Upgrading my TV Antenna

n7bsn wrote:
Locally, 7, 9, 11 and 13 are all VHF again. Only 4 and 5 (and 16, 22, etc) are UHF.

Maybe ... just because a station shows up on your television on Ch 7 doesn't mean it's actually transmitting on that VHF channel and not a UHF channel. ;) One would have to refer to a transmission chart for their area such as TV Fool to establish just which stations are actually transmitting in the VHF band and which are in the UHF band.

ScottG wrote:
I like it so much that when my roof was being replaced, I told the factory not to put the omni directional (fixed) bat-wing style ant back up there.

Confusing post :@ - the so-called "bat wing" antenna such as the Winegard Sensar III or IV is not omni directional but directional and must be rotated for best reception.

For anyone interested this is the Jack Antenna vs Winegard Sensar Comparison Test by SVCJeff that was referred to earlier.

The best all around, long distance, remote areas, is the newer Batwings with the Sensar Pro control unit. I’ve had old Batwings, Jacks, new Batwings, Automatic Rayzar, the Flat Rayzar. They all do well enough in local to tower situations. But OTA TV service is iffy no matter which antenna you have, unless you are within sight of the tower.

I've had brand new antenna side by side to compare- the Winegard did a bit better, much better on the VHF station, but there wasn't a huge difference. My gauge was a Winegard tuner with signal strength meter.

Recall the guy here on this forum that did side-by-side testing of the Jack and Winegard with Wingman (using instruments) and found the Winegard did better.

Locally, 7, 9, 11 and 13 are all VHF again. Only 4 and 5 (and 16, 22, etc) are UHF.

With more stations moving or moving back to high and low VHF under the current FCC repack rules, those UHF optimized Jacks may not be the best choice.

Yeah but 20 of those stations will be the Home Shopping or foreign language networks ;)

FWIW, I've had great results with the Jack as well - especially in fringe area's. I forget my channel count but it went up tremendously.

I like it so much that when my roof was being replaced, I told the factory not to put the omni directional (fixed) bat-wing style ant back up there. When I got it back I installed another Jack and gained 13 channels locally (most of them krap..).

When I bought my RV it had a Winegard Batwing that was not working, I cleaned up all connections and tested to see if it was broken, it was,so I replaced it with a new bat wing then ran a Channel Scan I was not impressed with the amount of channels that I got. This was done in my driveway here in the south bay of So Calif about 30 miles from the transmitters, using my SensarPro.

I then went out and got a Wingman add on, that put my channel scan up to 47,but I had a clearance problem with the Wingman

So I opted to put a Jack on and my channel scan went up to 85

The debate will go on and on, but I know what works best for me,in the real world.