Best OTA antenna?

Well, you can try to beat the batwing w/ the wingman, w/ the sensor pro signal meter, but I'd bet you can't.

The best out there? A full sized house antenna like years gone by. Those will pull in more than any of the cute so called HDTV antennas out there.

Funny that JIMINDENVER mentions this... I was just going through some old pictures of my OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer..

As you can see I am using one of those $90 LOWES House Type full blown YAGI antennas on my popup...



This was so large it extended out on both sides of my POPUP trailer trailer... I would hit trees on both side when rotating it.

It did indeed outperform any RV antenna I played with...

I eventually destroyed this one having to take it down and fold up for transport after each camping run...

IN all the antennas I tried the WINGUARD BATWING turned out to the overall best to have.

I did however get a very great signals using this eight BOW-TIE panel antenna but it just wasn't suited very well for the RV Trailers...


That omni-directional antenna you have now is not a very good antenna... I would defdinitely get rid of it for the standard old Winegard BATWING one that looks like this one shown here...


Roy Ken

The combination of the batwing Sensar IV and the SensarPro signal meter/amplifier is the cream of the RV TV antenna crop. Any knowledgeable TV tech will tell you that "omni" means "equally bad in all directions" when it comes to antennas.

Batwing with the Wingman is superior to the Omni-bad antennas

JiminDenver wrote:
The best out there? A full sized house antenna like years gone by. Those will pull in more than any of the cute so called HDTV antennas out there.

This. However......if you tune in a channel that works and then turn the amplifier OFF does it make a difference ??

Before you do anything drastic, you should make sure that the antenna you have is properly connected.

I have the cheap omni that came with my rig 10 years ago. In a major metro area, it is more than adequate. Away from a metro area......not so much.

I gave a longer answer elsewhere.. Likely to you.

OF all the antennas made for RV use among the worst is the flying saucer designs like the Roadstar

The Best is the Winegard Sensar IV with Sensar Pro module inside the RV (Replaces the wall plate you have now).

There are better antennas but they are designed for home use.

WARNING: All antennas are simple radio antennas.. They do not care if the signal is AM, FM, Digital, Analog, SSB, CW, or some other exotic format (and there are quite a few)... They only care about one thing. FREQUENCY.

ANalog TV used a bunch of Channels (Defined frequencies) Orignally 1-13 then they dropped 1 and gave it to folks like me (6 meter ham band) and added a bunch more so we had 2-83 then they dropped a bunch of the top channels so in the last about 50 years we have had 2-69

with the move to digital HDTV MOST (not all) of the lower channels (2-6 is VHF low) have moved up and many of the VHF channels (2-13 includes both low and high band VHF) have moved to UHF.

SOME HDTV antennas are designed only for UHF and do not perform well at all on 7-13 and do not perform at all on 2-6.. As someone who designs antennas I know why, but..> Well (has to do with the length of the longest element, The lower the channel nubmer the longer the "wing"

Thus the sensar IV (which includes the wingman) is the best RV specific antenna.

It will equal or out perform many very large house antennas, I did the test !

The Winegard Sensar IV (aka Batwing) receives both VHF and UHF channels well. In the U.S. about 25% of full power TV stations are now broadcasting on the VHF band (mostly on channels 6 - 13) so do not dismiss the VHF band. Presently the TV spectrum goes from channels 2 through 51. Channels above 51 have been auctioned off.

Original poster has received lots of good information ... and I agree, assuming his stock Omni antenna is working properly, his best choice would be to have a Winegard batwing antenna installed. However, if he does not want to put the required hole in his ceiling, a lot of RVers are having very good results with the Winegard Razar Automatic antenna .... but it is expensive.