000) on a really long cable run. Cranking up the drop amp does nothing to change that.

51.1-4 ION and 26.1-2 TCT which I reveived absoutely stable at Yonge & Stouffville (no amp) do not get picked up - both no issues as we did not really watch them.

Main problem was getting a contractor to do a roof install in winter - finally a computer network company (who had never done an antenna install before), did the job. Thanks to this forum we were able to piece the necessary know-how together.

Thanks everyone for providing this incredible knowledgebase.

Glad you got up and running, JohnMKeynes! :)

I'd guess that the locking difference on 11.1 between the two tuners is probably due to their age difference (different generations of ATSC tuner chipset). That's usually the case in situations like yours.

Also please post the installer's info here for the benefit of other members in your area: OTA: Ontario Parts, Sales, Service, Installers (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=23984)

Stampeder - as suggested, I have posted the info.

I have been reading this forum and figured based upon some recommendations in my area to get the CM4221HD.

Thank you for any help (And thank you Stampeder for pointing me here).

Mike.

JohnMKeynes, how long is your coax run from the antenna to your amplifier? I'm curious whether a preamp or a signal booster (like yours) will let me pickup ABC and NBC so that they come in a lot stronger. Currently ABC (7.1) comes and goes and NBC (2.1) is virtually non existent. I'm guessing if the signal booster from HD doesn't do anything I've got nothing to lose and can return it hassle free to HD. :)

Lobo

kyoshi see the link in Post #1117 ;) You will have good luck with a CM4221HD.

Lobo,

the cable is about 25 feet (the preamp is where the cable enters the basement before a central splitter). It does give the extra umphhh for the extra channels. And I do not see any "noise" (How one does on digital, I wonder). So much for the real life solution. This does however not seem to be the "generally" recommended solution:

When I got my antenna at Save & Replay, their recommendation for a Preamp versus Drop Amp was the following: If you have a channel on one TV but not the other, a drop amp is O. K. If you need the amp to get the channels at all (like in my case): go for a (proper) Pre-amp. So once it does get warmer, I might consider exchaning my "home building centre" drop-amp for a proper CM pre-amp on the antenna as the recommended solution. This also seems to be the consensus here on the forum.

Having moved 4 km north from Yonge & Stouffville (i.e away from CN-Tower and Buffalo-and to a slightly lower elevation)

...

51.1-4 ION and 26.1-2 TCT which I reveived absoutely stable at Yonge & Stouffville (no amp) do not get picked up - both no issues as we did not really watch them.

John, I'm in the same area, and you'll get 51.1 in the summer with some help from tropo. That extra ridge-line in the way makes it really difficult to pick-up. We were having some unseasonable tropo in Januany and 51.1 was coming in great for a few days. It's not 100% in the summer for me, but consistant enough to keep it in the channel line-up.

Kyoshi,

One of my co-worker live in your area and installed a 4221HD mounted on the roof. He was able to pick up a total of 33 channels (digital and analog). I'm pretty sure you shouldn't have any problem with the 4221HD. If you're using a long cable, I suggest using a pre-amp.

Thanks OnDaFringe,

I used to have a Starchoice connection, dish is still up there. I plan on taking that down, and using the cable the installed there. I just need to check if it is RG6.

Also, I have an ONQ box in my basement, where that cable goes into. On one side it has a small box for all my telephone connections, and on the other it has some kind of splitter. One cable goes into the middle and then the others go to my rooms in the house. Could I use that safely without any/much loss?

Mike.

I live in Newmarket and here's a bit of an update on my situation. I've not got a Channel Master 4228hd mounted in my ceiling, no preamp and some really crappy rg6 with the shielding all cracked (bad stuff). Its going on the roof with a cm7777 preamp and new cables once the weather warms up.

Peaking my antenna for GlobalTV rf 65 I was able to receive:

GlobalTV
SunTV
CityTV
CBC
CTV
CW23
WIVB Channel4 (weak with frequent cutting out)
and some analogue channels
Missing were the OMNI channels.

I then decided to aim at Grand Island to see what I could get and these are my results.

GlobalTV and SunTV are now gone.
These channels now come in reliably
CBC
CTV
CityTV
CW23
WNED PBS
WIVB channel4
WUTV Fox29

Late in the evening WGRZ NBC comes in somewhat reliably and I occasionally get blips of rf 38 channel 7 abc. I think if I peak the antenna a bit more I could pull in WGRZ reliably but then I'd lose FOX.

Can't wait the preamp this replace the cable and stick it on the roof. So far not bad for 105 miles away from the far Buffalo stations!

Think I have a hope in hell of pulling in RF49? Thats my white whale that I'm gonna pursue! Wish me luck.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d27ee9354347adc

New2OTA,

I think with a CM 7777 pre-amp, you'll get NBC 2.1 to 2.3 for sure. By pointing towards Grand Island, I get all the Toronto stations plus CW and MyTV consistantly. NBC, CBS and WNED, I get them at night during prime time. For some strange reasons, I never get Fox. Something to try for during the Spring.

I've tried ganging up two 8 bays, but the results were poorer than with the single 8 bays. I may have to scrap the chinese clone bowtie and replace it with a 4228HD instead. That could be the reason for not picking up Fox as it is in the lower frequency range. Again, it's another Spring time exercise.

I'm getting Fox from inside my attic. I live at the corner of Mulock and Yonge in Summerhill so maybe my location is helping me. Are you in a valley in Sharon? I'm surprised to hear that you regularly receive channel 49 that "should" be a lot harder to get than Fox. Maybe once I get everything up on the roof in the spring you'd like to stop by and compare notes. :)

New2OTA,

Surprisingly Sharon is higher than Newmarket. I think my problem is the tree in my neighborhood. It's a 40 year old home with 40 year old trees. But I think with a bit of repositioning and tree pruning, I should get Fox. I find the CM 7777 helps a lot in my case and worth the investment.

Here's my TVFool Results.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d27ee06c398ed20

:)

New update:

The antenna is up:) (well sort of)

I'm still waiting for the CM7777 to arrive but I connected everything else in the mean time.

I have 100ft of RG6 cable that will need to be cut and crimped so I'm losing some signal strength there.

I hacked the CM4228HD with the 61009 Phillips/Magnavox Baluns that I read were good in the balun thread.

The results.

Knowing full well that I'd be up on the roof again the next time the weather warms up I decided to peak my antenna for WNYO RF49 MyTV in Buffalo and come down and see where the chips fall.

The following channels come in perfectly:
WUTV
WGRZ
WNLO
WKBW
WIVB
WNED

CBC
CBC French (deleted it because I don't understand French)
CTV
OMNI.2
CityTV


As I type this now later in the evening it seems that WNYO is fluctuating between a lock and pixelating. :( Perhaps the CM7777 and a properly cut and crimped RG6 cable will clear this up.

Not surprisingly neither DT Hamilton station comes in. I'm confident that I could pull these in if I were to aim in that direction.

Somewhat surprisingly SunTV, Global, OMNI1 are not strong enough to get a lock on. I know that with more careful aiming towards the CN Tower I will get these as I had them in my attic. I'm not missing these channels too much and in a year I should get them no problem after the Canadian analogues shutoff and digital goes full power. I'd rather try to pull in all of the Buffalo stations.

ION and WNYB are not coming in either but I didn't ever expect to get ION.

Overall I would consider this a huge success. Pulling in RF49 (somewhat) certainly exceeded my expectations of what is possible. See my tvfool results a few threads up.

One snag and this is a large one. My neighbour told me its an eyesore.

Anyone have a link to the antenna by-laws in Newmarket? I've been searching all afternoon. I hope this doesn't become a big deal for her as nearly half the houses on this street have their lawns made into driveways and tenants living in basement apartments. I know for sure that is against by-law:confused:

Just to clarify I live in Newmarket proper. OnDaFringe is in Sharon.