On 9/2/2010 5:44 AM, Robert Green wrote:
Later this year, I am going to mount a
tall mast on the chimney and put up the rotor again, with the largest aerial
I can find to pull in the stations like 22 that broadcast from Annapolis, 90
degrees away from Baltimore or Washington and some other transmitters that
aren't located with the other major towers. )-:


We also opt for over-the-air reception. We are lucky. At our location (north
of Wheaton, MD) all the DC transmitters are within about 15 degrees of each
other, except for Chan 22, which is about 90 degrees further east. We opted for
a fixed mast on a chimney mount with a high gain, directional, unamplified
VHF/UHF antenna. Although the antenna is directional, we get
4,5,7,9,20,26,30,32,50 and 66 reliably without needing a rotor. Since we often
want to watch a DC station while recording 22, or vice versa, a rotor would not
have been a good solution for us. Our installer agreed to try mounting an
unamplified 8 bow tie UHF antenna on the same mast, pointed at 22, using a
reverse splitter to merge the signals from both antennas into the single feed
wire. Although you can find many web sites that say phase distortion makes that
type of setup unworkable, it works like a charm for us even though we passively
split the download 3 ways. You might want to try it before you invest $$$ in a
rotor.

I still get dropouts, though, from overhead planes, rain clouds and elves.
(IOU, I am not sure what causes them, but I do know they proliferate at the
ends of programs where they're saying "Of course, the killer had to be -
silence, splotches, more silence and finally the picture returns).

Us too. It can be totally clear, sun shining, no breeze and no sound of
airplanes, yet suddenly the signal strength starts fluctuating wildly and we get
drop outs or even short episodes of "no signal" blank screens. Since it most
often happens at about the same time of day for a particular station, I suspect
it may be aircraft activity from BWI and/or national relatively close to the
transmitting tower and too far from the house to hear anything. Of course
there's lots of helicopter traffic in the close-in DC area. As you say, it
usually happens at a critical moment in whatever program is in progress!