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RAM³

wrote in news:8d0c8279-66a3-4b3c-9db1-d077bb9ca909
@j24g2000yqa.googlegroups.com:

On Jan 7, 6:27*am, stryped wrote:
I have a very old large Radio Shack directional antenna that is about
12 years old. It is on top of a tower. I get all the stations I want
with the exception of channel 5 that used to be no problem but now
goes in and out. I have a rotor but it was not put on properly because
the wind blows the antenna around.

ANyway, I am tired of fooling with it. What I want to do is to get one
of those round, omni directional antennas and mount it on a 5 foot
pole on top of the existing antenna, use a diplexer to connect that
antenna to my new antenna, and be done with it. My thinking is this
will give me the little signal boost I need to get the channel. I dotn
want to fool with this very much as I hate climbing on the tower. DOes
this sound like it will work?

One reason for wanting to increase the signal is I bought my wife a 19
Dynex tv for Christmas. great picture. But when you tune to channel 5
and the signal starts messign up and you tune back to a known good
channel the tuner messes up and can now get no good channels. If you
tune the tv off then back on it can get the known good channel now.

I took the tv back and got another one and the new one did the exact
same thing. I am so frustrated. I live a long way from town and it is
hard to find time to ake things back, etc.

ANy advice is appreciated!stryped

You may be going to a lot of trouble for nothing, all the digital
stuff is pretty much up in what used to be the high-VHF and UHF
region, channel 5 used to be below the FM band and had a lot better
propagation. Might be you can't get your channel 5 anymore. The good
news with the new digital stuff is that if you can get any sort of
signal strength, the picture is likely to be good, better in fringe
areas than with the old analog stuff. But it's either going to be
great or you aren't going to get it at all, no in-between fuzzy-ghosty
pic. And most of the long elements on those old TV antennas are
mostly waste metal anymore. Nothing on the air now to pick up at
those frequencies.

You can contact the station and find out which direction they're
beaming their signal. My folks had that problem with a station about
60 miles away, they changed the direction that they were beaming the
signal and reception became crap.

Stan

Try going to http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/Welcome.aspx and follow the
"choose an antenna" route.

While it'll ask to send spam, just unclick those boxes and either use the
zip code OR expand the "more options" to provide lat/long addressing.

The results will provide a listing of stations within reach (color-coded
to indicate the type of antenna recommended), their directions, the
distances, RF channel, display channel, etc.

Don't be too surprised when the direction/distance info for several
stations coincide since they're probably being broadcase from the same
tower(s) even though the studios may be far apart...