S.F. Bay Area Channel 5 (KPIX) reception

[transco]

I'm located in Los Altos Hills, about 50 miles south of Mt. Sutro. I don't have a clear line-of-sight to the Sutro tower, but am able to pick up ever channel from there with Quality numbers of 80% or better with one exception, Channel 5 which has a Quality reading of zero. The only time I can receive Channel 5 is when it is raining. Under just the right storm conditions I can get a 60% Quality reading, but as you can imagine it is very unstable. My UHF antenna is a Channel Master 4250, a 6 foot parabolic, and my current channel count is 86.

The strange thing is I was getting Channel 5 for years. I see their power hasn't changed so it appears they have changed there antenna. I was wondering if any forum members have had a similar experience. I have a feeling that putting in a higher gain antenna isn't going to help. Any ideas? Unfortunately several of the shows we like to watch are on Channel 5 this year.

[signals unlimited]

Please post your TV Fool signal report.

[ADTech]

That's a heck of an antenna.

Unfortunately, it's probably in a multi-path spot ("dead" spot) and will have to be moved or adjusted.

You might just try a different antenna in different spots to see if you can get it separately, then use an A-B switch.

[transco]

My tuners are Elgato HDHomeRun's I have two of them in service which gives me 4 tuners online, each with its own coax input. The software isn't great and the last time I checked there wasn't any way to assign a tuner to a specific channel. If there were I could assign one to the Channel 5 antenna, leaving the other three for the other channels. I'm a bit long in the tooth and my ladder climbing days are long gone. I do have a 40 foot mast with an old VHF/UHF antenna mounted on a rotor. If I can find an unused coax in all this mess (I also have 6 satellite dishes in the 'farm') I can try running a tuner off that antenna and swinging it around to see if I can pick up Channel 5. I bought a Radio Shack (Antenna Craft) HBU55 to replace it, but my brother-in-law who was going to do the job chickened out, so it's just sitting on the ground. Even though it probably won't do much better than what's up there, I'll have to change it to keep my wife happy (You spent $132 on that antenna so I'd have channel 5 and it's just sitting on the ground!?) If you are married you know what I mean... :) Putting that up and a higher gain UHF antenna is another possibility, but I wouldn't do that until I can get at least a whisper of a signal with what I have.

[teleview]

Please provide a tvfool radar plot report with the Exact address and the antenna heights at 25 and 40 feet.

A tvfool radar plot report will reduce the guessing to close to zero guessing.