ON - Barrie, Muskoka, Sault Ste. Marie, Northern Ontario - OTA

[chinadog]

Driving to find an LOS spot to the CN tower is a good idea. I know the area well but so far I can't think of a hill where trees are not blocking the way.

Since I also will be mounting an FTA dish that necessitates some clearing of trees, the 70 ft bucket truck and tree service expense will happen anyways.

Should I be considering ganging 2 DB8 or 2 91 xGs?

[HWP]

If you're 70 feet up a tree, won't there be a lot of swaying? FTA requires exact aim. If the tower/mount/tree is moving, you won't get any reception. OTA is more forgiving, but 70 feet up, that will be quite a bit of movement.

I don`t know which antenna will be best for you. If you`re going for the CN Tower, then maybe the xg-91, but honestly, I don`t hold out much hope on you getting good results, but I`d be thrilled to hear if you did.

The problem with using the 91xg is that it is so directional you might cause yourself to lose reliable reception of the only TV Stations you really have a hope of: Barrie and Midland channels.

I think FTA, by my count, will give you close to a dozen `watchable`channels (by my definition of watchable). Even if you could only add the Barrie and Midland CHCH, CTV2, and Global channels, it would be pretty good for a cottage.

Best of luck! I can`t wait to hear how all this plays out. No falling.

[chinadog]

The FTA dish will be on the ground, mounted on a post. The tree service will clear enough to create a runway to make sure that the dish will be able to "see" the satellite. I need to move 20 or so feet back from some trees in the Southwest.

The ota antenna will be most likely at 50 feet or so. The 70 foot bucket truck will give us access to work practically in 40-foot plus range. The Tree service will clear branches of adjacent trees and then chop off the top part of the "tree-mast" so that the xg 91's boom will have enough space.

Thank's for danger caution : but I won't be falling because I know that this is out of my league, hence the tree service.

[HWP]

Take pictures!

[chinadog]

Wasaga Signal Tests

TV FOOL: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...de6556d26f2782

TEST 1 DB4E 30 ft above ground on cottage roof, some trees blocking the los, 50 ft of rg6
Some very good reception this morning: 100% quality and 32% signal strength for all Cn tower stations except for 57-1.
This turned out to be a mirage of reception (appearances of wnlo should have tipped me off) as these results disappeared to when clouds became more dense in the afternoon.

When I pointed the the db4e towards CHCH 67.1 (rf23). it remained solid throughout the day even though the antenna direction had to see through at least 10 trees!

TEST 2 XG-91 30 ft above ground cottage roof, virutally the same results as the db4e except city tv started to appear and global rf7 started to visit.


TEST 3 Same location as Tests 1 and 2; that is some trees blocking los at various distances. In the afternoon I added the winegard AP8275 pre-amp to the mix. With both the DB4E and the XG-91 signal strength increased ( 40%-50%) but quality fluctuated wildly from 0-20, no picure.
What does that discrepency between signal strength and signal quality usually mean? Can making some adjustments bring me stable picture quality with this set-up?

TEST 4 DB4e with winegard 8275 pre-amp, 40-50ft above street level on a hill (actually a sand dune) with almost a perfect los.
Signal Quality 100% Signal strength: 45-60% on all Cn tower signals. Even 67.1 persistantly showed up despite the fact that the antenna was 120 degrees off target.
I did not repeat this test with the xg- 91 as it is a little more difficult to carry up a hill covered in trees.

Conclusions: Test 4 seems to indicate that the CN tower signal can be caught. It could be that I was fooled again by a tropo moment. So I will repeat the test. I will now have to choose a suitable tree on my property that will offer a good los to the cn tower.

[chinadog]

I have picked a tall white pine as the "antenna tree". The antennas will be able to go up about 60 ft with a clear los. My tree-service guy in a bucket truck will rig it up for me. I will have cable run of 180-ft., so I have opted for the Research Communications 9263 to counteract any losses. I do not want to chop off the top of the pine ( for the good of th tree) so instead I have chosen the bow-tie antenna option for uhf (db4e or db8) and the C-5 for vhf ( rf9). These antennas will be less prone than the xg-91 to branches falling from other trees. Both will be mounted on a 10ft mast and fastened to the tree with the Ronard tree mount.
My tv fool: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...de6556d26f2782

So now the question.

Db8 or db4e? (i already have one of each) or another bow-tie? My main goal is the cn tower.

[HWP]

Is there any benefit to having the wider beam width of the four-bay? If not, use the DB8.

Also, before choosing the RC preamp, consider its price and anecdotal accounts of pre-amp failure. You might be best served by choosing a reliable workhorse like a Channel Master 7777 that is likely to give you years of worry-free service.

Make sure you ground your antenna and RG6. Question: Is the tree itself adequate to ground the antenna?

Regardless of the issue of grounding the antenna you will definitely want to ground the RG6 with a grounding block and/or lightning arrestor before it enters your cottage.

Try to anticipate everything. You don't want to pay for the cherry-picker to come back for an avoidable repair/adjustment.

Good luck! Keep us posted!

[chinadog]

Good advice on the pre-amp! I was unaware of reliability issues; just seduced by the very low noise figures. I will uninstall the CM7777 that I have at home ( which is easily accessible on my bungalow roof) and use it on the tree mount. I can use the British amp at home.

With your advice, I will use the db8 (which has a slightly higher gain) as there are no really reliable signals in range to really catch on a lobe. CkCo and ChCh are lurking in the west, but both are available through other transmitters (r23 and rf9)

Will keep you posted!

[brantford bill]

Hi chinadog, i dont' mean to rain on your parade or your idea's but putting an antenna in a tree, isn't the best bet for reliable reception, if there's even a slight breeze the sway in a tree is great and your reception will no doubt suffer, and as i read your not doing it your self it's costing you money to set it up i really don't believe it's going to give you very reliable reception. Just my opinion, maybe someone else has some thoughts on that one...

[goforit]

The swaying tree might cause more of a problem for the DB8 with it's narrower beam, compared to the DB4e.

[va3saj]

Hi Everybody:

Well, I got the Tower up. It's a self-supporting DMX-68, about 60 feet high (the 68 feet counts the legs which are buried in concrete at the tower's base). I added a Heavy Duty Yaesu G800 Rotor at the top of the tower. To that I put a ham radio antenna (A Cushcraft Minibeam MA5B), an FM antenna (the Winegard HD6055P) and above all that, an Antenna Direct 91XG with a Titan 7777 Preamplifier for Digital TV.

The Shortwave/Ham Radio is much better...signals I could barely copy in the noise are now booming in, sometimes several S-units higher. If I had no other benefit than that, it would have been worth it. FM radio is considerably improved as well...an HD6055 8-element at 60 feet on a tower works much better than a Winegard HD8200 (Combo antenna) at 30 feet on my roof. I can now get digital locks on Buffalo channels such as WTSS 102.5 (often) and on WNED 94.5, WBFO 88.7, WBLK 93.7 and WKSE 98.5 (sometimes). Even when there is no digital lock, the signal is much clearer and enjoyable on all my Buffalo stations, including WBFO which runs my beloved BBC World Service at night.

But you're not here to read about Ham Radio/Shortwave or FM, interesting though it may be! How's the TV Reception? Therein lies a tale. The original plan was to put the HD8200 and the 91XG on the tower, but the installers convinced me to go with an FM-only antenna for FM and leave the HD8200 on my roof tripod (and hearing my new FM, I'm glad I did). But it now means I have 2 TV antennas...a Winegard HD8200 Combo antenna at 30 feet on a roof tripod, and an Antenna Direct 91XG with preamp on my tower at 60 feet. The HD8200 is connected to a Zinwell DAT-970A Digital Box, and my 91XG is connected to my Tivax STB-T8. I feed separate coaxes to each one, and use a sliding splitter type switch to select between them. Both have analog pass through, which up in the Barrie area is a good idea as there are a lot of analog transmitters still chugging along in cottage country. So the TV listings below are mainly from the 91XG on the tower...I put HD8200 where the combo antenna works better (mainly on the VHF that the 91XG can't get). I'm now seeing pretty much all the Buffalo channels, but they are hit and miss...usually they roll in during the evening, and are around a few hours after sunrise...then come back the next night. Some I get virtually all day long, like the high-powered WNLO...others I have to wait till late evening to see, link WUTV or WNED. I find WNLO to be the most reliable Buffalo channel (its on about 90% of the time), followed by WGRZ, WNYB and WNYO (about 80%), then WKBW/WIVB. WNED is near the bottom, about 50% of the times I'm checking its rolling in, and mainly at night. I get some tropo from Rochester and Erie, but they are too rare to list here...these channels I'm listing below are regular daily visitors. All the Toronto area Channels I get with no trouble at all (except I haven't seen Omni2 yet...whats up with that?)

Here's what I'm getting (analog first):

AnalogTV
2 CIII-TV2 Bancroft Global (HD8200 snowy)
2 CKCO-TV2 Wiarton CTV (HD8200 good
4 CIII-TV4 Owen Sound Global (HD8200 ok B/W only)
9 CBLT-2 Huntsville CBC (HD8200 very good)
11 CKNY-TV11 Huntsville CTV (HD8200 very good)
12 CHEX-TV Peterborough CBC (HD8200 good)
13 CICA-TV Huntsville TVO (HD8200 ok B/W only)
18 CICOTV74 Peterborough TVO (very good)
20 CBLN-TV5 Wiarton CBC (very good)
21 CFTO-TV21 Orillia CTV (very good)
22 CHEX-TV2 Oshawa CBC (ok B/W only)
27 CIII-TV27 Peterborough Global (very good)
34 CBLFT-TV13 Penetranguishene CBC-French (very good)
44 CBLFT-TV12 Peterborough CBC-French (very good)
45 CBLN-TV4 Wingham CBC (very good)
51 CICA-TV51 Penetanguishene TVO (very good)

Digital TV
2-1 WGRZ-HD Buffalo NBC
2-2 WGRZ-AT Buffalo Antenna TV
3-1 CKVR-HD Barrie CTV2
4-1 WIVB-HD Buffalo CBS
5-1 CBLT-DT Toronto CBC
7-1 WKBW-HD Buffalo ABC
7-1 CIII-1 Midland Global (HD8200)
9-1 CFTO-DT Toronto CTV (HD8200)
17-1 WNED-HD Buffalo PBS
17-2 WNED-SD Buffalo PBS
17-3 WNED-TH Buffalo Treehouse
19-1 CICA-DT Toronto TVO
23-1 WNLO-HD Buffalo CW
25-1 CBLFT-DT Toronto CBC-French
26-1 WNYB-SD Buffalo TCT-Religious
26-2 WNYB-HD Buffalo TCT
26-3 WNYB-SD2 Buffalo TCT Family
26-4 WNYB-SD3 Buffalo TCT La Fuente Sapnish
29-1 WUTV-HD Buffalo Fox
29-2 WUTV-SD Buffalo TCN Country Music
35-1 CFTO-54 Peterborough CTV
36-1 CITS-HD Hamilton Crossroads Religious
41-1 CIII-HD Toronto Global
41-2 CIII-SD Toronto Global
47-1 CFMT-DT Toronto Omni
49-1 WNYO-HD Buffalo MyTV
49-2 WNYO Buffalo CoolTV Jazz
57-1 CITY-TV Toronto CITY
67-1 CHCHTV3 Muskoka CHCH Hamilton

Thats about 45 channels or so. Not bad for being 100 km outside of Toronto, I think. So I can't complain.

VA3SAJ

[Jase88]

Originally Posted by va3saj

It's a self-supporting DMX-68, about 60 feet high (the 68 feet counts the legs which are buried in concrete at the tower's base)

There are 8 sections at 8' each (64'). The extra 4' is assumed to be from the top of the tower and the bottom of the antenna on the mast--not the base pegs, which are (mostly) below grade.

Congratulations on the install!

[va3saj]

Hi Jase88:

Thanks for the clarification. I just wanted to add a quickie correction: analog CBLT-2 Huntsville CBC which I got on the HD8200 is actually on channel 8, not channel 9 as I posted above. Sorry for the error. I was scanning the analog bands and found a signal on channel 8 which I figured to be Wingham....but it was coming in from the North, and I eventually determined it was Huntsville...oh, hang on, I already have that on channel 9? No I don't, I wrote it down wrong. Apart from that, the list is fine.

VA3SAJ

[chinadog]

The Installation
Kudos to Peter in the 65 -foot bucket truck. He was highly skilled and found a way around the many obstacles that come up in a one-off set-up like this. I drew some maps showing how the path of the signal crosses nearby roofs of houses and golf course parking lot. Peter then could choose the right area of the trunk to work on. Some branches had to to be cut at the trunk to accomodate the Ronard tree mount and the ten foot mast. It was amazing how Peter was able to move around existing branches and avoid a hydro line in order to get the antenna to the needed height. The mount also had to be shimmied so that the mast could be close to plumb despite a tapering tree trunk. Initial time estimates were one hour, but by th eime the ground and the RG6 was secured to the tree. It was just under two hours.
Tesla, our Weshie dog, made sure that she could help by "bite-testing" the middle of a 180 foot length of Belden quad-sheild burial grade. The cable apparently heals itself from abrasions, but I decided to replace it. It's a good thing that I bought the 1000 foot roll.

For aiming. I ran the signal into a Zat 502 attached to a monitor in the back of my SUV. I focussed on CICA and optimized the strength indicator. The Signal was a little elusive at noon..
The run back to the cottage is about 100 ft. I dug an about 1 foot deep trench and buried the cable.

The Equipment:

DB4E at 60 ft
Clearstream C5 at 55 ft
CM 7777
180 feet of Belden 1829BC RG-6 Burial Cable
60 ft of 8 gage copper wire ( on sale at Canadaina tire for $ 1 per metre!!!!!!!)
Ronard Tree Mount

First Results at 1pm

TV FOOL: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...073bbdf79fc8d4

3-1 CTV2 This comes in strong with an old piece of twin-lead.

5-1 CBLT Unreliable in the afternoon, but much better in the evening
0-100% highly fluctuating quality, 42 % Strength

9-1 CFTO 100% quality 48% strength

19-1 CICA 100% quality 43% strength

25 CBLFT shows on samsung monitor tune, also on a the cheap hd to anolog tuner but
NOT on the Zat 502

41-1 CIIII 100% quality 43% strength

47 CFMT weak, just visits

57 CITY low quality and strength , comes in and out

67 CHCHDT3 100% quality, 55% strength Rock solid even though the DB4e is 120 degrees off-target.

The three strongest CN tower stations, CFTO, CICA and CIII all dropped out occasionally in the afternoon, but became more stable in the evening.

I enjoyed this project immensely and it satisfies my ota ambitions for now. Overall, I am happy with these intitial results. Although the install was not cheap -$300-, this is quite a good poor man's tower. I would have liked to have CBLT to come in stronger. I am impressed with the performance of the Clearstream 5 in nailing down CFTO. I wasn't counting on getting 67 CHCHDT3 from the DB4e and thought that second smaller antenna would be necessary, so getting it was a nice surprise.

I have tried to post some images here: I have great pix, but will need some help in posting.

[chinadog]

Here is the link to my pix of the Antenna Tree Installation
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0Bx...8wWTBwU1E/edit

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0Bx...8wWTBwU1E/edit