OTA Antenna questions

[notruffinit]

I am set up in Des Moines for the weekend and have a problem with my TV antenna reception. As a result, I am looking for suggestions on what might be my problem.

I have cranked up the antenna, I have made sure that the booster is set for antenna and not cable. I do not fully understand the booster display, but it appears that I have reception. When I auto-search for stations I only get one station on both the televisions. I know from experience that I should see about 15. I did not find any stations at the last campground, but I was unfamiliar with the area and wrote it off to where I was parked. Before I left home a few days ago, I had all the stations that I should have seen.

All connections were checked. All settings on BOTH televisions are set to ANTENNA as is the signal booster. I am inside the city limits where I should be able to pick up all the networks without even cranking up the antenna.

Now my question, where should I start my search for a remedy? This will not ruin my trip because I have better things to do than watch the tube, but I do like to watch the news at night.

[RoyB]

Not sure if I can help or not but here is how mine works. We use it alot camping off the power grid.


My OTA ANTENNA is a BATWING with a built-in preamp and is controlled by this ANTENNA WALL PLATE PANEL


All I do is push the BLACK BUTTON on this panel which lights up the LED. This is indicating to me that 12VDC is now being applied to the built-in PREAMP in my BATWING OTA antenna.

The next thing I do is point the BATWING OTA antenna toward the town that is transmitting the HDTV digital signals.

Then I go to the MENU of my 22-inch VIZIO HDTV TV and select ANTENNA from the menu. Then I select AUTO SCAN from the menu and the TV starts scanning ANALOG signals first then starts on the DIGITAL SIGNALS. If I don't see any DIGITAL signal not counting in the first 15% of the digital scan I will stop scanning and move the BATWING antenna a few degrees in one direction or the other. Then RESTART the scanning again.

We normally get 6-36 digital TV signals scanned in just about anywhere we go here on the East side of the US. All of these digital HDTV signal are full blown high def full screen HDTV signals.

This is what we do when using the OTA BATWING antenna to pick up the digital Natl Broadcast signals from the local towns (CBS-ABC-NBC-FOX-PBS)...

I guess the PRE-AMP in the OTA BATWING Antenna can go bad...

This is my setup at any rate - yours may be different...

Just my thoughts
Roy Ken

[Almot]

notruffinit wrote:
I am inside the city limits where I should be able to pick up all the networks without even cranking up the antenna.

Being in a zone with strong signal could mean that you don't need a booster, but having antenna properly oriented and unobstructed is still important. More important than having a booster.

[n7bsn]

Additional troubleshooting:

Disconnect the cable, run a scan, see what you pickup. Connect the cable, with the system setup for cable run a scan, see what you pickup.

Certainly possible the bat-wing amp has died.

[Eycom]

You might use this website to locate the direction in which to point the antenna. Plug in your zip code and see what's available in the area.Make sure the batwing is up and the booster light is on. Ensure that the signal source is set for "antenna" before doing your scan/search. Good luck.