My inlaws - Philadelphia
 

Hi,

I'm trying to help my in-laws in Philadelphia improve their reception for the TV on the first floor. They have some type of set top antenna. I don't know anything about it.

The problem is that reception is great until the trains go by (which happens fairly often). When the trains pass by they either lose the picture or it's at least degraded.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...e2cbcf0d422994

Short of moving the antenna up 1 or 2 floors, is there anything they can do to improve their signal on the first floor?

Thanks!

Short answer - "no". Long answer is the same.

This is not an antenna performance issue, it's an antenna location issue. Sorry.

Ok. That's what I was afraid of. Thanks.

My FIL is constantly upset about the fact that the digital switch made all of this worse (it worked fine before he says).

If I were to put an antenna upstairs, I'm assuming one of the flat antennas installed in a window would be best? The house was built in the 1890's and is made of stone.

Can we use one antenna for two TV's with a two-way splitter without needing a distribution amp?

What would be best would be a small ALL_CHANNEL antenna because of your local channels 2 & 6. The small, flat antennas generally do very poorly on the lower channels although, at your distance and signal levels, you'd probably get away with it anyway.

Yeah, that's what my grandfather used to say about the mule team on the farm, at least until he got a tractor and learned how to use it well. In the analog system, it usually took constant fiddling with the indoor antenna to get rid of snow and ghosting, but he's likely overlooked that. If you lived in a location that required those efforts with analog, digital reception will be "challenging", to say the least.

Here is a sample location for that area. If your in-laws live on the SW side of the tracks, I don't see much hope. If they live on the NE side of the tracks as shown in the photo, there might be some hope.

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...2&d=1470520788

A location on the NE side has a clear path to the transmitters, but there are signals reflected from the trains as they go by that interfere with the direct signals.

It might be possible that a very directional antenna with a shield on its left side could minimize the problem.

These would be extreme examples of that concept:

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...3&d=1470521359

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...1&d=1470522754

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...1&d=1470522754

http://forum.tvfool.com/attachment.p...6&d=1470523901

Now those are some directional antennas. I see a future project in the works. My wife is going to kill me when, (if) I put one of those on the roof.