Antenna

MANY Companies make antennas such as you describe.. one such is Channel Master.. They are used for HOMES and some can see as much as 100-200 miles on a good day.

You may choose to use a mast head amplifier if you wish for improved performance epically if you use a tall pole... You will need maps to follow this.

Union City Michigan, south of town about 5 miles.. Could see Detroit, South Bend, Indiana. And the Gun Lake transmitter complex (Battle Creek, kalamazoo and Grand Rapids stations) and the Lansing/Jackson group solid,, And some others if you did not mind some quality loss.

Tower height 105 feet.. And yes, there is a photograph of this acrophob installing the mast head amplifier in that antenna.. (My faith in my safety harness exceeded my fear of height).

(Harness worked too).


THe key things to remember are this: The UHF Bow Tie shown above is not good if the station is transmitting on VHF. some still do.

Second HEIGHT IS MIGHT.. I kid you now, HEIGHT IS MIGHT.. True story follows.

Now: You also ask where to plug it in,, Park cable input if you have original wiring.


The True story: Got caught by a ball game letting out so going home from work NOT an option. Had a new ham radio toy a 2 Meter (VHF) radio, A Wilson WE-800, convertable (hand held or mobile) So decided to see what it could do hand held.

Estaplished communications with some Hams in Toledo OHio via a repeater in Adrian MI. Had a ham from Windsor (Just across the river from me, In fact I could see his house from where I was standing) try and join us.. He failed.

Well we moved off to a simplex frequency (This means we talked directly to each other, NO repeater).

He's running like 40 watts Effective radiated power at 30 feet.

Remember. I'm running hand held,, perhaps 1/4 watt effective radiated power.

I'm making the trip.. he's not We can see each other.. What's up?

ME. about 250 feet. HEIGHT IS MIGHT.

Here's my solution for long range reception. I purchased an aluminum mast on eBay and mounted a Wingegard Batwing antenna on it. The mast is military surplus and is in 4 foot sections.

Some typical offerings on eBay: Aluminum mast

WE traveled all over the USA for 7 yrs.
Majority of time we could get OTA TV via the Winegard crank up antenna with the wingman add on.



We learned early on that the head of antenna had to be 'aimed' in the right direction towards transponder towers to get best signals.

We used couple of websites that allowed you to input current address and it would give you compass direction, distance and signal strength

Antenna Web

DTV Reception


Sometimes due to location we couldn't get very many channels.
That is when I would hookup the 'array' antenna I had bought at ACE Hardware. Attached it to a 5' pipe (3/4") and install it in the flag pole mounts I had on rear ladder. Connect the coax cable to 'cable' input on rear of trailer. Then change coax input from antenna to cable (leave TV input on 'AIR")
Usually could pick up several more channels than via Winegard.

Just put the Wingman extension on my bat wing antenna and the Sensar Pro signal meter. The Wingman pulls in weaker stations and the Sensar Pro helps you point the antenna in the right direction for reception.

In my driveway, with the regular bat wing I was able to pick up 4 Providence channels (about 50 miles away) but only one came in with no distortion. After, 6 channels and they all came in OK with the Sensar Pro gain all the way up.

Recently on the road, we got 7 channels from Buffalo at Niagara Falls. I'll let someone that knows the area say if that's good or not.

Recent thread on antennas here.

I guess you are referring to picking up the NATL BROADCAST UHF DIGITAL HDTV signals from the local towns verses SAT TV...

We camp alot OFF-ROAD in our POPUP TRAILER adn use this home made pole mounted to the side of the popup and has the standard BATWING antenna on top. I can reach through our window flap and rotate the antenna pole with ease.

We get great results from the local towns using this setup...

It only takes a few minutes to setup and it breaks down in a couple of sections for transport...

I mounted a regular ANTENNA BASEPLATE inside the trailer that feeds this antenna and has the 12VDC PRE-AMPLIFIER control voltage for the BATWING Antenna... This is where you have a PUSH BUTTON to turn ON the pre-amplifier inisde the the pole mounted BATWING antenna...





I used to bring along my spare SAT RCVR and SAT DISH tripod to setup but since the NATL BROADCAST came out with digital HDTV a few years this was a better way for us to get high def digital TV signals...

I think this is what you are referring too???

Roy Ken

Moved from ATC