On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:56:13 -0500, J Burns wrote:

On 11/7/14, 10:05 PM, micky wrote:
On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 18:21:07 -0500, J Burns wrote:


Your problem could be the amplifier. I'd test the antenna with just a
coaxial cable.

Definitely. I bought an antenna amp from the sale table at Radio Shack.
It was 8 dollars marked down from 30 or so!! Looked new. With my attic
antenna and the amp, I could get almost all the DC stations now.
(Strangely I don't get channel 20 which iirc is in Baltimore where I
live. But I never watched it much anyhow. )

BTW., my large multi-arm antenna in the attic is just sitting on one or
two large empty cartons. That's just as good as a mast, isn't it?

When I had a small round remotely-rotatable amplified antenna in the
attic, I screwed a 2 foot piece of metal tubing to a rafter and attached
the antenna to that. but since this big one doesn't rotate, I saw no
reason to use a mast. Yes?

Something went wrong about 2 months later, and I could only get
Baltimore again. There was no difference if the amp was in the
circuit or if it wasn't. Bought a new amp from Solid Signal. So many
choices, I ended up buying the very same amp under a different name. It
wasn't very expensive (about $35 or 40) and I knew how well it worked
before it broke. I wonder if this one will break too, or if Radio Shack
knew something when the cut the price by 75%.

The first time I put both parts of the amp in the attic close to the
antenna.

I meant to say that it worked fine this way**, but maybe the amp power
supply broke because the attic gets fairly hot. The old amp power
supply smells burnt now, and the other half doesn't.

**People with antenna on masts don't do it this way, because they have
no AC receptacles on the roof or at the top of the mast!

The second time I read th e instructions and it said to put
the power supply half closer to the TV, or in my case the DVDR. (It
runs the power up through the co-ax, at the same time the TV signal is
going down it.

Before I got a DTV, I got a Phillips "HDTV" set-top amplified antenna.
For analog TV, I was amazing, as good as a rooftop antenna with an
amplifier. Then I got a DTV. That antenna was terrible. I guess it
wasn't good at rejecting multipath distortion, which can wreck a digital
signal.

It worked better with the amplifier power supply unplugged. DTV can do
fine on a weak signal.

Sometimes. Before the amp, I got a lot of feeze frame for 1 to 5
seconds, or sound on/off/on/off.

Now I get all these stations from 50 miles away, but one of the channels
in Baltimore, whose antenna is on "television hill" maybe 12 miles away,
has the sound on/off/on/off and blotchy picture much of the day. It
does this no matter where I set the amp adjust knob on the antenna amp.

I think without the amp it worked better, but all the other stations
work better with it.

BTW, if worst comes to worst it's possible to use two antennas,
connected through a splitter (which in this case is a merger or
something!) Both can be directional or one can be dir. and the other
omnidirectional. The amp should go after where the splitter joins
them, unless one antenna has a built in amp.

A splitter will mean 3dB attenuation. That may be OK with DTV, but 2
antennas seems to ask for multipath distortion.

I saw it recommended somewhere. Maybe at solidsignal.com, but maybe
not. But multipath is another reason to take a tv into the attic to
aim antennas there.

When we first got a TV antenna, there were 3 weak stations 3 directions.
Rotators were expensive and prone to trouble. Our mast had 3 fixed
antennas and 3 transmission lines leading to a switch on the back of the TV.

Talking about a co-ax switch reminds me. I haven't been using one much
lately, but I have two antennas myself. One is the one I've been
talking about and the other is a 6 or 8 foot piece of single strand
(insulated, fwiw) wire that just lies on the floor in the bedroom, or
maybe it's run across a dresser. It plugs into the center hole of a
co-ax switch, and when the antenna amp was broken, sometimes gave a
picture on more stations than the large, multi-arm attic antenna.

Now I think it's plugged into the input co-ax connector for the digital
to analog converter set-top box that feeds my VCR. The set-top box has
a better tuner than the Philips DVDR with Hard Drive. I use the vcr for
tapes and its settop box when I want to record one station and watch
another. That's rare.

I've considered using 2 fixed antennas. I'd use 2 coax lines and a coax
switch.

Are splitters for antenna signals different from other similarly looking
splittlers, because frequencies are different? I never paid
attention.

I haven't noticed, either, but quality can vary. When my BIL went to
DTV, he bought a balun at Radio Shack to connect his cable to a 300-ohm
antenna. He couldn't get anything. I unscrewed the cable and put my
finger on the center conductor. He got several channels.

I gave him a spare balun that cost about 1/4 of what he'd paid. It
worked. With baluns and splitters, it might pay to buy a spare of a
different brand.

But you're not saying they're designed for lower or higher frequencies?
Just that the quality can be bad?