Our house is in a valley with obstructing hills far off in every direction except westward. We are 40 miles from any broadcast antenna, about half way between Chicago and Rockford. Rockford is to our west with no obstructing hill, but our house being set low, line of sight is not quite there either.
In the analog days, with our huge analog antenna and high quality signal booster in the attic, we achieved decent Chicago broadcast reception. Not perfect reception, just decent. Some stations with almost no snow, some stations with some snow.
In 2009 when the country ended analog broadcasting, our reception was 100% gone. Scanning stations with our digital converter boxes yielded a big ZERO.
It was then that I learned that a digital antenna requires line-of-sight to the broadcast antenna so being in a valley is a hopeless condition.
Out of desperation I bought an antenna like THIS high gain digital antenna which did improve ZERO reception to a few stations, but with significant pixilation. We ended up pointing the antenna westward to Rockford where we got a few decent stations, but not enough to be satisfied. So we gave up on a lifetime of free TV and resorted to cable TV.
MY POINT HERE IS that the made-for-digital high gain antenna is better than the massive spanning old style analog type. The high gain digital antenna is quite small at around 3 feet in width, very easy to handle, easy to point, less influenced by winds and perching birds.
This is visually similar to my original analog antenna with a span of around 12 feet. It was a real beast to handle the few times I had to do some maintenance on it. Another problem with it was that pigeons liked to perch on it and their poop ruined our asphalt shingles. I think our analog antenna had a range rating of 35 miles.
This is similar to the high gain digital antenna I have on my house today that performed better, but still unsatisfactory for our particular circumstance. It's range rating is 70 miles, but digital requires line-of-sight to do it job.
It would make for an interesting experiment to modify a Winegard antenna to have my home digital antenna on it's scissor arms. For me the problem is that my a/c unit is in the way of cranking it down.
In the analog days, with our huge analog antenna and high quality signal booster in the attic, we achieved decent Chicago broadcast reception. Not perfect reception, just decent. Some stations with almost no snow, some stations with some snow.
In 2009 when the country ended analog broadcasting, our reception was 100% gone. Scanning stations with our digital converter boxes yielded a big ZERO.
It was then that I learned that a digital antenna requires line-of-sight to the broadcast antenna so being in a valley is a hopeless condition.
Out of desperation I bought an antenna like THIS high gain digital antenna which did improve ZERO reception to a few stations, but with significant pixilation. We ended up pointing the antenna westward to Rockford where we got a few decent stations, but not enough to be satisfied. So we gave up on a lifetime of free TV and resorted to cable TV.
MY POINT HERE IS that the made-for-digital high gain antenna is better than the massive spanning old style analog type. The high gain digital antenna is quite small at around 3 feet in width, very easy to handle, easy to point, less influenced by winds and perching birds.
This is visually similar to my original analog antenna with a span of around 12 feet. It was a real beast to handle the few times I had to do some maintenance on it. Another problem with it was that pigeons liked to perch on it and their poop ruined our asphalt shingles. I think our analog antenna had a range rating of 35 miles.
This is similar to the high gain digital antenna I have on my house today that performed better, but still unsatisfactory for our particular circumstance. It's range rating is 70 miles, but digital requires line-of-sight to do it job.
It would make for an interesting experiment to modify a Winegard antenna to have my home digital antenna on it's scissor arms. For me the problem is that my a/c unit is in the way of cranking it down.
