Bad Antennas

[ahhaa]

There's a pretty hilarious bad antenna thread over at Digital Home
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=35083

Also there is a lot of useful info there about OTA in general; splitters and ganging Channelmasters and suchlike... http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

AS The Man with No Name once said: "In these parts, sometimes a man's life depends on a mere scrap of information." 8)

&... If you bought a lemon post it here...

[redwudz]

I bought one of these Zenith antennas as it had a lot of recommendations:



It did pick up about 15 HDTV stations after I connected it to a RF amplifier. Then I unplugged it, leaving the four foot coax hanging out of the amplifier and forgot about it. About a week later I checked my HDTV tuner and saw that I now got 23 stations with a clean signal on all channels just from the disconnected coax hanging down the wall. The Zenith antenna was worse than just a piece of wire.

I have since mounted a regular long boom antenna in the attic and get 29 HDTV stations, all with good signal strength.

EDIT: I should also mention that a $.99 set of rabbit ears from a flea market outperformed the Zenith by quite a bit.

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings ....

If I recall the slogan right --

"ZENITH - The quality goes in, before the name goes on."

Who makes the RF amplifer and the cable? Where did you buy them?

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video

[redwudz]

It was about four feet of bulk RG-6 Belden, hanging out of the amp and extending towards the floor. The amplifier is a Channel Master 3044. It feeds to a HD Homerun LAN HDTV tuner. Most HDTV stations are now running at full power, so it's not hard to get a signal if you have line of sight to the transmitter towers. I also pick up a couple of stations that are about 50 miles away with the attic antenna, but not a good signal, a lot of dropouts.

[ahhaa]

Red- I'd have bought one of those too!

Just FYI, couple days ago PBS Newshour was discussing DTV antennas and mentioned in passing that the FCC has overruled all local rules & ordinances banning rooftop antennas.