Yes the length of the screw is about 2" also 1 3/4" is also good enough.

Good luck, you should be ok, definately with more height will come stronger signals.

As you know no reason to point it towards the Cn tower. Because we are so close to the cn tower you can have a lower signal and you should not encounter any dropouts.

From your location try and get max signal from Nbc and Fox and all the others will be there. :)

Hi

I am akide's brother...
I put the antenna on the proper corner of the chimney now..

Here is a pic of the finalized install
http://static.zooomr.com/images/321351_2228470363.jpg

Here's what the antenna is aimed at (the antenna itself is maybe 3-5 feet higher than this viewpoint, but it gives you an idea of what i'm up against... this is as bad as it gets thankfully)
http://static.zooomr.com/images/321349_fa7bdfcb37.jpg

Here is the channels that I can receive using a dvico fusionhdtv5 usb gold tuner, along with the approx. % and db (i assume the signal for the subchannels will be the same %/db as the -1 station)

4-1 WIVB-HD - 83% 22.6 db
4-2 Radar
4-3 WNLO-SD
5-1 CBLT-DT - 100% 27.6 db
7-1 WKBW-HD - 71% 19.2 db
7-2 WNGS-SD
9-1 CFTO HD - 84% 23.4 db
23-1 WIVB-HD - 87% 23.1 db
23-2 Radar
23-3 WNLO-SD
25-1 CBLFT-D - 97% 26.3 db
29-1 WUTV-HD - 95% 24.4 db
29-2 WUTV-SD
33-1 D33 (I suspect this would be WGRZ?) - bounces between 0 and 18% 6.1 db
43-1 WNED-HD - 80% 21.7 db
43-2 WNED-SD
43-3 WNED-Th
44-1 OMNI 2 - 100% 33.3 db
57-1 CITYHD - 100% 27.6 db
64-1 OMNI 1 - 91% 24.4 db
66-1 CKXT-DT - 64% 17.4 db

I'm going to go back up tomorrow and try point the antenna a tad more east or west to see if I can get WGRZ better.

As for future plans, I'm looking at having this signal split 4 ways.
There'll be one cable running from the antenna to a split point inside the house (25-30 feet). It'll be split 4 ways, with a cable run of 40 feet to the living room, 2 35 feet runs to a room in the basement (1 to tv, 1 to computer with hdtv tuner), 20 feet to one of the bedrooms.

What am I looking at in terms of requirements for amps. Do I need a pre-amp given the above information (if so, I'd like to get this in ASAP as I don't want to keep having to go up onto the roof). A distribution amp isn't as big a deal, as I can do that inside before the split point (right?).

Any assistance in answering my questions would be greatly appreciated)

Hi Shmizer

I would expect that you would get roughly the same results as me.. (as my brother said, we live near you, DVP/Don Mills/York Mills/Lawrence).

I also had trouble getting WGRZ (with a bit of aiming, Sun TV was easily attainable).

The other difference in our setups is that you are using 4221 vs our 4228. Would be interesting to see your results.

Anyways, let us know how it goes.

BTW, fwiw, I'm aiming 160 degrees off magentic north - based on my house location and the WRGZ towers according to the FCC.

Nice clean install guess the chimney kit was good. :)

I sent you a response.

When you have such a strong signal from Fox and weak signal from Nbc this tell me your antenna need to position more east.

You can also put on Nbc and move till the signal gets into the low 80's maybe high 70's and check it against Fox.

Its ok to have Fox and Nbc in high 70's low 80's (20-22db).

Its ok to move the bottom strap up a foot to 18" to get more height.

Good luck.

Skipped out from work a little early today to mount my antenna while it was still light out. It was all pretty rushed so I did not cut the pole just mounted the whole 10' on my roof and only eyeballed it to 180. The side of my house is pretty much due south.

Thanks for the input striker. I also fed the cable down the pole it looks much better. I tried to run it from the antenna to a 3 x 4 swith with my sat and a diplexer at the end but no signal. Then I went back up and ran the cable directly to the grounding block using another diplexer joined it with my sat there. Still need to go back up and drill and screw in the pole to the arm but it is wedged in there pretty good I had a hard time turning it.

Here are my results using Stikers format for for my CM 4221.

I have a Sony KDS50A2000, and this is signal strength.

4-1 WIVB-HD - 87%
4-2 Radar
4-3 WNLO-SD
5-1 CBLT-DT - 98%
7-1 WKBW-HD - 89%
7-2 WNGS-SD
9-1 CFTO HD - 95%
23-1 WNLO-HD - 95%
25-1 CBLFT-D - 92%
29-1 WUTV-HD - 92%
29-2 WUTV-SD
33-1 WGRZ-HD - 70%
33-2 weather
43-1 WNED-HD - 81%
43-2 WNED-SD
43-3 WNED-Th
43-4 WNED-Th again?
44-1 OMNI 2 - 98%
57-1 CITYHD - 95%
64-1 OMNI 1 - 98%
66-1 CKXT-DT - 65%


I will try and take some pics on the weekend. I am pretty happy with the results, should I try and tweak it at all? You think I will have any problems using a 10' pole with a sat arm? I can add some side braces for extra support.

oh the cable run is about 70' of rg6, wiring it from the sat dish would add another 25 to the run.

Great results. Did not think you would have gotten such great results from 70' of RG6 from a 4221. Good for you.

If you hit the two center screws in your roof truss and also used 4 more screws on the outside you should be ok with no addition support.

The 4221 does not weight that much and wind load should be low.

I would move the antenna slightly more east maybe 1/4" on the pole to get a stronger Nbc and have Fox drop to mid to high 80's.

Nice tv picture must look amazing. Full umcompress HD signal. Watch Nfl on Sunday or live shows like Tonight Show.

Update: I did a rescan last night and I'm getting these additional channels (Sorta)
7-1 WKBW-HD
7-2 WNGS-SD
2-1 (Not Sure)

Now the reason I say sorta, is last night I was watching these channels with a few drop outs, but today they are basically gone. So was I just getting lucky last night?

Or would a preamp help me lock these channels full-time, or is this to be expected with virtually all the leaves fallen now?

Also anyone else notice WNED-HD is now broadcasting 720p when they use to be 1080i?

I got my 4221 installed and fine tuned for a few days. Here is the some factors and results. I hope it can help other guys in the future.

1. Steels/Warden, 2 story house, can't see CN tower.
2. 4221, mount against chimney, about 6' pole just let 4221 clears the top of my chimney,4221 about 170' degree.
3. no pre-amp, about 100-120ft RG6 cable.

I managed to get
29-1 Fox 76% 77%
5-1 CBC 96%
25-1 CBC (F) 94%
23-1 The CW 92%
2-1 NBC 80% 78% 84% 90%
7-1 ABC 68% 69% 73% 76% 80%
4-1 CBS 86% 85%
9-1 CTV 93%
43-1 PBS 81% 82%
44-1 OMNI 2 96% 95%
57-1 Citytv 93%
64-1 OMNI 1 90% 88%
66-1 Sun TV 81% 77%

Just found some interesting thing that I get different singal level in the different time and weather condition. You can see the pretty different result especially for 2-1 FOX and 7-1 ABC. Generelly,
A. in the night better that in the day time(less interference?)
B. more cloudy sky more better (because of reflection?)
C. rain doesn't bother alot to the signal(better than Dish)

Now I can watch all HD channels from CN tower and Grand Island very stable. Perfect PQ for the games, night talk shows, TV shows and CTV weekly moives.
I got 4221 from Yaamon. He is a such a nice guy and gave me alot of help. Thank you Yaamon.

deham thank you, that's great results especially your cable length and no preamp.

Your antenna is aim properly as you get almost equal signal strength from Nbc and Fox so what's in between cant get any better.

As a try you can try a indoor 10db amp and see if that helps increase signal strength. You should be able to buy those for $20.00. That is amazing that you are able to receive overall such strong signals at 100-120'. That's over 6.6db of signal loss because of the length of the cable.

Just shows that a 4221 is also a excellent antenna for the gta.

A note: My friends place that I did a 4221 install with a Winegard preamp AP4700 and a Samung 451 in August I had to remove the preamp on Sunday as Fox was pixelating with -26db of attenuators.

Without the preamp but a short cable run of 50' all channels is 10 out of 10 with Sun at 8.

A night like tonight where there is lots of moisture and fog it can absorb signal. Regular rain I find does not really affect reception.

Hi to all the experienced OTA GTAer.

I finally got my hand on a Hughes HTL-DL receiver. I finally have something that display signal level. Previously, I been judging by eye of the signal quality. However, now that I have some sort of meter, could someone assist me in achieving the best overall direction? I don't have a rotor so I would need to have the best compromise position.

My location is Martin Grove and Rexdale. My CM4228 is about 20 feet up, mounted to a 1-1/4" galvanize pipe using the RCA chimney mounting kit. I estimate about 60-75 feet of RG6 with F compression connector. I have a clear view of the southern direction. There is absolutely no tree until the west point.

I took a reading currently and all the Canadian stations are over 80. I am seeing really poor Fox and PBS signal level currently hovering slightly below 50. NBC is about 56. ABC and CBS are around the 65 mark. While surprisingly, the new CW (23-1) is a fairly good 70.

Previously with my built-in tuner, I thought I was getting poor signal from the poor cable and perhaps I needed a pre-amp. I purchased one but have not installed it yet because I wanted to see the level without it.. The preamp is a TACO 467 combo UHF/VHF. It is rated 20dB for UHF and 15dB for VHF.

BTW, has anyone experienced the Hughes HTL-DL receiver before? I wanted to know if it can do channel description and/or programming guide? Another question, why is my ADD channels option is greyed out?

Please let me know.

Thanks

hieppo

... Nice tv picture must look amazing. Full umcompress HD signal.
Over the air HDTV is heavily compressed. The technical standard in HD studios, master control and mobile trucks is called HD-SDI and operates at 1.495 Gigabits per second. Over the air, at best, is less than 19 Megabits per second after allowing for overhead data, PSIP, etc. That's barely over 1% of the original data rate.

GeorgeMx if you think ota digital transmission is compressed, then what about satellite

Satellite is compressed running closer to 13mps compared to ota as you said at 19 ?

Currently OTA is the highest quality you can receive a HD signal compared to cable and satellite.

If you know another source for better HD signal reception consumers, please inform us.

HD dvd is different.

hieppo, its hard to say as you dont say what direction your antenna is pointing.

If its towards the Cn tower swing it more west closer to 160-170'.

It's ok for the signal from the Cn tower to drop since you are much closer in distance there should not be any dropouts.

Keeping swing west the antenna till Fox and Nbc both has equal signal and check with the stations from the cn tower.

GeorgeMX is right about OTA digital TV using compression, and since compression is the enemy of signal quality it really comes down to the question of what we see in our homes. Who/what uses the least amount of compression? With today's technology it is OTA, followed closely by QAM on CATV, and distantly by Satellite. He was pointing out that studio production gear has to uncompress/recompress MPEG-2 data streams at many steps, and that is before it even gets to the point of "station feed" to the transmitter or to the CATV/DBS companies.

Having said that, lets remember that there are threads about this in the main OTA Forum and we'll now direct this one back to Toronto Outdoor reception.

O.k. finally got something done.... almost.

After having bought my 4221 almost 7 months ago. I finally got around to getting it mounted yesterday... sort of.

Just a little background.

I am located between Islington and Kipling just north of Eglinton. The house is a bungalow from the roof I cannot see the CN tower. The house being on the north of Eglinton is a little bit of a valley.

Originally before I got my TV(JVC 70Fh96) I had an Omni-directional antenna that came with the little inline powered amp.
When I got the TV(May 06)... I hooked up the TV directly to the cable run(the cable run is 75ft factory terminated on both ends). The TV was sitting on the floor before it was put in its final resting spot. I removed the amp as it did not appear to assist with the strength of the stations.

I was able to get the following but I am choosing not to list the sub channels

5
9
25
29
57 very intermittent

When the TV was moved into the built-in cabinetry I connected the 75ft cable run to the inwall cable(I had run that several years earlier) With that connected the cable run must be close to 90Ft.

So yesterday I was fortunate to have Remembrance Day off... I decided to tackle the job with the assistance of my dad.

Took down the old antenna first... as I was going to reuse the cable run.

Got the 4" wall mount brackets from Yaamon(thanks Yaamon) put those up on chimney near the top... aprox. two ft apart and about 4" from the cap of the chimney. I mounted the CM4221(thanks again Yaamon) on top of the 4ft pole so the Antenna just is above the chimney flue's.
I initially ran the cable over the top of the roof as the entry of the cable into the house is on the west side near the back of the house and the chimney is on the east side near the front of the house. Thank god I never got around to shortening the cable run originally. It just made it to the antenna.

I decided I would try the antenna out to make sure it was doing o.k.

I had to aim the antenna slightly more east than I expected. I will have to get a compass to validate the angle but I thought it was more east than it was.

I got the following channels(again no sub channels listed... I believe I am getting them all)

4 ???
5 CBC
7 ???
9 CFT
23 WNYO
25 CBLFT
29 FOX
44 omni
57 city
64 omni

Now, I did not check the strengths except for FOX... as I thought I read to try and aim between FOX and NBC. But as you can see no NBC.

The signal on FOX was as high as 72 and when I last left it was around 64.

We then disconnected everything and started the job of running the cable up to and through the sofitt and across the inside of the attic clear to the other side of the house near the chimney... terrible job.... Still not complete the cables were left yesterday near the wall of the chimney in the attic. My dad was going to go over today and remove part of the flashing around the chimney and we would then pull the cable up through there.

So I will need to hook it back up this week when I have some time.

Than I can test further.

I know the 90ft cable run is long... but nothing I can do about that.

I know I will have to split the cable a number of times
1) Where the cable enters the house. It needs to split to 3 outlets up to 5connections
The Three outlets are
1) Living room 1 analog TV connection
2) Bedroom 1 analog TV connection
3) Family RM 3 connections
- Here I need to split it three times.
a) Digital RF input on the TV
b) Analog RF input on the same TV (???? should I bother)
c) ATSC DVICO tuner card on the HTPC (never actually used this
yet either so looking forward to recording some of TV)

So I am anxious to get it all connected.

Does anyone have suggestions for good quality SPLITTERS to use? Also where in the GTA can I get them?

Does anyone from my general location how far east I may have to point.. My initial attempts seemed that is as far east I could go before I started to see fox drop into the low 50's.

Anyway... I will try and post signal strengths when I can.

Hi Teenie

It looks like you are a stones throw from my place. I'm just west of Islington, just north of The Westway. I too have a bungalow. Our equipment may differ though, but here are is my quick list for reception;

2 NBC
4 CBS
5 CBC
7 ABC
9 CFTO
23 WNYO
25 CBLFT
29 FOX
44 OMNI 2
57 CITY
64 OMNI 1
66 SUN TV

My signal strength meter shows mid to high 80's (in percent) on all channels except CFTO (60-70%), OMNI 2 (40-60%) and SUNTV (30-50%, doesn't always tune in). I am using a Samsung SIR-T451 tuner and a Digital Stream HD1150 tuner, so the RG6 coming into my home is split 25 feet after the antenna, then each run is an additional 20-30 feet or so. I am using a CM4228, on a chimney mount, about 4 feet over my roofline. Yaamon was great with info about tweaking it, but after playing with it a little, this is the best I've gotten. I don't mind not having OMNI 2 and SUN (I don't really watch them anyway), as long as ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CBC and CITY are strong and stable. Anyway, if you haven't chopped up your signal yet with splitters, then it seems the main difference may be the antenna. I strongly recommend a pre-amp and maybe a swith to a CM4228 if you are going to split the signal so many times, but that is just my opinion. Perhaps one of our resident experts can chime in with some help.

Tony

Thanks Unzio...

What would you say you are currently poined at? By that mean Local landmarks.

I approximate that I am currently pointing a little east of Richview collegiate.

Still have not taken a compass bearing to be alittle more accurate.

teenie I would suggest you get a preamp.

The Winegard AP4700(19db) or the Channel master 7775(26db) of gain.

With your long cable run you are losing signal, plus you intend to split the signal several times.

The Winegard at 19db of gain has more than enough to over come the long cable length and splits you need.

Good splitters can be bought anywhere. Usualy I use the ones rated from 5-1000mhz.

Your results on analog might not be that great. The reason is that for analog reception the antenna needs to points directly to the station. If not you will get noise, double ghoast images etc..

Still you should be able to get Global clear.

You guys don't get PBS, but Fox is ok??

Good luck.

Yaamon, my mistake, I do get PBS loud and clear! So many channels, my mind is overloaded!!!!

Teenie, I don't know exactly where you are, but if you are west of Islington and pointing east of Richview, then my guess is you are pointed too far east. I would try to point the antenna south, then gradually move it east until (as Yaamon explains!) you get about 80% signal strength from Fox. You aren't pointing towards the CN Tower, but you are close enough to it that you should still get all the Toronto channels anyway. Heck, I got all of my channels except ABC, NBC and FOX with a Zenith Silver Sensor indoor antenna! My guess is that my antenna is now pointed just slightly east of Grand Island (Buffalo) and definitely west of the CN Tower. Hey, it works great for me, but I would try re-aiming yours, then buying a pre-amp when you split the signal up.

Tony