I drove off with the antenna up...

austinjenna wrote:

What he said....
There is no possible way those antennas are remotely close to each other in performance. It wouldn't surprise me if you couldn't walk outside and SEE the antenna farm.

Im sorry that you didnt like my results. I was in a state park, rural area roughly 50 miles from my house and I live in the outskirts of the city. All I am saying is when I tried both antennas I got the same results, thats it. Believe it or not I really don't care.

Me neither!
If you READ what I SAID, I didn't call you a liar. I said the antennas are nowhere close to each other in performance, MEANING your test isn't a valid comparison of them. Chill...

What he said....
There is no possible way those antennas are remotely close to each other in performance. It wouldn't surprise me if you couldn't walk outside and SEE the antenna farm.

Im sorry that you didnt like my results. I was in a state park, rural area roughly 50 miles from my house and I live in the outskirts of the city. All I am saying is when I tried both antennas I got the same results, thats it. Believe it or not I really don't care.

What he said....
There is no possible way those antennas are remotely close to each other in performance. It wouldn't surprise me if you couldn't walk outside and SEE the antenna farm.

austinjenna wrote:
I have a channel master flat indoor tv antenna so this last outing I experimented and used the factory antenna on the fiver with the booster on, wrote down all the channels that I got. Then I switched to the channel master antenna, re scanned for channels and I got the same exact ones I did with the antenna, nothing more. nothing less. So I think the flat one would work fine for you as well.

where were you during this test? in an urban park or 50-miles out in the country? TV signals are line of sight and the simple fact is the farther away you are the weaker the signal will be at the receiver. in the old analog world a weaker signal meant "snow" or static in the picture. the farther away the receiver was from the transmitter the more "snow" cluttered the picture until the picture just faded out.

in the digital era the picture is either there or it's not...no "snow", no static. couple that with reduced transmitter power and that many broadcasters have moved to frequencies in the UHF portion of the TV band and line of sight becomes more important than ever before.

the answer in an RV is to elevate the receiving antenna as high as possible.

I have a channel master flat indoor tv antenna so this last outing I experimented and used the factory antenna on the fiver with the booster on, wrote down all the channels that I got. Then I switched to the channel master antenna, re scanned for channels and I got the same exact ones I did with the antenna, nothing more. nothing less. So I think the flat one would work fine for you as well.

F450 wrote:

Dutch_12078 wrote:
If good OTA TV reception is not a priority, there are a few non-crank up antennas that will work well enough if you're fairly close to the transmitting towers. For the best overall reception though, your best bet is replacing the original crank up Winegard batwing with a Winegard Sensar IV and getting one of the "Antenna is up" hang tags that Jim mentioned. I clip our tag to the ignition key slot when the antenna is up, and to the antenna crank when it's down. All of the parts for the Winegard antenna are readily available, including a Sensar IV head only. Repairs are usually pretty straight forward.

Is that sensar IV an improvement over the older batwing?

The Sensar IV is basically a Sensar III with the Wingman UHF yagi add-on included. An additional improvement would be to replace the original power injector with a Sensar Pro signal strength meter/amplifier.

Dutch_12078 wrote:
If good OTA TV reception is not a priority, there are a few non-crank up antennas that will work well enough if you're fairly close to the transmitting towers. For the best overall reception though, your best bet is replacing the original crank up Winegard batwing with a Winegard Sensar IV and getting one of the "Antenna is up" hang tags that Jim mentioned. I clip our tag to the ignition key slot when the antenna is up, and to the antenna crank when it's down. All of the parts for the Winegard antenna are readily available, including a Sensar IV head only. Repairs are usually pretty straight forward.

Is that sensar IV an improvement over the older batwing?

popeyemth wrote:
Is that the small or large pitot tube cover?
Thanks,Mike

Fits the type of pitot tube on a Cessna 172.

jerseyjim wrote:
I did that too...once. My fault.....so i bought one of those "Antenna is up" things from CW. Hang it on the crank every time. No more problems.

the OP is in plenty of good company. i did the same thing early on. we used a clothes pin. when the antenna was up I clipped the clothes pin to the gear shift. when it was down it was clipped to the crank.

the short answer is yes, you can get all sorts of TV antennas but unless you always camp in an urban area you will be sorely disappointed in their performance. replace the antenna with the new Winegard Sensar IV/Wingman combo, get yourself a clothes pin and use it.

I didn't want a crank up on mine so I replaced it with a Winegard Roadstar RS-3000.
It looks like a flying saucer that sits on a short stem. Got mine off ebay for around $80 or $90.

I'm sure the performance isn't quite as good as a large crankup, But I have been pretty happy with the reception!