So i bought a 55 mile indoor flat amplified antenna for a tv I have. Granted I am in a remote part of the US. But I figured it would allow me to get the over the air digital channels offered in the area. Basically get the same two or three I can get with the old rabbit ears. It was $33 and was really hoping it would help, not so. If you have any suggestion please let me know. I am not the type of guy to box up and take back. As I have used it and do not think it is defective.

You may need an antenna on a mast.
I'm in the middle of nowhere and will have to have one on a 20' mast to pick up the stations.

Use this to determine what you really need.
Those flat ones are for cities and outlying suburbs.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps

Return it, they are defective in my opinion. I bought one tried it didn't work either. I returned it.

I'm only about 30 miles from the local stations' towers, but I skipped the RCA in favor of a Mohu Leaf 50.

I have three of them now, one for each TV in the house... no complaints. Certainly, crummy weather interferes a little, but that's just physics.

amplified antennas only amplify the signal that they receive,

if your signal area is crap you will only amplify a crap signal.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
So i bought a 55 mile indoor flat amplified antenna for a tv I have.

That is a misleading claim, IMO. UHF and VHF-Hi are primarily line-of-sight. Let us say the broadcast tower is at 1000 feet (which is one of the higher TV broadcast towers you'll see) and your antenna is at 30 feet. LOS would be 53 miles.

That doesn't mean it cannot work. It just means that advertising such an antenna as a '55-mile" antenna is a wee bit "optimistic," IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Granted I am in a remote part of the US. But I figured it would allow me to get the over the air digital channels offered in the area. Basically get the same two or three I can get with the old rabbit ears.

Too many variables to say. You need to get over to TV Fool, put your location in, then perhaps screen-shot the results and show us what they are.

As for the antenna you bought: Many so-called "digital" antennas only work well on UHF signals. Some TV stations are currently on VHF-Hi, and there is even a scattering of stations still on VHF-Lo.

E.g: I tried both a Mohu Leaf and a Winegard FlatWave Amped. My stations are all on more-or-less the same bearing, ±15 miles away. The Mohu Leaf utterly failed to get any of the VHF-Hi stations, whereas the FlatWave Amped, which is billed as a VHF-Hi/UHF antenna, got all the UHF stations the Leaf did, plus the VHF-Hi stations.

If you have any stations on VHF-Lo, probably neither of them would work.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
I am not the type of guy to box up and take back. As I have used it and do not think it is defective.

You would be well w/in your rights to return it, IMO. I feel such a manufacturer's claim to be so "optimistic" as to verge on false advertising.

FWIW: I have a fairly extensive "CV" in things related to radio, antennas, transmission lines, etc.

If you are truly in a remote area, and the stations are very far away, you'd probably best be served by a rooftop antenna.

Any type of indoor antenna is not likely to work at that range. You need an old fashioned roof mast mounted Yagi antenna. And they tend to be directional, so it will need to be pointed at the transmitters you want to pick up.

Thanks guys. I was just hoping I was not going to have to go the roof mast style route. Some of them say you can mount in the attic?

I have a little GE antenna mounted on the side of my house. Leaned out a window to mount it. I put it on the side of the house that faces the city... it's still pretty underwhelming.

Works great if you speak Spanish, like home shopping channels or televangelists.

Laws of Physics state that the best antenna is still the old fashion rooftop antenna like your grandparents had.

Lots of variables, but if you are looking for the best antenna, the old rooftop type of best.

quote:

Some of them say you can mount in the attic?

It may work for you, depending on your location, building materials (no tin roofs!) and such. Generally the higher you can get the antenna, the better signal you can get. If you MUST amp it, put the amp as close to the antenna as possible. And don't forget to take lightning protection into consideration for rooftop installtions.

I was able to install a full size Yagi in my dad's attic on a rotator, and he could then pick up all the stations from Providence, RI to Poland Springs ME.

https://www.homeantenna.com/di...tenna-reception-map/ This make help to see if your area will benefit before you spend your money.

https://antennaweb.org/Info/AntennaInfo

Another good site to figure out what will work best for you.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Thanks guys. I was just hoping I was not going to have to go the roof mast style route. Some of them say you can mount in the attic?

That depends.

In general terms: The higher, the better. (Tho see story, below.) What is your roofing material? If it's steel: Forget it. If it's slate or ceramic tile: Probably not. If it's regular old shingles, well, it'll probably work ok except during heavy downpours or when there's a thick layer of snow on the roof.

This RCA Compact Outdoor Yagi HDTV Antenna with 70 Mile Range (ANT751E) gets very good reviews and can be mounted about anywhere.

It may or may not suffice for your needs.

You really need to share with us the TV Fool data for your location if you expect anything more than wild guesses.

Higher is not always better.

About the time everything went digital I decided it was time for a rooftop antenna upgrade. Bought a new antenna. New coax. A coax compression connector kit. A 10' mast to replace the 5' mast that had been up there. The appropriate ground wire as per NEC. An 8' copper-clad steel ground rod. The works. Put it all up, fired up the TV and...

Reception was crap!

Long story short: I was pointing nearly directly at a tree. There is an effect with trees called "Fresnel Effect" (yes: Just like the lens), and, near any tree, a "Fresnel zone." What I actually had to to go get my reception back where it had been was lower the antenna back down until I got into a kind of "null Fresnel effect" zone.

The optimum height ended-up being right were the old antenna had been

I have the ANT751E, mounted about 9 feet outside. It works well in my area, picking up 48 channels. I get Chicago stuff and I'm 56 miles LOS from Willis (Sears) tower.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

Long story short: I was pointing nearly directly at a tree. There is an effect with trees called "Fresnel Effect" (yes: Just like the lens), and, near any tree, a "Fresnel zone." What I actually had to to go get my reception back where it had been was lower the antenna back down until I got into a kind of "null Fresnel effect" zone.

The optimum height ended-up being right were the old antenna had been

Not understanding here. So, the lower height allowed you to shoot under the tree? Normally one tries to raise the ht such that the Fresnel "football" is above the trees, or at least try to get a larger % of the football above the trees.

I normally think of Fresnel being an issue at frequencies higher than the < 1 GHz where TV transmits, but admittedly everything scales. Really big tree?

 
I have this Winegard HD7694P antenna mounted just above my roof line. It has a distant line of sight 68 miles away to where all of the PHX stations have their transmitters (South Mountain). Though the antenna is supposedly rated for only 50 miles, I get all of the PHX stations perfectly, both UHF and VHF-high band (channels 7-13). All of the digital broadcasts from PHX are on one or the other (VHF-high or UHF).
 

 
The hawk was not included.
 

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
Not understanding here. So, the lower height allowed you to shoot under the tree?

I can't explain it and I can't find the %!#!! paper that does.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
Normally one tries to raise the ht such that the Fresnel "football" is above the trees, ... Really big tree?

Yes, and really too close. But, short of erecting a 20-30' mast or tower about 100' from the back of the house, there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

So it turns out that when you're in the "RF shadow" of a tree, w/in a certain distance, there is a "sweet spot" ("semi-sweet spot?") essentially directly in the center of the tree, on the bearing of the signal, where the disruption is minimized. As you move further and further out of that spot, random diffraction increases.

I think that, in that "sweet spot," the diffractions are self-canceling? (Additive?) (This is from memory and ICBW.) Obviously, when the wind starts blowing things about this all falls apart. Sure enough: When the wind starts blowing our most difficult stations would go to pieces.

It's counter-intuitive, and I found the explanation only after lowering the antenna, in trying to find out why that seemingly worked.

After I found that explanation, I went back up on the roof and eye-balled the axis of the antenna and damned if, at the height it'd been at, it wasn't nearly dead center on the tree's foliage.

I wish I could find that paper again. I probably had it bookmarked at some point, and lost those bookmarks.

Since then I tried another idea. Theorizing that if I could take that tree out of the equation by getting it out of the antenna's radiation pattern, I pointed the antenna as closely as possible to the midpoint between all the nearby trees. That put it about 15° or so off the average bearing to the stations of interest, but they're only ±15 miles away, anyway. Sure enough: We now get less interference when the wind blows. And I'm getting some Toledo stations pretty solidly, most of the time, to boot

^^^^ Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, ensigmatic.