On Oct 24, 7:48*pm, "RogerN" wrote:
"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message

...
On Oct 24, 2:58 pm, "RogerN" wrote:



I live in Du Quoin, IL and with a tower and good antenna I can get
broadcast
channels from St Louis and should be able to reach Paducah. I was just
wondering with the Digital TV would it be worth putting up an antenna
tower
and point one antenna toward St Louis, another toward Paducah, 2 antennas
I
could switch between instead of a rotor. At least it would seem I could
get
a good selection of local channels. It's been a long time since I used TV
antennas and not sure if there is much broadcasting going on or if they
shut
transmitters down and work through cable and satellite. For what they want
for a monthly payment for TV these days it seems a new tower and antennas
are a reasonable option.

3 months without TV and I'm still alive!!! The Internet seems to have all
the local and worldwide news and I can access it anytime of day.

RogerN

\
\Over The Air TV works fine for me. I receive Boston clearly from
\southern NH on an old patched-up antenna from the 1980's, with a home-
\made UHF dipole element replacing the storm-damaged original. It's two
\6" long aluminum rods stuck into the ends of a plastic tubing
\insulator. Most of the patching was replacing rusty rivets with
\stainless steel screws.
\
\I put a USB tuner on a $100 surplus PC running Media Center to make a
\Digital Video Recorder.
\
\jsw

I bought one of those Hauppauge sp TV tuner boards for my PC and it makes
a neat DVR. *I don't have media center edition so most of the neat features
like auto channel changing and the remote control doesn't work but it's
still nice for a DVR. *Also nice for taking old video tapes and making
DVD's.

I'm interested in getting an economical surplus PC and dedicating it as a
media center though. *I think I could buy some good antennas and have good
enough TV instead of the hassle with DN or DTV. *I'm kind of interested in
trying to set it up where I have a small tower with multiple antennas aimed
at different stations and have the signals all on one cable. *I'm guessing I
need notch channel filters and signal combiners, but then no rotors to
fiddle with to see what's on.

RogerN

Where I am the stations are in four directions and some are very
sensitive to precise aim. I bought a bucket of dead 1950's rotators
for $5 and fixed the most promising one by replacing the motor
capacitor and generally cleaning and oiling everything.

The rotator is at the bottom end of a long mast tube that slides up or
down a wooden post attached to the side of the house. When it's down I
can reach the antennas from the roof, full height when up is about 50
feet, braced at the top by guy lines. I couldn't aim fixed antennas at
the top unless the mast was strong enough to climb, and don't receive
many of the stations when it's lowered to within reach.

The guy lines go over pulleys on a ring hanging from a foot of cord,
to allow free rotation, and down the mast to rope cleats. It's nearly
impossible to adjust their tension properly from the outer ends, but
very easy when looking straight up the mast.

The biggest disadvantage is not being able to move the antenna
automatically for timed recordings. During the NTSC/ATSC transition
period I also had to manually patch the separate feeds from the UHF
and VHF antennas for some weaker stations that dropped out unless
connected directly to the tuner.

jsw