Want to make sure I am heading in the right direction...
 

First things first...my report: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...5b94751c0b2870

As you can see, I am ~30 miles from the Philly towers. Line of sight is not an issue as our development is only 10 years old. Wife and have finally decided to cut the cord. Being the impatient type, I grabbed an ANT751 since my local Best Buy had 2 in stock for the same price as Amazon. Right now it is sitting on my halfway in my living room and pointing towards the back of the house and I am watching the SF/Carolina game on Fox with 90% signal. :)

When I performed the initial scan, I picked up 40 channels. All I really care about though are the majors and they all come in at 90%+ with my current jury rig (with some tinkering). However, ABC does not want to cooperate. I have yet to see a signal.

Once I move the antenna outside (+20 ft up) and dial in with a compass, should ABC be good to go? Do you guys see anything else I may need...a pre-amp or maybe even a different style antenna?

TIA for the help!

John

ABC is Ch 6 which is VHF-Lo. It's a great little antenna for many, but the ANT-751 isn't optimized for the VHF-Lo. That doesn't mean it can't pick it up. A similar antenna that had an extra wide element for the VHF-Lo was the HD7000R, which is out of production now I think. But before you go changing, try the 751 where you plan to mount it. That Ch 6 signal is strong, which could be all the difference in offsetting the inefficiency of the 751 to receive it. A pre-amp would not be a solution here. That'd be like turning up the water flow and expecting the water quality to improve, when what you need to do is work on the water source instead.

Adding to elmo's comments, try the ANT-751 outdoors, where it has access to more signal and less electronic noise from inside your house. If it fails to give you reliable reception of the signals you want, then step up to an all channel antenna such as the Winegard HD7084P (premium option) of similar product such as the Antennacraft HD1200, HD1800 or HD1850.

Thanks for the feedback guys...I really appreciate it.

There are two main things that attracted me to the ANT751:

1. All of the positive reviews.
2. Its small size.

The second reason is particularly important to me. I really don't want this to come off the wrong way but there isn't a good way to say it...

We live in a "nicer" development and I don't want to be "that neighbor" who has a monstrosity mounted to his roof. I know it would be the talk of the neighborhood. Of course I could tell everyone to screw off but I'd rather play by the unwritten rules.

So, I am either stuck with the 751 or find something in the same size range that performs better for my needs. Also, I am not opposed to attic mounting but was trying to avoid having to figure out how to get the cable from the attic to the basement.

Before any of this though I will move the 751 outside and see how it does.

Let me ask this also: is there another antenna (same size as the 751) I can buy that is specialized to the VHF Low? I'm think I could have both and combine signals.

Again...thank you very much.

John

No. The physics say that the antenna element lengths are proportional to the wavelength of the frequencies desired. That means, for a VHF-low antenna to have the same performance as a high-VHF antenna, its elements should be around twice as long.

I often suggest our 3-element FM antenna for channel 6 operation. It actually works really well but it certainly isn't small by any means.

Getting your antenna up in the air may well help as it might simply be picking up electrical noise where it's currently at.

Working within your stated constraints and desires, and if it were me, I'd play around with the 751 in the attic to see what can be gotten in there, and if it's promising, go with a high-gain all-channel in the attic. It'll be a monster, but that's just how it is.

I intentionally went with much more antenna, mounted in my attic, than I would have needed if mounted outdoors, and everything comes in 99-100% all the time, even with a load of snow on the roof. Outdoors, I could have used cheap rabbit ears with UHF loop to do the same thing, which I actually tried (at ground level) just to see how it worked.

The point of trying what you have up there is that there may be construction details that make if difficult or impossible to get a good signal. My neighbor has the model home for this street, and his house has aluminium foil insulation under the siding that prevents signals from getting through, so he had to be careful to aim his attic antennas through the roofing, which works just fine (as does mine). My house has no such wrapping, though. Better to find out what's possible before spending more on a monster antenna.

Attics are a crummy place for an antenna, but if that's what you want to do, at least play around with what you have first. Run a clean cable through the scuttle or stairway straight to a TV with signal strength meter when you experiment. Or put the TV up there with you.

Do you guys think I would have a better chance of getting ABC out of Scranton (UHF - 60 miles - 490kW) with a second antenna pointed accordingly?

If I can pull that off, all other channels I care about are on UHF out of Philly.

John

Forget everything I said. :)

I put the ANt751R in my attic tonight and ran a single 50ft coax to my TV in my family room. I am now getting every channel out of Philly at 99% - 100%...including WPVI (Lo VHF 6.1) at ~95%! And it is crumby weather to boot...been raining all day!

I couldn't be happier! I can't believe this little ass antenna is pulling in a dreaded lo vhf channel. All in all the scan found 66 channels of which ~55 are watchable with no glitches at all. Of course...lots of religion, shopping and Spanish so I'll definitely need to setup my favs.

The only channel that I picked up in the scan that is not watchable that I would like to have is 2.1 (KJWP)...and that is only because I could see Gilligan's Island was playing. :) I'm kinda curious why that one clocks in at ~45% when it looks very similar to 6.1 to me. Thoughts?

Only thing left to do is run the coax out of the wall and down to the basement where everything is split. I'm think I will need some kind of amp to split to 4 TVs but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Oh...EDIT: The real "last thing" to do is CUT THE CORD!!! That happens tomorrow! W00t!

John

I'm now reading about FM and how it can hinder OTA reception.

Below is my fmfool report. Is there anything close/strong enough to cause me grief?

http://www.fmfool.com/index.php?opti...pper&Itemid=29

Thanks,

John

Doubtful that FM is your problem. Channel 2 is such a low frequency, only a true low band antenna mounted outside would have a chance of bringing it in.

I was meaning in general.

I don't know what happened but I am now getting 2.1 @ 77% signal. Gilligan's Island FTW! :)

J