Antenna not worth a "hill of beans"

wa8yxm wrote:
When you replace you WILL have to drill a hole down into the living area for the crank.

The hardest part was fining the right place on the roof to install. Once I had that figured, the actual installation was a breeze.

I drilled a hole in the junk omni and connected my Winegard to the existing coax. Sealed up the hole. The only good thing about the omni is that the pie plate shelters the coax hole from the rain.

Acampingwewillgo wrote:
While I agree, your not going to equal a Directional antenna's gain with any Omni antenna, I just removed my Bat-wing and have gone with my older Winegard saucer style antenna. While not scientific at all, I get over 100 broadcast station's in my drive-way. For me, OTA is a last resort although I do like the HD you can get with OTA since I have not found the need to upgrade SAT to HD in the RV as of yet.

thats great as long as you are in the driveway or urban camping. Put some distance to the transmitter and see what happens. There are other reasons an Omni is a bad deal for digital TV starting with multi-path from reflected signals off buildings and local mtns. This is no longer an analog world. There are no longer ghosting pictures, there is black.

Be sure to turn off any and all LED lamps when scanning. After picking up some channels, test for interference by turning on the lamps. Do this on each station you want. While an omni is a poor excuse for an antenna, I'd hate to see you go to the trouble of replacing it and still have the same problem.

While I agree, your not going to equal a Directional antenna's gain with any Omni antenna, I just removed my Bat-wing and have gone with my older Winegard saucer style antenna. While not scientific at all, I get over 100 broadcast station's in my drive-way. For me, OTA is a last resort although I do like the HD you can get with OTA since I have not found the need to upgrade SAT to HD in the RV as of yet.

Additionally....

When you replace you WILL have to drill a hole down into the living area for the crank.. For the cable.. If you "Dig" under the cover where the cable comes up through the roof you may find a connector you can replace cable from there on.. if you wish.. Or you can just unhook the cable from the antenna, If you know how cut it back some and put a new end on it (I like weather tight compression fittings here) then using another double female (Barrel) connector.. If you do that.. Wrap with Rescue tape or Antenna tape to fully seal (Self fusing Rubberized or silicone tapes that do a fantastic job of sealing). I did that when I re-did my "in the roof" conneciton a while ago.

lakeside013104 wrote:
New Palomino (Forest River) truck camper has a fixed round television antenna.

TV antennas come in two basic types. Directional and Omni-directional

Now there is a model of "Flying Saucer" that is Directional. RCA made it back in teh 70s's and it is still marketed today.> Radio Shack sells it as an HDTV antenna (the other one (Omni) does not say HDTV on the box or did not last I looked)

But most of the Flying Saucer types are Omni's. And your subject line is dead on for Omni's

I would recommend an upgrade.. There are two levels (or 3) of upgrade

Good: King Controls JACK, the directional one, not the omni wich is no better than what you have


Better: Winegard Sensar IV (Or Sensar III with added wingman)

Best: Above Winegard with SENSAR PRO module replacing your existing wall plate... It just don't get better than that (What I am watching as I type this).


NOTE: the more directional the antenna, the more important is is to have the aim spot on.. but the farther away it can SEE.. I have one place I camp where due to the distribution of transmitters.. I'd be better off with the Jack, less gain, greater beam width.. But everywhere else I park the Fully expanded Winegard, (wingman plus sensar pro) can't be beat.

Thanks folks. I now have understanding about why my Omni has pour performance.

Wife says she owns me a favor for being a good helper. I think I will duck tape a couple of coat hangers to her hands and have her stand on the roof so I can watch the local news. Probably this will work better than my Omni......

Lakeside

Your description of what you see says it all. Omni-directional antennas, ANY Omni-Directional antenna is junk both in performance as you found out, an in internal construction. It will never ever ever come close to equaling the performance of a directional gain antenna, period.

the big crankup boosted batwing was most likely better than what you have now on TC.

but w/ the smaller TC, why not use a small mohu leaf, or a winegard flatwave ($28 at home depot). size of a sheet of paper. we use indoors at home to get all local OTAs within 25 mi (w/ added coaax booster amp)

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