[dustyz]

Another update...

Over the summer our channels started to disappear. I redirected to the 290° angle shown on the TVFool report and picked up several steady signals. That slowly seemed to drop off over summer, to under 6 reliable channels by October. I assumed it was largely because of foliage. When the antenna was installed, it was early spring after all.

So fast forward to last weekend. All signals went out. No channels at all. I lowered the antenna and checked connections, cables, etc. I rebooted the Tivo that the antenna was connected to, and the preamp. Nothing. I ended up moving a HDHomerun out to the antenna, effectively eliminating the cable run but still using the preamp, and tested signal strength.

What I found was interesting. The signal strength was 100% on most stations, but had no quality. BUT, I could completely remove one side of the DB8e, effectively making it a DB4e, and I picked up more channels than I've EVER had. Stations from different directions, solid signal qualities, it was nice. (That's actually how I'm using it at the moment.)

If I connect the UHF combiner back up, using both sides of the antenna, the signal is gone. Connect only one side to the combiner, making it unloaded, and it's still gone. Nothing works through the combiner, period. I threw in a 2 way splitter, to see if it worked, and got the same results.

I spoke with Antenna's Direct, and they said having both sides of the antenna pointing in the same direction makes it very directional. However, pivoting them 30° off one another really helps signal strength. I tried that... no luck. It didn't change anything.

Am I over-powering the tuner? It's most certainly sounding like it. Is there an easy way to test that? I put a splitter in the line, midway to the house, and connected both the Tivo and the HDHomerun, and it didn't change anything.