I am looking to update the tv antenna on the camper,it has a Jensen omni direct antenna and does not work very well,had better reception with our old camper and bat wing antenna. Looking for input. Thanks

The Jensen omni is crap, I also have one and hate, hate, hate it.For me, the problem with the conventional "Bat-Wing", is the ceiling is too high for even me (6ft plus) to reach it.Wingard makes (used to?) a motorized Batwing. That deploys and turns with a motor. I thought (hard) about that, but ended up moving on.Testing done by people in this forum suggests to me that the Jack Omni would work (at best) marginally better then the Jensen. Both suffer from the same problems, size and height. No antenna mounted low to the roof is going to work as well as an antenna with more height. Also size matters, small antennas don't work as well as large antennas.I ended up with an Omni sold by Radio Shack. This is much larger then the Jensen or Jack. But I mount it on a separate push-up pole on the rear of the trailer. Obviously not something I would do for an over-night stop.There is a "old tech" Antenna that should work well, it's two crossed elements that fold up and go into a tube. This design has been around for years, but I believe it is still sold

I also have an omni on my FW. I left it intact, due to it being for the radio, as well as the tv.I bought the replacement head Jack, that is supposed to replace the batwing head. I fasten this to a two piece aluminum pole, and use a couple of stretch cords to fasten it to my FW ladder.I have it about 4' above my roof, using the supplied coax. It works great. I just fasten the coax to my outside cable hookup, right near the ladder.Jerry

Winegard works the best it has built in amplifier that boost the tv signal

I have played with BATWING, JACK, OMNI Hide-a-antenna, BOW TIE Panels, and LOWES BEST VHF/UHF long YAGI.The LOWES multi-dipole YAGI $80 did the best. This antenna pulled in some real good signals and by adjusting the positions of the fold-out dipole it worked great with distance and more local station. Was a sight to see however extending 6-feet or more off both sides of my POPUP roof and when I rotated it I was always hitting trees on both sides. Folks lined up however to watch me play with my big antenna...After about a year of using this antenna I finally totally destroyed it by having to fold-it-out at every stop and the aluminum dipoles finally broke beyond repair. As shown in the easy-up mount above you can see how I rotated my antenna by just reaching out the window flap of the POPUP and turning away. The OMNI Hide-A-Antenna as it is called does work but suffers big time on reception. This is basically two DIPOLE in opposite directions and doesn't work well with distant stations. It also suffers big time of losing the digital signals from the HDTV station when aircraft fly over head. This is my BACK-UP antenna as it disappears into the tube and is great for storing when in travel mode. I then picked up the BATWING and the JACK and mounted them on my easy up pole mount. They both worked great but the BATWING had a wider beam-width allowing me to pick up more HDTV station that were in the same direction but located on the different sides of the town. Washington DC is some 50 miles from us here in Northern Neck VA and they have their transmitting antennas on the NW and E sides of town. We would have to move the JACK antenna to pick all of these stations up. The BATWING would get both groups with one pointing location in this case. The BATWING is the antenna I use today. Easy to transport in my case and I mount everything up and start watching TV in only a few minutes after arriving at the camp sites. I would say the KING JACK antenna has more gain but you really have to point this antenna towards the transmitting station to get best results. ADDED NOTE: SCFJEFF reports down the thread here I am wrong with my assumption that the JACK Antenna has 'LESS BEAM WIDTH' then the BATWING. I was just reporting what I found in my very simple pointing antenna tests I did here. That may have been a wrong assumption on my part. All I know is the BATWING outperformed the JACK antenna in my case looking at several HDTV Transmitter stations situated on both sides of Washington DC some 50 miles away... Sorry if I mislead anyone here...The JACK antenna will mount on the BATWING hardware and crank-up and rotate just fine using the BATWING controls. It also can be mounted just above the roof and only rotate. Like said above being close to the roof makes the JACK suffer from performance somewhat and even things like the roof mounted air conditioner always seems to get in the way when you are trying to pick up a TV station in that direction. Being up as high as you can get worked great for us but I didn't like the very narrow BEAM WIDTH I was getting with it in my setup. I also experimented with the BOW-TIE PANEL antenna. This is a panel about 3-feet by 2-feet and has 8-BOW TIE dipoles on it. This is a great antenna and is more suited for the home installation. You can mount this on a single pole so can be used on the RV as well...This is probably the best of all antennas as it has great performance in picking up station up to 75 miles away. Also has great signal reduction to the rear of panel... I use mine here at the house and and the two array panels can be pointed in different directions and this really performs well pointing to the Washington DC digital station which are some 50 miles from here... This array panel was just on sale for $49 Extremesignal recently. I originally paid over $100 for my panel from a different company. I am a sucker for deal hehe... My antenna storyRoy Ken

Tv antenna | Good Sam Community

99x
Explorer
Aug 25, 2014
The problem we have is the state channels come in fine its the local channels thats the problem when you get away from the metro area. We do alot of camping up north of Sioux Falls. Its more for the wx than anything.
MFL
Nomad II
Aug 25, 2014
99x wrote:
Does anyone know if the radio will work with a different antenna? Thanks

This is one of the reasons that I left my Omni intact, as I don't think the Jack would work for the radio. Not sure about the batwing.

I stayed at Big Sioux rec area by Sioux Falls about 10 days ago. I did not need my Jack antenna, the Omni worked great in your area.

Jerry
99x
Explorer
Aug 25, 2014
Does anyone know if the radio will work with a different antenna? Thanks
egregg57
Explorer
Aug 13, 2014
When transmission went digital, I went out and bought from Radio Shack, a plug in 10DB amplifier. Without the amplifier, in my driveway. I got 5 channels at best. I put the amplifier in and I recieved (I have not checked for a while, there may be more now) 19 channels.

The amplifier is about 35 dollars. You don't need to buy adapters, change your antenna out put some crazy apparatus up instead of what you have.

Just checked price went up about 2 bucks.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3780245
Imaroadrunnr
Explorer
Aug 13, 2014
On my last adventure I parked under a tree at a campground and when let the antenna down a branch got caught in the works and naturally I really cranked on the handle and broke the gear in two pieces and rounded off the aluminum shaft. Didn't God make vice grips for people like me. Anyway I got all the new parts including a new worm gear and shaft and handle and the aluminum rods that attach to the bat wing. The antenna cable is in poor condition and I was wondering if any of you good people have replaced this cable from the antenna all the way down to the connection next to the TV? Maybe it's time for duct tape.
Stan
dmeck
Explorer
Aug 11, 2014
I use a batwing but leave it down cause my handle to raise it is broke. I just push the button to turn on the booster and it seems to work great. Had 9 channels this past weekend in a very wooded campground thats 50+ miles from the tv stations. But we usually only watch the news or my son likes to watch cartoons while we cook breakfast.
SCVJeff
Explorer
Aug 11, 2014
Its likely that came from multi-path issues with the smaller capture area on the Jack. When I did those original tests, I lowered the mast a tad and also moved the RV back and forth to make sure I wasn't getting bad measurments, but that same thing happens at the house on the very few stations I can see OTA.. :(

BTW- I have never seen mfgr. specs on either antenna, nor was I able to get any information whatsoever from either Winegard or King. That makes ir easy to claim whatever you want but reference it to nothing.
RoyB
Explorer II
Aug 11, 2014
SCFJEFF - you are probably correct on the specs - never looked up the specs. Just reporting what I found with my setups... I had to point the JACK more precise towards the HDTV digital transmitting stations to get good reception. Both the JACK and BATWING got great reception of my 50 mile away HDTV transmitter stations but I really had to point the JACK 'right-on' to make it work. Wrong assumption on my part I guess as to what the problem was. Less gain would be a good answer maybe verse BEAM WIDTH...

The BATWING picked up all the HDTV transmitter stations 50 miles away with a single pointing position where the JACK had to be moved several degrees to one side to pick up the other group of HDTV transmitter signals...

Oh well... I will mod my report or maybe I should just remove the whole thing...

Thanks for the report...

Roy Ken
rockhillmanor
Explorer II
Aug 11, 2014
I'll just add that I had great reception with the ole bat wing....until they went digital. And what I finally found out is it was NOT the antenna.

I bought a new flat screen when they went digital. Way less channels than the old analog TV. Thought that was what was to be expected w/digital.

Then I bought a second flat screen for the RV. THAT TV got 10 more channels than the other one. :? Parked in the same spot each TV got different reception.

Talked to fellow campers and different brand TV's have different circuit boards for the antenna, i.e. different reception.

The second TV I bought is a real small Vizio and it gets 10 more channels sitting inside the same RV as the other one.
SCVJeff
Explorer
Aug 10, 2014
tegu69 wrote:
Take that Omni apart. The top of it is more effective as a frisbie than it ever was as an antenna.
Good one !

Roy: your comment on the Jack having more gain and tighter to point than a Batwing is backwards. The Jack has less gain and is much wider

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