Home base TV Antenna

[philh]

Antenna is 25' above the ground. Running into difficulty getting a consistent signal to any of the 3 TVs. Long range direction VHF/UHF antenna with a preamp.

Original higher cost preamp just didn't work well at all. Replaced it with a cheap unit, and had a substantial improvement... but still run into complete channel loss or bad pixelation.

Bed is directly below the antenna, about 20' below it. One channel in particular, I get out of bed, signal is lost. Get back in bed, signal comes back. High quality, albeit too long, RG6 cables. To make it even more fun, if it's pixelating too much, I stretch my arm out perpendicular to my body, signal improves, pull my arm back signal gets worse.

Something in the park model is affecting the reception. The really odd part, that my body's position affects the antenna 20' above me.

Suggestions?

[jameo]

I was facing issue to how to find good antenna for my home. Then after searching a lot I come across this great post. https://homestal.com/best-omnidirectional-tv-antennas/

[philh]

I've never seen this anywhere else in our travels. And it's just one station

[Tom_M1]

philh wrote:
On the one TV, it showed the station is broadcasting on two different frequencies.

That's a common practice. In Minneapolis where I live there are at least three stations that have two transmitters. Through the magic of virtual channels (PSIP) these appear to come from a single transmitter. For instance, channel 5 is broadcasting on RF channel 30 and RF channel 35. These are displayed on a TV as virtual channel 5.

[philh]

Made some progress today.

2' long RG6 between balun and preamp had some "debris" where the insulation was cut to the core. Not exactly sure what it was, but it also looked like some shielding was close to the core. Cleaned it up best that I could, but need to replace that cable. I had a 3' piece, and it made things worse.

Completely lost one channel, which boggles my mind, as the other channels are stronger now. Antenna is in the exact same position, as I have the pole pinned.

Think I also figured out why I can pull the signal in and out, I have about 40' coiled right under the bed. I roughed it up a little, so it's not a pretty coil. I'll deal with that later, was pretty done after several dozen trips in the crawl space and back to the roof. I did use the creeper under the add on roof, crawling under the trailer gets really old. Only bad part, if I was any plumper, I wouldn't be able to sneak under the HVAC ducts.

Did happen to finally take a look at one channel that has come up with 2 or 3 different times doing a channel search. On the one TV, it showed the station is broadcasting on two different frequencies. Wonder if they or the FCC know they are doing this. Might have to drop a dime 🙂 I should do a rescan, because I have seen on one TV, three duplicates.

[philh]

Ran into an acquaintance that is actually a tv station chief engineer this weekend. I couldn't do anything yet, as it's been way too windy to play with an antenna on the roof.
.
His suspicion is one of the cable has a shield wire strand contacting the core wire. I can easily pull the living room tv off the splitter and check the other two TV's. I've had other projects taking up my time this weekend. Because the behavior didn't change when I disconnected the other TV's from the splitter, it has to be in that line, and that wire and installation is all me. Can't blame Quailridge for that 🙂

There is two other possibilities, the antenna has a "short" and he advised me to look carefully at the cross over elements to make sure one isn't shorting out. The short lead on the antenna to the balun also hasn't been changed out.

[wa8yxm]

Gdetrailer wrote:

It should be noted that ATSC TV tuners do not give the actual channel frequency that is being used,

Every one I have used (I have never used a VIZO) you can go into the menus and usually add channal, manual add, and it gives either what I call the carrier channel or both the carrier channel and the actual frequency.... (That is the frequency the station broadcasts on)

Your Sensar Pro (in an RV) will show the Carrier channel so I use tune the TV to the station that almost is good. then go to manual add and change nothing but note the carrier channel.. set the Sensar Pro to the same number.. and peak the signal.

[Gdetrailer]

Tom_M wrote:
The antenna that the OP is working with is one at his house, thus it is stationary. He has at least one station that is broadcasting on VHF-Hi so a combination VHF/UHF antenna would be the better option.

Correct.

Besides the antenna the OP has installed is a combo VHF/UHF antenna which is why I don't understand why antenna selection process came into the mix here.

Per OPs follow up post..

philh wrote:
Thank your for all the responses.

Broadcast stations are a mix of UHV and VHF, furthest stations I'm trying to receive is about 50 miles. Not that far for the monster antenna. Also had an omni directional uhf antenna that didn't pick up much of anything

Below is the sequence from antenna to living room TV. It was interesting that removing the splitter had zero impact on signal, which shocked me.

Channel Master advantage 100 antenna..

Even though OP didn't give exact model, it should look like these..





The OPs issue has nothing to do with having the wrong antenna, it actually is a fairly good choice and all of the antenna selection vs frequency stuff is not much more than a bunny trail..

[Tom_M1]

The antenna that the OP is working with is one at his house, thus it is stationary. He has at least one station that is broadcasting on VHF-Hi so a combination VHF/UHF antenna would be the better option.

[Gdetrailer]

wa8yxm wrote:
Regarding Virtual Channels comment.

I referred to what I call "Carrier Channels"

I will give you an actual station WJBK

Virtual channels 2-1 2-2 (not sure if they have a 3)
Carrier channel 7 (note the lack of a dash) this is the frequency they broadacst on. Want to hear somethign funny Just down the road (About 1-2 miles) is WZYZ.. Virtual channes 7-1 7-2 and so on.. YUP Channel 2 took over thir OLD frequency (WXYZ now uses I think 41 but I'm only sure of the forty part)

So when you talk of "Virtual Channels" and I speak of "Carrier" We are actually lookign at the same thing You are looking at the TV channel display and I'm looking at the corrosponding frequency meter.. I'm more frequency oriented because antennas see frequencies .

Not all stations have gone back to their original old analog channel frequency.

Some have chosen to stay with the frequency assignment they were given during the analog to digital changeover or during the repacks. Some have taken the option to swap frequencies with another channel also.

Because of this mish mash, you cannot depend on the readout your TV tuner is giving as the actual channel frequency it is being broadcast on and that is because of the "virtual channels".

To find out what frequency they are really transmitting on you must use an external internet website like THIS

Example, Pittsburgh TV market, KDKA channel 2 (the old analog assignment which which Ch 2 originally was broadcast at 54 Mhz which is VHF Lo band..

With the last repack, KDKA Channel 2 is now broadcasting at 626Mhz which is the old analog UHF Channel 40 broadcast frequency and not on 54Mhz when they were broadcasting in analog.

But, the TV tuner specifically only gives the digital "virtual" channel number assignment of 2-1 or 2.1, it does not give you the real broadcast frequency or even the new channel frequency it is actually being broadcast on. Not exactly how you can think or assume that 2.1 is being broadcast on its old analog frequency of 54Mhz..

Here is sample of what I am talking about..





To figure out what the old analog equivalent is you need to go HERE

Which lists the current TV bandplan..





I have found better websites in the past to translate so they are out there but takes time to dig through to find good websites.

One cannot just assume that the digital OTA channel number corresponds to the exact channel frequency as it did back in the analog days.

"Virtual" channel translation is the reason that if you leave a TV broadcast market, you must always rescan the tuner.

[Gdetrailer]

philh wrote:
I should be able to take 25' of cable and attach it directly to the bedroom TV through the window. I agree I have too much cable in the system, but things like needing 60' of cable, drove me to 100' premade cable. Taking the splitter out of the system gave me a result I wasn't expecting, no change.

I'll order a roll of RG6 and cables and start making cables as short as needed if reducing every thing to minimum lengths. Probably what I should have done in the beginning, but I'm also coming to the conclusion the wire buried in the wall is a concern. I also had someone tell me they had an issue with a TV that was leaking voltage into the F connector and they had to put a splitter on trap the extraneous voltage.

Running wire directly to a TV for a test should give you a result, if it doesn't then you will need to look at your connection at the antenna which would be the 300 to 75 ohm balun and the short jumper..

Since removing the splitter did nothing, it is obvious that no signal is making it to the splitter. Time to eliminate every unknown by a direct connection to the antenna.

Even a spare old 50ft roll you have laying around may work fine to run through a window to one TV.

I am very suspicious of the prewired part of your trailer, fair chance when the factory was slapping it together they tossed in a wire staple right through the center of the coax somewhere along the way..

If you get a good signal using the test piece of coax, I would suggest bypassing all prewired runs, instead run new wire drops to all of your TVs locations. You might have to get creative fishing the wire through the walls, you might have to take the coax under the trailer floor or run through interior cabinets.

Make one central location for all TVs new runs to terminate at. Locate that location where you have power for the power injector.
Insert power injector first, then add the splitter.

[Tom_M1]

wa8yxm wrote:
Regarding Virtual Channels comment.

I referred to what I call "Carrier Channels"

I will give you an actual station WJBK

Virtual channels 2-1 2-2 (not sure if they have a 3)
Carrier channel 7 (note the lack of a dash) this is the frequency they broadacst on. Want to hear somethign funny Just down the road (About 1-2 miles) is WZYZ.. Virtual channes 7-1 7-2 and so on.. YUP Channel 2 took over thir OLD frequency (WXYZ now uses I think 41 but I'm only sure of the forty part)

So when you talk of "Virtual Channels" and I speak of "Carrier" We are actually lookign at the same thing You are looking at the TV channel display and I'm looking at the corrosponding frequency meter.. I'm more frequency oriented because antennas see frequencies .

Can't quite make sense of what you're saying. About the only thing you got right is that WJBK is broadcasting on RF channel 7. WXYZ is now broadcasting on RF channel 25. Since the last FCC channel repack the TV band only goes to channel 36.

[wa8yxm]

Regarding Virtual Channels comment.

I referred to what I call "Carrier Channels"

I will give you an actual station WJBK

Virtual channels 2-1 2-2 (not sure if they have a 3)
Carrier channel 7 (note the lack of a dash) this is the frequency they broadacst on. Want to hear somethign funny Just down the road (About 1-2 miles) is WZYZ.. Virtual channes 7-1 7-2 and so on.. YUP Channel 2 took over thir OLD frequency (WXYZ now uses I think 41 but I'm only sure of the forty part)

So when you talk of "Virtual Channels" and I speak of "Carrier" We are actually lookign at the same thing You are looking at the TV channel display and I'm looking at the corrosponding frequency meter.. I'm more frequency oriented because antennas see frequencies .

[philh]

I should be able to take 25' of cable and attach it directly to the bedroom TV through the window. I agree I have too much cable in the system, but things like needing 60' of cable, drove me to 100' premade cable. Taking the splitter out of the system gave me a result I wasn't expecting, no change.

I'll order a roll of RG6 and cables and start making cables as short as needed if reducing every thing to minimum lengths. Probably what I should have done in the beginning, but I'm also coming to the conclusion the wire buried in the wall is a concern. I also had someone tell me they had an issue with a TV that was leaking voltage into the F connector and they had to put a splitter on trap the extraneous voltage.

[Gdetrailer]

philh wrote:
Thank your for all the responses.

Broadcast stations are a mix of UHV and VHF, furthest stations I'm trying to receive is about 50 miles. Not that far for the monster antenna. Also had an omni directional uhf antenna that didn't pick up much of anything

Below is the sequence from antenna to living room TV. It was interesting that removing the splitter had zero impact on signal, which shocked me.

Channel Master advantage 100 antenna
75 ohm adapter (changed out once)
short cable (18"?)
preamp (originally channel master switched out for cheap RCA, which actually improved the signal)
100' higher quality RG6 (replaced 100' channel master cable)run in crawl space
amp power supply
Short cable to 3 way splitter (splitter replaced twice, newest one is channel master passive which will pass through preamp power, also had a powered splitter, but it didn't seem to work at all)
12' cable connected to wall outlet
3' cable from wall outlet to TIVO

Kitchen TV, also 12 ft cable from splitter

Bedroom TV 50' cable from splitter to park model drop to wall outlet
3' lead to TV

All TV's react the same way, i.e. They all suffer the same amount of pixelation. I'd love to say the bedroom drop had an issue, especially since my movement in the bedroom affects ALL TV's, but I bypassed the splitter and it didn't improve the signal.

I could connect the bedroom TV to the antenna, bypassing the splitter and the rest of the cables.


One other issue, that I believe is another symptom, in hot sun, signal reception is worse.

Way to long of runs, way too much coax, way too many connections and I suspect you have the 3 way splitter in between the preamp power injector which is the wrong place for the power injector.

The TV tuners may not "like" having 12V-15V DC present on the tuner inputs either..

Even though a splitter may "pass" DC voltage, it does so at a loss of voltage.. Passive splitters are nothing more than 75 Ohm resistors inside and the power injector only inserts 12-15V DC onto the line. Some preamps give the option of adjusting the gain of the preamp at the power injector.. They simply reduce the voltage going to the preamp which lowers the gain.

I recommend you sort of start from scratch.

Remove all of the extra cables, connections and splitter out of the setup.

Run the shortest cable you have directly from the antenna to the power injector and then to ONE TV and see if things are working.

Your power injector MUST be installed before any splitters!

Here is snip of the RCA manual for their preamps..



Of course, you will still need the 75 ohm to 300 ohm balum plus the short jumper from the balum to the mast mounted preamp.

This may mean for a temporary test taking a small TV outside and connecting it up.

You have to reduce the squirrels nest of wires and connections by process of elimination.

Once you are satisfied the test setup works then add in your 100ft cable from antenna and install power inserter there with ONE TV and see if you get the same results as the outdoor short cable test.

If satisfied with indoor test, proceed to add in the 3 way splitter AFTER the power injector (antenna lead goes to the power injector marked antenna, output lead (marked to TV) of injector goes to input of the splitter and output of splitter ports goes to TVs).

Then report back your results..

I do think you have way too much cable which is not helping things either but you need to start troubleshooting without all of the other unknowns.