Replacing the Winegard Sensar with a King Jack antenna

That's a problem with the Batwing, very rare. Is this driving wind damage? There are other antennas around, but the advantage with the Batwing is performance. The Jack is simply nowhere near as sensitive as a Sensar, especially on VHF and there is no way to get around that. If you're a surbubran camper the Jack may work fine, but if you're a boonie camper, there is no better RV antenna than a Batwing. Sacramento has some challenges with receiption because of where most of your transmitters are located out on the delta

There will be one or two that will likely show up here to contest that, but look around this forum and you will find pages of people backing up what I said above.

I replaced the BW with the King on my 5th wheel a few years back. For me the King picked up a few more channels, however they are more directional sensitive. I had one down side, the pins holding the KJ to the BW post kept coming loose.

I have since traded fiver fot MH with KJ installed on roof, I got better reception when it was up.in the air alittle.

Jeff has tested both and the Sensar is superior so while the jack may do fine, you will suffer some performance loss.

When I bought my RV it had a Winegard Batwing that was not working, I cleaned up all connections and tested to see if it was broken, it was,so I replaced it with a new bat wing then ran a Channel Scan I was not impressed with the amount of channels that I got. This was done in my driveway here in the south bay of So Calif about 30 miles from the transmitters, using my SensarPro.

I then went out and got a Wingman add on, that put my channel scan up to 47,but I had a clearance problem with the Wingman

So I opted to put a Jack on and my channel scan went up to 85

The debate will go on and on, but I know what works best for me,in the real world.

Thanks for everyone's input. Yes the wind has now bent the fins of the BW and I'm just not going to buy another. Each time it occurred, and it happened twice, I was driving down the freeway with heavy cross winds. The KJ seemed to get quite a few stations while I was testing it with the rv in the garage and I will accept a lessor performing antenna for the peace of mind that the KJ won't fold like the last two BW's.

The wind did a number on mine and the jack pulls in more stations than the bat wing. It very easy to put the jack on, just a couple of pins and your done.

The bat wing is made for the old tv format. Now every thing is digital.

snowpeke wrote:
The bat wing is made for the old tv format. Now every thing is digital.

What a completely ill informed and misleading comment. :R The fact that the "old tv format" was based on analogue transmission while television signals are now transmitted digitally has little to do with the ability of the Winegard Sensar antenna to receive either. True, Sensar III and earlier versions were originally designed for maximum sensitivity in the VHF band ... however, in the change to digital transmission many stations also changed to the UHF band. Winegard addressed this issue with the Sensar III by introducing the Wingman add-on accessory which is designed to significantly improve UHF reception. End result - the latest version Sensar IV which includes a Wingman OR a Sensar III fitted by the owner with a Wingman are identical, offering maximum sensitivity in the UHF band where most stations are currently transmitting.

X2^^^^^^ snowpeke has no idea what he is talking about.

And as more stations move back to high and low VHF over the next few years, lots of people with under performing on VHF antennas like the Jack are going to be disappointed with their choice. Even some of Winegard's newer antennas have poor low VHF performance.