Would glass affect the signal?With clear window glass, no. With any sort of light filtering or tinting film on the glass it depends if it has any metallic properties, so you'd have to test. Metallic blinds are also a signal killer.

Hello,

I am about to purchase a CM 4228HD antenna to go on my roof. A bit about my place. I live east of the CN Tower in the beaches area of the city and can see the CN tower form my roof. The roof itself is a flat root sloping 5 degrees to the north.

I have been looking at non pentrating roof mount antennas and have a few questions about the mount and grounding. Any knowledgeable advice would be appreciated. My questions:


I notice most of the nonpen roof mount bases are square, how should I orientate the mount on the roof to avoid blocking water movement? I am considering placing it on a 45 degree angle so the water can flow around it down the gentle slope. Should I be concerned about water getting trapped in the metal square itself?
Can anyone recommend a mount? I plan on getting two 4228HD's later on the down the road so I can point one to the south and one to the west, so I have been looking at mounts with two masts.
Should I use a rubber mat with a nonpen roof mount?
Does anyone know where in Canada I can buy a 4228HD and nonpen mount? I see lots of places in the states but prefer to buy in Canada.
I can two RG6 with ground from my basement to my roof. Inside the house they terminate right beside the water main which has a massive grounding cable attached to the fuse panel. I am planning on putting an additional grounding strap on the water main and attaching my two grounding cables from the RG6 runs to it. Is this sufficient for a ground?


I have been lurking on this forum for a long time, and this is my first time posting. I appreciate any help I can with my jump into OTA.

J.

You are so close to the CN Tower, a decent indoor antenna will do the trick for Toronto stations.

I suggest reading the grounding and mounting threads for insight into your questions....

Try the sponsor saveandreplay i know they have these non petertrating roof mounts i have seen them there and have asked about them. they are designed for a flat roof and you must put cylinder blocks on them. They dont have them on there website but they do sell them in there store i have seen them and considered one for my brother before.

They also have the grounding rods and grounding wire there too this i have purchased from them before and also the 4228HDs.

read here on grounding this is a very informative site, i used a copper grounding rod and pushed it 4 feet into the ground, i have heard of people using exisitng water pipes too!

johnnyyu, see this thread for everything you will ever need to know about grounding antennas:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=62265

and regarding non-penetrating antenna mounts you need what is called a "saddle mount":

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=96910

Let us know what decisions you make. :)

I live in the Dufferin/Steeles area and use a CM4221 mounted on my roof. I do not get any of the US stations; I did get NBC for like 5 min a few months back, but then have been out of luck since.

I'm thinking about getting a CM4228 instead ir adding a preamp. Thoughts?

Also, is it possible to get 11-1 CHCH from my area? Thanks.

drp37, I've read that the 8 bay bowtie antennas do in fact pick up all the Buffalo stations in this area. The CM4228 original is rated the highest in the antenna chart for up to 110 km.

drp37, use the Search This Thread tool to the upper right beside Thread Tools and put in the search term "Thornhill" and there are results already posted from where you live so you can compare. :) Try searching on other local neighbourhoods too.

You are so close to the CN Tower, a decent indoor antenna will do the trick for Toronto stations.

I suggest reading the grounding and mounting threads for insight into your questions....
i have been using a pair of rabbit ears hooked up to a homerunhd and i get about 6 channels, however only two lock on. my plan was to get the 4228 and initially aim it at the cn tower to see if i get everything. i wanted to then try aiming it south to see if i can get us stations and canadian with one antenna.

I live in the Dufferin/Steeles area and use a CM4221 mounted on my roof. I do not get any of the US stations; I did get NBC for like 5 min a few months back, but then have been out of luck since.
Something is wrong somewhere. I'm in a 6th-storey condo at Dufferin+Steeles with a southerly view, and I get almost all the Buffalo digital stations, with an INDOOR antenna.

Is there a tall building SSE of you? Is your antenna aimed properly? If you can you see CN Tower from your roof, point your antenna at it. From Dufferin+Steeles, the Grand Island antenna farm is in the same direction as the CN Tower. Another way to aim is to point it parallel with Dufferin, towards Lake Ontario. Dufferin is actully NNW-SSE rather than N-S. So it's exactly the direction to aim.

I'm thinking about getting a CM4228 instead ir adding a preamp. Thoughts?
Buffalo should come bombing in on your 4221 without an amp, unless you're splitting it umpteen ways, or your view is blocked.

Also, is it possible to get 11-1 CHCH from my area? Thanks.
Yes, I get it too. But it's in Hamilton, i.e. to our SW. You have to rotate your antenna 45 degrees to the right from the CN Tower.

We have been using an elderly Zenith HD-SAT520 (2003) for OTA reception on an NTSC TV for a year ($35 on eBay). We have a fixed direction fringe reception antenna with a big handful of UHF elements on 3rd floor chimney with a 70 foot downlead and no splitters. We live in midtown Toronto with CN Tower and Buffalo quite closely aligned (that used to be horrible for analog reception but no defect for digital).

Mostly great viewing. But in the summer, we are crying because WNED (PBS Buffalo, 43-1) becomes marginal... like this week. Soooo, poor me, I'm trying to guess what is the weak link while my wife frets.

What is the weak link:

1. Is it the old Zenith box that needs upgrading? More to my immediate decision, what's the likelihood that the $59 set-top box from Above All on Bloor Street be a "sixth generation" chip or otherwise be a good step better than the Zenith?

2. Would a CM4228 antenna do the trick; I have a quote from "A. MacDonald" for $400 including rebuilt rotor? Or would a CM4221 with no rotor provide a good signal? The current downlead is said to be RG-6 quality but seems pretty thin to me to be RG-6 - is that the weak link? (I'd sure have no problems fooling around with antennas except it is too high up for me to work with.)

Any practical guidance greatly appreciated.

Ben, first welcome to the forum. :D

Not sure this answers what you want to know, but my WNED reception has been solid lately, with both 5th and 6th generation tuners and a 4221 antenna (I have a rotor but not using it really since I've found a spot to get all of Toronto/Buffalo/Hamilton). My best guess is that a 4221 without a rotor would work well for you (I'll defer to anyone closer to your location) since your angles to the transmitters are so much better.

You may want to get a state-of-the-art tuner (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=42186) too - not sure which I'd try first though. :confused: This might be the easiest thing to try and it's pretty easy to sell it if you find it didn't meet your needs.

With a 70 foot cable run, I'd want to be sure it's RG6. You might want to upgrade that first if you can get up to the antenna. It's likely the cheapest thing to try.

El Gran Chico -

Very informative. Thanks very much.

But I still need to figure what's my course of action for first and minimum weak-link replacement(s)?

Tomorrow (when the unit at Above All is re-stocked), I might be able to tell if the cheap set-top box is 5th or 6th generation and that might will be adequate. But wouldn't ya know it, good reception of WNED last night!

Can a purchaser take for granted than any HDTV or set-top box in the stores is 5th or 6th generation tuning? How do you tell?

Pity that the professional antenna guy is $400 plus tax. Is there anybody around who does antenna installations competently and cheaper? Maybe just a re-direction would do the trick? (I've left a message for Yaamon.)

I ordered a CM7000 from Save&Replay's site on Saturday night and it arrived this morning. I got this box specifically because of S-Video output, and the quality is indeed fantastic. As a test, I hooked it up to the dinky collapsable dipole antena that came with my USB tuner stick, and it easily received all the Toronto stations.

My medium-term plan is to build a sturdy SBGH antenna and put it on my roof, but being impatient I did something a little drastic today to get the most out of this new box.

There's an SGBH antenna I made last year our of cardboard and foil sitting in a room upstairs pointed at a window, getting almost everything from Buffalo along with the Toronto stations. Problem is that the TV and box are downstairs. However, a neighboring room upstairs has a CATV outlet. Sooo..

I drilled through the wall from the outlet room to the antenna room and ran a cable. The signal thus travels from the antenna, to the next room, through the outlet, around the outside of the house (20m of RG59 cable...yuck), and to the cable tv splitter box outside. That box also contains the feed to my living room tv. So, I just connected those two cables together, bypassing the splitter and the regular cable TV feed (which I'll probably be unsubscribing from soon).

I also went to The Source and picked up a generic 10db coax amplifier and stuck that right at the antenna, so it could push the poor signal through that monstrous tangle of old RG59 cable.

The result? A few of the US stations are now available too, but ABC and CBS are all but gone. Oh well, I think it's still a decent result for such a hackjob.

I'll bet you'll get all those channels again when your GH antenna is done. :)

Thanks Schmerm (and Stampeder, of course). So are you thinking the CM7000 is a whole lot hotter than the alternatives?

I'm still in pain (mental pain, mostly). The local bargain place ("Above All") has back-ordered Artec T3A (presumably, T3APR-T, the pass-through model for TVO-analog... the only analog I'm interested in around here) and previously sold for a mere c$59. The Source has Tivax's for $80, I think.

Sooo, will the Artec, Tivax, or CM be appreciably better than my old Zenith satellite converter or not? The Zenith, roughly us$750 in 2003 and us$32 on eBay in 2008, is quite a fancy job - no simple turn-it-off pass-through but a real double tuner, a whole bunch of HD and analog outputs (unlike the set-top boxes), etc.

I'm thinking maybe enhancing the antenna system is best for now and into the future. Perhaps just better downlead? I prefer doing the work myself and have vague misgivings about commercial outfits but no way for me to climb 3 storeys on a ladder.

I am not much of a fan of amplifiers and have no splitters in the circuit... but the time to add an amp is when some brave soul is on my roof.

Finally, can anybody say whether a nearly deep fringe yagi with a good number of UHF director bars will be appreciably bettered by a CM4221 in (a) stronger signal strength or (b) good pick up in a broader reception angle?

Any help appreciated.

whether a nearly deep fringe yagi with a good number of UHF director bars will be appreciably bettered by a CM4221 in (a) stronger signal strength or (b) good pick up in a broader reception angle?I believe that your question is really about whether the CM4221HD will be good enough for the VHF-HI channels from Buffalo after the digital transition, and so when it comes right down to it a VHF/UHF combo antenna would win that competition in the VHF-HI band but lose out to the CM4221HD in the UHF band.

Is that what you meant? If so, there are other post-transition options shown in the Antenna Chart such as the Winegard HD769xP line.

The CM7000 has no analog passthrough. As for sensitivity, I think it's definitely better than my Hauppauge USB tuner stick which was made at least a year before. Since chipsets evolve over time, I think that something made recently should have better reception abilities and sensitivity than something in 2003.

Many thanks, again. The comments that follow below have benefited greatly through a phone chat with Yaamon who is wonderfully helpful even to strangers. I like to write out ideas fully, in the hope of helping those who follow us here....

First, I looked at TVfool.com - everybody should check that site (after getting the lat-and-long for their house from Yahoo maps). The CN Tower and Grand Island (Buffalo broadcast antennae) are at bearings 149 and 151 degrees for my house and at 28 feet for my antenna, TVfool says it should be no sweat getting WNED with even a basic outdoor antenna. For sure I won't need a rotator (since the stations are lined up straight) but overload from powerful CBC NTSC signal may be an issue. Years ago with SDTV, used a sharp CBC-5 filter (bought from an outfit in Rochester for $10) in order to totally eliminate the overpowering CBC SDTV signal which debased many other station signals (and that allowed us to watch 60 Minutes from CBS Buffalo).

Based on an earlier post I read at Digitalhome, I thought my 2002-2003 Zenith sat. receiver was generation 4 chips. Yaamon thinks that given its antiquity, it must be generation 1 or 2. In that case, almost any recent unit (generation 3-4-5-6), possibly even the bargain Artec, would be above the threshold for good reception for me (as compared to the Zenith which is sometimes marginal for PBS).

Yaamon (and the antenna test databases I looked at) have confidence in near-fringe power of the UHF section of the familiar yagis, no disrespect to Stampeder. At least that's my reading of the test figures - in other words, there's not much to choose between yagis and dedicated UHF antennas. On the other hand, some goodies from Radio Shack (like balums) are pretty shoddy performers and so who knows the quality of my 15 year old Radio Shack yagi.

Likewise, Yaamon says that a downlead with a heavy signal wire is likely an RG-6 and not likely to show a lot of cable deterioration even in 15 years. BUT, connectors, antenna balums, and so on can suffer in time and these may be another weak link for me.

Yaamon thinks an antenna pre-amp makes sense, given my 80 foot cable. I am fearful of overloading the pre-amp by stations at the CN Tower, 4 miles away, but adding a pre-amp might make sense. Once I lived in Soho/NYC near the Empire State Building. The antenna was aimed carefully to avoid multipath on FM and aimed upwards a bit, no kidding. I recall measuring voltage like .05 volts on the signal lead with an ordinary VTVM. Now THAT signal would scramble any pre-amp's output.

I guess there is no easy way to watch TVO-19 SDTV with a CM7000 because it lacks SDTV pass-through feature (OK... splitters, etc. etc. could do it). Ummm, that's a downer. I guess the CM unit was for the US market where pass-through disqualifies you for a $40 coupon.

Ben, when I helped set up my father-in-law's system, he wanted to make sure he could still get TVO too (that's why I sound so grumpy in the "when is TVO going digital" threads ;) ). Maybe there's something here that might help you.

He has a CM4221 in his attic, and just over 50' run to his tv using RG6. We put in a splitter and put one cable into his SIR-T451 tuner (4th generation) and the other into his NTSC tuner in his tv. We had some trouble with drop outs, so I got him a pre-amp. Not sure how much this helped but it didn't really eliminate the drop put situation. So we sold the SIR-T451 and bought a Zenith DTT900 on everybody's favourite online auction website, and this pretty much did the trick.

He still loses the south Buffalo stations and the ones that direct the signal south occasionally (par for the course with an attic install), but the Toronto digital stations and WNED-DT (another must have) are very solid. And TVO looks pretty good too.

We left the pre-amp in place - not sure if we really ever needed it though.

In our case, the tuner made all the difference, but keep in mind from his location, the Toronto and Buffalo transmitters are over 50 degrees apart and from a stationary placement, multipath will be an issue for at least one of them.

Again, not sure if this helps you but hopefully our experience will help someone someday. :cool: