Losing KTXL 40 in the afternoon/evening?
 

Tv Fool Report: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...d5bcb21734092d

2 TVs: #1 about 30ft from antenna(RG5) #2 about 45ft from antenna(RG6)

Antenna: Winegard HD7697P with CM3043 distribution amplifier

mounted on roof about 17ft above ground

Last year I had an old 24 element antenna similar to the RCA ANT3020X and KXTL started cutting out.

In March of this year we installed the HD7697P, I thought this would be a better antenna. All the other stations in the green zone (except that maybe KVIE6 gets squirrley randomly) have great reception. I am not sure I can get the antenna any higher.

At about 4pm it starts breaking up and by 8pm it's gone.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

KTXL is one of your strongest signals among 17 very strong signals and 11 additional signals that are more than ample. In the Winegard HD7697P, you have a truly awesome antenna that should be able to pull-in every station listed in your TVFR plot. With as much signal as you are receiving, I seriously doubt that you need an amplifier.

Have you tested you antenna with an uninterrupted connection between your antenna balun and your TV? No amplifier, no splitter, no nothing? If you get good reception on one TV, then install a splitter and run cables to each TV from the splitter.

MisterMe-
Do you mean just getting a long length of coax and attaching to the antenna, through a door and directly to the tv? No, I haven't. I have tried TV #1(which is a tube TV w/ a RCA DTA800B converter) by itself through the attic with a female to female "f" barrel connector without the distribution amplifier and the kxtl signal drops about 10%.

Oops. I meant KTXL in previous posts.

Posters on this forum are warned not to take signal meters too seriously. The test is not some number on a meter, but whether or not your tuner receives the stations that you want without pixelation and drop-outs. Signal meter readings vary from tuner to tuner with no calibration standard to compare them. Each signal meter has a threshold reading above which you get perfect reception. By definition, you cannot improve upon perfection. Trying to raise your signal strength above the perfect reception level on one channel will not improve your reception on that channel, but may saturate you amplifier and hurt reception on all other channels.

As I suggested in my previous post, test your signal with an uninterrupted connection between your antenna balun and your converter box. Have the box rescan your channels to ensure that it is receiving all channels that are strong enough for it to receive. Using two cables coupled by a barrel connector is not optimal. Let it go for the time being, but tests of this sort should always be done with cables that are known to be good.

Surf your channels on your converter box and take note of all channels that you receive. Based on your TVFR, you should receive nearly if not all TV stations listed on your TVFR. It would not surprise me if you received more than 70 subchannels. If you see a much smaller number than this, then I suspect that you have either cable issues or a converter box with a poor tuner. Cable issues include water penetration of terminal ends and bad crimps that short the inner core conductor with the outer shield.

After you have a handle on the stations that you get with the antenna connected to a single converter box, disconnect that antenna cable from the converter box. Connect it to the input of a good splitter, and connect the each splitter output to your converter boxes, TVs, whatever. Do not rescan the first converter box because you want to know if all of the channels received the straight cable are received with the splitter. You will have to scan the channels on the second tuner to ensure that it is receiving anything at all.

The first converter box should receive every channel with the splitter than it received without the splitter. The second tuner should receive the same channels. That said, not all tuners have the same sensitivity. There is no guarantee that the two tuners will receive all of the same channels. If you know one tuner to be more sensitive, then it should be your primary test instrument.

Report back with your results.