Equipment Selection

[gremlinz]

I have tried indoor antennas to no luck and have decided to give the great outdoors a chance. I am looking for advice on which antenna to select for the following TV fool report. I am trying to get wluk.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3da36279516901c9

[John Candle]

What is your housing situation , house , apt. , condo , mobile home , motor home , etc,. . The first 8 digital stations are 5 to 10 miles and the signals are very strong. http://forum.tvfool.com/showthread.php?t=233 . Any building obstructions in the way?

[gremlinz]

We are in a 1 story house. We have a terk unidirectional indoor antenna upstairs and it gets the channels in mostly just a little choppy. WLUK is very choppy.


we can get the other channels ok in the basement ok but wluk not at all. Wluk is our fox channel and we need to be able to watch house :)

[mtownsend]

Since your local stations are extremely strong, the most likely cause of your channel instability is multipath interference.

Multipath is a condition where signals bounce off of objects (e.g., walls, trees, hills, neighboring buildings, etc.) before reaching your antenna. This can cause multiple copies of the same signal (a.k.a., ghosts, echoes, after-images) to be observed by your tuner. It's a situation where the original signal is interfering with itself because the multiple signal are being observed on top of each other.

One way to combat multipath is to use a more directional antenna. A directional antenna is more selective when it comes to picking up signals approaching from all around. It has a better chance of isolating a single signal path that is less corrupted by excess signal reflections coming from other directions.

What model Terk antenna do you have?

If it is already a highly directional antenna, then you might be able to re-point the antenna for better results.

If your current antenna is not very directional, then you may need to go with a more directional one.



One other thing to watch out for is amp overload. Your signals are so strong that most amps would probably be overwhelmed by this much power. Be sure to avoid using any kind of amp in your setup, including any amps that might be built-in to some antennas.

[John Candle]

Signals are very strong , transmitters are very close , Do Not use a signal amplifier of any kind shape or form. A Winegard HD1080 with a two way splitter. http://www.solidsignal.com . Direct the antenna at 208 magnetic compass reading.

[Dave Loudin]

The Terk to use is the HDTVi (no amplifier), NOT the HDTVa. You need the rabbit ears part of the HDTVi to get the Fox station.