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In Reply to: Can anyone recommend a good in attic antenna for UHF/VHF/FM/HDTV? posted by Matt on January 04, 2002 at 05:17:19:
my neighborhood homeowner's association prohibits TV antenna's: the development was built wired for cable (must be some kind of scam going on with Comcast). but the cable company sucks bigtime, has horrible interference problems (I get the CBs from the truckers and the dispatcher from the fire company as well as the neighborhood ham operators on more than one cable channel), goes out completely whenever it rains or sometimes for no reason at all, and even when it's working, I've discovered I get better local reception with rabbit ears on top of the TV! (and yes, I checked and double checked the ground on the cable, had it checked by their technician, and even put a technical ground in--which helped the stereo but did nothing for the cable).So I dumped them and went satellite. Even "digital" cable isn't necessarily digital. The dish is great! except, it sucks that you have to pay so much for "free" local TV, and as you noted, HDTV.
I put a Radio Shack array w/YAGI in the attic, pointed it at the broadcast towers, and spliced it into the cable distribution which convieniently runs thru the attic. Now I get satellite and off-the-air broadcasts as well as fantastic FM, and the reception is much better than cable--(not saying much).
My only complaint is that the NBC feed to Philadelphia of "The West Wing" really really sucks, on cable, on satellite, and on the airwaves. %The picture looks as if they recorded over a worn-out grocery store VHS rental tape. It's the only show that does this too...
...hey, do you think it's a vast, Right Wing conspiracy??????!
Follow Ups:
Pete,In the attic what's the model number of the RS antenna, and how far away from the source towers are you? Is it direct line of sight, with no hills or buildings in between?
Thanks,
bstan
oh, wait, I remember I didn't get the RS but one from the Sears hardware. I hate going into RS -- will do anything to avoid it. I think most of the building supply places have them too: like Home Depot and Lowes.I bought the smallest "rooftop" model they had, it was about $30. It's not easy to get up in my attic or I'd go and get the model number for you, but it has about 7 or 9 VHF elements and the YAGI reflector in the tail with a bunch of UHF elements.
I suspended it from the rafters with string--but now I wish I'd put up some kind of mast with a rotor, even though it'd be a pain to run a cable down to the control...I may do that soon, now that it's cold up there.
Was worried about grounding and lightening for a while but it's been up there for 2 seasons and the house hasn't caught fire (yet). I suppose it's grounded thru the coax shield where I spliced into the cable TV distribution (had to cut the coax and put a "T" in line--that wasn't too hard and came out OK, but be sure to disconnect your cable TV feed where it comes into the house to the ground block, then just re-plumb the coax so the antenna feed goes on the IN side of the distribution/ground block where the cable feed was disconnected--get it?), but I really ought to do it properly, I suppose. don't turn me in.
I'm fortunate to be up on a hill facing a direct line-of-sight to most of Philly's broadcast towers, about 20 miles or thereabouts. I think I"m within 30 miles of all the antennas in the Philly area, and can even get Allentown, which is over the hill behind me. The link below says I don't even need the antenna in the attic, but what do they know.
But check out the link that Tom (was it tom??)posted below. I think I'm going to go with the biggest antenna that will fit between the rafters and still rotate. I'll let you know how it works out.
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