Pimp My Gear! (Photos of OTA gear)

[Jase88]

jrmclean: Seems like you may have too much wind load for that CM rotor. Also, there appears to be a lean to the mast, which would make rotating even more difficult. Would this stand up to an Ottawa winter?

[jrmclean]

Originally Posted by Jase88

jrmclean: Seems like you may have too much wind load for that CM rotor. Also, there appears to be a lean to the mast, which would make rotating even more difficult. Would this stand up to an Ottawa winter?

Jase88, you're probably right about the wind load...I'm not planning on using the rotator once I've got these guys all pointing in the optimum direction. I may use it rarely to tweak things if it moves.

There is a very slight lean to the mast. It appears that when the rotator is secured to the tower via a short mast on the side, it is not quite centered under the doughnut. I fiddled with that for about an hour and wasn't sure what else to do. The whole thing needs to be turned about 180 degrees from where it is facing right now.

Advice? Should I just remove the rotator and secure the mast better and just do without?

[stampeder]

That tilt is a lot more unstable than it looks, and I'd be expecting some damage or at the very least heavy wear and tear on the rotor. The mast has to be completely vertical, which you can check with a carpenter's level, so even if it means taking it all down for a do-over it has got to be done.

[jrmclean]

You guys have way more experience with this stuff...thanks for all the tips and advice....today I climbed the tower again and removed the rotator completely....the mast is now lined up and I can turn by hand very easily. Unfortunately, the sky started to get dark, so I couldn't complete what I wanted, so I'll have to wait till the weather improves. All that is left is to connect the coax grounding block, the grounding wire and fine tune the direction of the antennas...

[300sflyer]

I moved my tower around to the other end of the house where it's much closer to where the TV is, and added 2 sections of tower to its height. I got the guy wires all figure out as well, including a homemade bracket on the tower to hold them.

[Maxwedge]

It looks like all those wires are going to your neighbours houses!

[300sflyer]

I attached one of them to my neighbours deck in his backyard, and I am hoping he doesn't notice!... LOL!

Truth is I live outside of town with lots of space, so all of the wires are on my property.

[LG47DB8]

Here is my OTA antenna setup in Navan, ON
DB-8 at the top pointing at South Colton NY, CM 7777 pre-amp in the middle, Old Delhi VHF-Lo at the bottom pointing at CF, all mounted on a 16 foot mast attached to the chimney. The top of the chimney is 28 feet off the ground and the mast extends 12 feet above the chimney, putting the DB-8 at 40 feet. The old Delhi is about 5.5 feet below the DB-8

With this setup, I receive 21 digital channels (13 local and 8 US). Global on Ch 6 comes in really clear with virtually no pixelization or artifacting.



TVFool report can be found in my homepage link

[Jase88]

Nice clean set up, LG47DB8. Impressive.

[LG47DB8]

Thanks Jase88.. There's still some tweaking needed and I'll need to clean up the wires running down the side of the chimney.

[lithOTA]

Ok, I know attics are bad...but the way I see it, if an antenna works well in the attic, it can stay up there, out of the weather.
This summer, I did a lot of DXing with a AD 91XG/Winegard 1713 combo, on a rotator, outside on a 25 foot mast. This works great, but with the DX season over, I wanted to set up fixed, switched antennas for the 4 cities in my area. I also wanted to get the extra weight and windage off of my outside mast.
So into the attic I went, and I've managed to cobble together quite a nice little system.



These 2 antennas are for Chicago, a K6STI high-VHF Yagi with folded dipole and a AD C4 hacked into a vertical gang. My K6STI Yagi is kinda ugly and crude, but it really cooks on RF 7 and 12. The C4 is major overkill for Chicago (which is LOS at 43 miles), but using it gives me a decent shot at WYIN at 75 miles (behind Chicago in NW Indiana). I also have this pair hooked into my Dish Network MT2 ATSC module, which has a very weak tuner, so having the extra gain ensures that I can DVR with no problems.



This Winegard setup (4400 & 1713, with CM 7777) is for Milwaukee at 70 miles. They look through the north gable of the attic (Milwaukee is at about 20 degrees) and the only building materials that the signals need to penetrate are the flakeboard sheathing and vinyl siding- no foil or insulation here. The 1713 is only for one station on RF 8, but I took a small TV up there with me and found the optimal mounting location. After that, I installed the mast so that it would hold the antenna in the right spot. It works just as well as it did outside.
The 4400 gets all of the Milwaukee UHFs, but a few of them won't hold during the day. This is okay because those 3 stations are either duplicates, or are not of interest to me. They do come in fine at night. The important stations are all 100% solid on a daily basis.
Because the 4400 has such a wide beam angle, and receives a lot of signal from the rear, this antenna casts a very wide net; a channel scan on this feed usually nets over 70 total subchannels. In addition to the Milwaukees, it also grabs most of the Chicago UHFs off the right rear quarter, so I have this system running to every TV in the house. The CM 7777 does a fine job pumping through several splitters.

In addition to these two systems, I have to leave the 91XG outside in order to pick up Madison stations. The XG also gets the 4 Rockford stations at about 35 degrees to the left, including an RF 13. With just the XG on the mast, and the rotator removed and stowed in the garage, the wind can blow all it wants and I'm not worried.

So far, this setup has worked very well for us. I have the 4400/1713 running my kid's TVs, so they get 4 PBS stations in their bedrooms (but no brainless Nick, Disney, or Cartoon Network). The Chicago system allows my Dish DVR to use OTA for recording if there is a conflict with a satellite channel. The Winegard pair and the XG are all I need for Sunday afternoon NFL, as they get all 4 FOXs and 3 of the CBSs. Next spring, the 1713 and the rotator will go back outside with the XG, to facilitate my DX habit.
Between the 3 systems, I'm receiving about 100 channels from the 4 cities, about 60 of which are actually useful.

[PanaMark]

oh my, so envious! Love it. I promote attic install's in high signal markets also.

[Jase88]

That's a nice setup, lithOTA!

[lithOTA]

Thanks guys, that means a lot coming from members of this forum. Now, I just have to fight the urge to fiddle around with it!

[LG47DB8]

Well my antenna setup in post #683 got the ultimate test overnight as my weather station recorded sustained winds of 63 km/h and a maximum wind gust of 93km/h.. The strong winds are also affecting the reception of weaker signals, mostly with audio drop-offs.