New to this and unable to pick up one local channel?

Tyko · 21-Sep-2010, 6:21 PM

Alright the wife got tired of just netflix, hulu and such on her laptop and made me go get a converter box and antenna last night.

So I jumped online and did some quick research on a good low price converter and antenna and then went to the local Fry's and picked up a Terk Indoor Low-Profile TV Antenna(TV4) and a Channel Master 7000 converter. Came home and hooked it all up and I was able to get all of the channels but one. The one channel I wasn't able to get was channel 8(ABC) which of course is the one that has most of the shows on it that the wife wants to watch.

I moved things around and even hooked up a old AM wire antenna from my stereo to where the metal connects on the antenna and streched it out, this pretty much brought all of the stations that we were getting that were jumping from 40% to 80% up to 80-100% and they are all coming in great now, however still no channel 8.

This morning I found this site and saw some else referred to the gov site on how to do a rescan or double scan, which I did and this time my box found channel 8, along with another(went from 28-30 channels) however still no picture or sound. At first it was jumping from 15-25% then I turned the antenna to try and pick it up better and lost everything and I haven't been able to get anything back since then.

We live in a 2 story apartment and are on the first floor with our big glass patio door and all of our windows but one facing North, the one faces West. The box is sitting on top of the TV inside a wooden entertainment center and the antenna is on top of the whole thing about 5 foot off the ground, it's about 4 foot from our patio door which is the direction I stretched the old AM radio antenna. There is crappy battery ran clock and a lamp on top of the entertainment center also and on the far side in the glass door is a DVD player and surround sound system that only gets turned on for movies.

Here is my info from the site here:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...a3623d34c465ab

When plotting this the signal seems to be coming from the same place as the other local stations, which to me means I should be able to get it just as I do the others. However other then running a pair of rabbit ears on a tv as a kid with 2 channels on a black and white TV I've not exactly messed with any of this before so any help would be appreciated by me and then more so by my wife towards me!

Dave Loudin · 21-Sep-2010, 8:13 PM

I looked up the spec sheet from Terk, and it makes no claims about antenna gain, but that's OK. According to your report, you've got tons of signal to spare. You don't need gain, you just need to cleanly catch the signals.

Not having seen this antenna for myself, I'm guessing that you see the diamond shapes by looking down on the antenna and not by looking at it from the front. The first thing to try is tilt the antenna 90 degrees forward so the diamonds actually face toward the walls/windows and not the ceiling. Orient the antenna so the diamonds face to the southwest. If you've got steady signals, then we're done.

I strongly suspect that this will not work to your satisfaction, that is getting a good lock on WFAA. If this is the case, replace the TV4 with the Terk HDTVi, which has rabbit ears for VHF (RF channels 8 and 9, virtual channels 8 and 52 for you) and a saw-tooth looking part for UHF (all your other channels). DO NOT BUY THE HDTVa, as that has a built-in amplifier which will be worse than useless for you - as in getting fewer channels. Orient the antenna to pick up everything but 8 and 9, then adjust the rabbit ears to finish the job.

Good luck!

Tower Guy · 21-Sep-2010, 8:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyko

We live in a 2 story apartment and are on the first floor with our big glass patio door and all of our windows but one facing North, the one faces West.

Your location near other apartment buildings makes your situation harder than most.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...02411&t=h&z=19

Keep playing with antenna locations and orientations until you can make it work.

You can also try the patio/deck if you have one.