[acat]

Rabbit-many thanks for the links & photos; it would be great to take a more quantitative approach and nice to not have to lug antennas and cables around. I'll give it a look and see if it's something I can undertake.

Over the weekend I took both antennas down from the roof and deployed them around the outside of the house in various locations. I have been using the SiliconDust software to record signal level, quality and symbol quality. The latter is supposedly the most important. I mounted the antennas on a tripod so I could rotate them easily and also tilt them vertically with some reproducibility. I put the SiliconDust software on a Windows 10 Slate so I could read the signal quality factors while standing at the antenna. This made life easier than running around.

I found a good symbol quality (nearly 100%),and signal level by pointing the VHF antenna off the 160 degree direction for channel 9, but it was very sensitive to the exact position & orientation of the antenna. This direction was towards a low hill several miles distant. I was prepared to leave well enough alone, but suddenly and inexplicably lost the signal and could not get it back. Still a mystery.

I placed the 8-bay bowtie in approximately the same position and tuned its orientation to maximize the various signal level/quality factors and it did just as well without the extreme sensitivity to pointing direction. All in all the quality (symbol level also 100%) level was high enough so that I was actually able to record! We'll see how reproducible this is.

In a separate experiment which I did first, I thought I might be able to combine the VHF & UHF signals using a Hi-low filter combiner (Blonder Tongue) but that seemed to degrade the overall signal quality so I didn't pursue it any further. Perhaps a better method of combining UHF and VHF signals exists?

So for now I'm going to see how "robust" the signal is day-to-day with the 8-bay. If it remains stable I'll mount it permanently. I am getting about 37 channels ranging from channel 7 upward including the main one, channel 9. Oddly, I cannot receive the nearby channel 24 (PBS). This has been true all along; I can either get channel 9 or channel 24, but not both. The orientation also makes no sense as I am not pointed at the Denver antenna at 160 degrees. I am pointed at perhaps 100 degrees straight out to the eastern plains. I will not be surprised to receive a few Kansas stations when atmospheric conditions are right; that has happened in the past.