Rooftop digital antenna issues

TV signals can be picked up with a coat hanger......no such thing as a digital antenna.

Antenna head needs to be pointed towards transponder tower(s) to receive the broadcast signal.

Antenna amplifier needs to be turned ON
Antenna 'aimed'
TV input set to 'air' or 'antenna'
Then auto scan for channels

A few good websites for aiming antenna:

DTV Maps
TV Fool
Antenna Web

Some TV digital tuners are better than others.
Also if signal strength is marginal it may come in, may get lost, may pixel....depends on distance to tower, terrain and obstructions

What is a "digital" antenna?

MNtundraRet wrote:

rvten wrote:
Not much you can do. Move closer to the signal is all.
Just something we all have to live with now. Digital is a weaker signal than the old anolog broadcast.

:h

1. There is plenty you can do. Check your setup and get a better antenna.

2. I don't think many of us camp in the city.

3. The stations transmit with considerable less power since switching over.

It looks like you have given up making the necessary changes and would rather complain and live in the past.

HD television is many times better than the past for picture quality, although the speakers supplied are a POS (too small). There are also about 5x more channels for most viewing areas. Of course if you make no effort to improve your situation you will never see them.

Not complaining.
Added the little signal meter shown in one post.
Added the Jack. Helped some.
Picture is great when you can get one. Hard to keep from loosing it. Seams it always goes pixel or disappears at the best part of a program.

Can you rotate the direction of "digital" antenna on your Vista or is it one of the flying saucer shaped stationary so called "omni-directional" antennas? Digital broadcast signals are directional and I have yet to try an "omni-directional" antenna that did not have to be directed toward the signal source. This is why your picture breaks up or is there on one scan and not the next - the direction toward the signals is off. If you can direct the antenna toward the signal you will lock in these signals - with a picture that breaks up just a slight turn in one direction or the other will lock in that signal solid. '

rvten wrote:
Not much you can do. Move closer to the signal is all.
Just something we all have to live with now. Digital is a weaker signal than the old anolog broadcast.

:h

1. There is plenty you can do. Check your setup and get a better antenna.

2. I don't think many of us camp in the city.

3. The stations transmit with considerable less power since switching over.

It looks like you have given up making the necessary changes and would rather complain and live in the past.

HD television is many times better than the past for picture quality, although the speakers supplied are a POS (too small). There are also about 5x more channels for most viewing areas. Of course if you make no effort to improve your situation you will never see them.

Ditto on the 'narrow' reception compared to the analog. You have to move the antenna very slow and then keep rescanning if you are having trouble.

*When you pull into the CG look at which way ALL the RV's have their antenna pointed....and point yours in the same direction!!

That's half the battle they've done most of the guess work for you. At least you will have a starting point instead of spinning and spinning the antenna when you are in an unfamiliar town and don't know the cities the channels broadcast out of or which direction they are.

Make sure your amplifier button is turned on.

And if your site has a lot of trees you need to point it 'in between' the trees/branches. Digital doesn't play well with trees and/or CG's that sit low in the area.

We watch the digital counter real close when we first start scanning. If it doesn't do much in the first 15% of the scan we swill stop the scan and move the antenna one way or the other a few degrees and then start scanning all over again.

You also have to be using the ANTENNA MODE versus the CABLE MODE on the TV scan menu... You also have to scan the digital station at every place you camp at. They all use different channels and ID number etc... The ANTENNA PANEL WALL PLATE unit also has a push-button on it and this needs to be pushed ON. It will turn on a small LED LIGHT when it is working properly sending 12VDC up your RG coax to power up the OTA ANTENNA PRE-AMPLIFIER. When you are connected to the camp groound CABLE this push-button has to be OFF.

The DIGITAL CHANNELS are very narrow beam width and you really have to be pointing right at the BROADCAST transmitting station real good.

There is a small unit called SURELOCK MDL SL1000 by KINGS which will find digital HDTV station before you scan them. YOu might want to get one of these to help out.


It takes some practice to find where the BROADCAST transmitter is located in the local towns... You can get a basic direction on-line and point the BATWING OTA Antenna in that general direction.
Sometimes it is just easier to look around the camp ground and see where the other campers are pointing their OTA antennas.

If you do get one station then while watching it on your HDTV after you have it all scanned in you can move the OTA Antenna back and forth and get the antenna centered on where you get the best view. In the digital world the best view is a perfect picture without any pixelating. Once you have the antenna centered then do a scan again.

We get 6-36 digital high def TV stations just about everywhere we go here on the East side of the US.

Roy Ken

Not much you can do. Move closer to the signal is all.
Just something we all have to live with now. Digital is a weaker signal than the old anolog broadcast.