[badlocation]

Today the antenna turned up. A wise person would have waited till the weekend and got on the roof, but where's the fun in that!

Given getting the gable mount installed after work was not practical, I just found an 8 foot piece of PVC pipe in the garage, clamped it to the gazebo and pointed it where TVfool said Suto tower is. Then I looked at signal strength and moved it a little looking at ABC (Sutro tower) and then NBC (not on Suto Tower but close).

I use a DVICO USB gold 5 TV tuner on a laptop, and the dB number come from this. It seems like it needs 15 -20 dB to get a picture. The antenna is a channel master 5020 with the 7778 pre amp pole mounted.

Oddly pointing straight at a tree seems the best result...enough of this. The data.

I am ignoring the excellent HD signal I got on a number of Spanish channels as this just irritates me.

ABC HD from KGO I get good reception and 25 dB
NBC HD from KNTV most of the time was 20 dB and good reception but sometimes dropped out to 6 dB. I notice when finding the right angle it was VERY sensitive to angle.
TV36 or KICU a local channel was very good at 29 dB
42.1 and .2 This TV and retro TV also came in at 20 dB
54.1 KTEH now KQED+ and its sub channels came in at 19 dB with some drop out.

So in summary I get the really strong signals from south even though I am pointing WEST and I get the strongest signals from Sutro Tower. The antenna must have a weak side lobe I suppose.
ABC and NBC are new to me so this is good. I still need to mount the antenna ~10 foot higher, and I expect this will help with what I can see, or at least variability. I did notice some channels at 5 dB too low to watch...I am hoping I get one or more of these when I get the antenna on the roof. I also think maybe the TV tuner will be better than a USB tuner.

I should also say I got good reception on a Christian channel notable as it shows up as -0.9 NM(dB) in TV fool, so either TV fool has old data on the transmitter, or that's the limit of visablity for me. Sorry but I filed this channel with the Spanish language channels as a waste of good EM radiation.

More data when I get it mounted on the roof.

Colin