Reception Help Needed

ultragc · 1-Dec-2016, 5:52 PM

Hi All,

First of all, Happy Holidays! Newbie to the the forum and need help figuring out what I need to get TV reception from where I live (Chino Hills, Ca). I am without cable for over a year and wife wants local channels. This is why I am looking into OTA before considering anything else. The issue I see is that my house is located (mid hillside) Southeast of a mountain while the stations I want (ABC, CBN, NBC, KCal) are located Northwest of me about 25-30 miles away. I need to know if the signal is good enough. If so, which antenna to use.

TVFool mapping:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...dfafd2db911e86

I have also attached two images. Thanks in advance.

ADTech · 1-Dec-2016, 11:24 PM

If you're actually on the back slope of the hill facing away from the stations, I'd be lying if I said that your chances were anything other than very, very slim. The UHF signals simply won't have the necessary distance to diffract (bend) downward to your location.

Due to the way the TVFool simulation engine operates with terrain that is highly sloped at the receiving location, it grossly overestimates those signal levels, especially on UHF.

ultragc · 1-Dec-2016, 11:29 PM

Hi ADTech,

Ouch! That is painful to know... but I kind of expected that.

ADTech · 2-Dec-2016, 12:14 AM

Yeah, I've learned (the hard way, of course) about some of the limitations of both the signal propagation characteristics when behind a hill and of the simulator.

I'm generally quite conservative in my estimates as I shoot for extremely high reliability for our customers, so, if someone has a less pessimistic viewpoint and you'd like to approach it as an experiment, it's not going to hurt my feelings a bit if it works better than I'd anticipated. I'm always happy to be shown to be too negative in those cases.

rickbb · 2-Dec-2016, 2:48 PM

You have a good deal of channels due East of you as well. Don't give up, try an inexpensive antenna, (one you can return if needed), and experiment with locations and aiming directions first.

You can even take a small TV up on the roof to scan for channels in different directions. (I know it looks weird to your neighbors, but mine are used to seeing me up there doing this.)

ultragc · 2-Dec-2016, 5:38 PM

Thanks RickBB and ADTech. I will try it one of these days. Looking at my neighborhood, I only see one house has an antenna up... that saids a lot.