[bobsgarage]

Hi all,
I wanted to thank Rabbit73, AD Tech, Tigerbangs, RickBB, Wizwor and other for their input.


I just wanted to do some housekeeping here and close the case of my friend Ron's antenna situation. He has what he wants now and doesn't want to spend any money since he has Chicago good and even some Milwaukee channels without changing anything except the aim and a couple connections. I had it resolved a few weeks ago, but I had to finish the job and the day before yesterday, I had time, the weather was good and I had just enough light to get back on his roof.

What I found:

In his basement, he had the antenna disconnected it appears. In fact, I had to do a lot of probing to find what was the actual down lead from his antenna/Satellite combo on his chimney.

The two stations he was picking up were actually without an antenna.

He has what appeared to be a sophisticated distribution with at least 10 Coax cables routed all over his house by way of all kinds of splitters and an amp:

I imagine this is left over from his Direct TV installation. Seems like it may have been used as an attenuator & 7db loss on all ports? Wow! :



Now his amp. Does anyone know if this will work for his antenna system, should he want to hook up the splitters again and send signal to each room? Or is it an satellite only amp? I saw no amp up on top of the roof. :



To simplify things, I just ran his antenna lead direct to this connector, and ran one lead up to his tuner. That got him 75-80 % on Sony signal meter on most strong Chicago stations:




So, the other day, I went back on his roof, removed the combiner, satellite and TV antenna were joined, I didn't know it was possible. I replaced the combiner with a barrel connector so he had antenna signal only. The sat dish is dead anyways.

I spoke with him on my cell while he watched the signal meter and aimed the antenna since his rotator is broken and he won't buy a new one. There is some 10-20 degrees of free movement coming from inside his rotator and I told him about it but he is really frugal, and says it is what it is.

Also amazingly, the antenna points directly into some pine trees that are at least 10 feet higher than the antenna but a good 60 feet away. I wanted him to eliminate the rotator and put a few more feet of mast up, but again, he wasn't willing to do much financially, so I gave up on helping him because he wants everything to be free.

Anyhow, here's a photo of his Sony signal meter, his strongest channels. The channels displayed are the REAL Channels:

Channel 7.1 WLS (ABC)(UHF)




CH 2.1 WBBM (CBS) (VHF):





Channel 32.1 WFLD (FOX)(UHF):



IN closing, we even got some of the strongest Milwaukee stations off the back of the antenna. Since he didn't care about Milwaukee, I guess they are a bonus.

Originally, I wanted him to get a bay type antenna like a DB4e, remove the reflector or get a DB8e and split the aim between Chicago and Milwaukee. He sounded interested but when he saw what he can get for free he changed his mind, he isn't interested in spending any money, even for a cheap Chinese copy HDB8X or HDB4X antenna.

I doubt I will get back on his roof . Remember, no good deed should go unpunished!

Thanks, Bob

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