I have a Hauppauge tuner. I have a single antenna Antennas Direct ClearStream 1 mounted on 5 foot mast in my backyard. Yeah mounting an antenna on the roof might produce better results then again it might not.
I chose the mast in my backyard because it was already there supporting a DTV dish that I am ready to give the boot out the door. Plus I have a cable from my old cable installation running to the back wall. So it was easy to install. The ClearStream is small enough that my townhouse neighbors won't find it distracting.
Anyway I decieded to do some improvements today. I had those twist on coax connectors and decided to replace them with crimp ons.
Dummy me I should have tested the setup right before I made any changes. We have a local station where the reception was almost non existent. No matter since there was a distant station that I was getting just fine that was a similar channel. This work this way several weeks before the "upgrade".
Now I lost that distant station but that local station that I could almost never get is coming in strong signal wall to wall. And an additional local station is much stronger. But I lost that distant station along with one other that had programming I really liked.
I have tried playing with the position antenna but nothing. I even tried temporarily moving it to the front of the house where it was installed originally and I was getting a halfway decent signal.
What on earth could of happened? I can understand maybe losing a station or two but why am I getting the local station in so clearly now? Plus I am getting two stations that I was not getting before. Sadly one of them is a religious station and I already get several.
Any ideas on how to get that one station back? Or is this the nature of OTA? Would an amp work to get those missing stations back? I am now getting nothing at all on the signal strength in 7MC. In fact it seems to be all or nothing. Either all green bars or only one red one on each station.
OTA Reception Changed
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barnabas1969
- Posts: 5738
- Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:23 pm
- Location: Titusville, Florida, USA
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If you want help with OTA reception, the best place to go is http://www.tvfool.com. They have an abundance of information and a great forum with lots of knowledgeable people who know all about OTA reception. You can put in your street address and it will show you a chart of all the stations in your area, what kind of antenna you need, and even gives you a graphic representation of how strong the signals are in various places near you. It's pretty amazing actually. Make sure to run their TV Signal Locator tool. It will give you a link to your results. You will need to post this link in your forum post if you expect to get any help from the folks there. They will also want to know specifics like the make and model of your antenna, how it is mounted, what kind of cable was used to connect it to the tuner, and how long that cable is.
Based on what you wrote above, I will say that putting the antenna on a 5' mast in the back yard is not a very good setup. It needs to be up high enough to be up above nearby obstructions like buildings, fences, and trees. You are probably seeing the signal get worse because the trees around you have leaves on the branches now. You probably had better reception when the trees were bare, right?
There are lots of things that can affect your signal reception. You can't assume that if you can receive a distant station, then the local station should come in fine or vice versa. TV signals bounce around all over the place... and can even curve around objects... distorting the original direction of the radio waves... which could explain why you can receive a station now that you could not receive before.
Federal law prohibits your condominium association from placing unfair or overly-burdensome restrictions on the installation and placement of antennas. I recommend roof-mounting your antenna. Depending on your location and distance from the transmitters, the antenna you have may or may not be the correct one. You can go to antennaweb.org to get a similar report to the one on TVFool. Pay close attention to the color chart on antennaweb.org for the weakest station that you want to receive. You will need to select an antenna that is the right size and type depending on those colors. The colors are explained in the image attached below.
Based on what you wrote above, I will say that putting the antenna on a 5' mast in the back yard is not a very good setup. It needs to be up high enough to be up above nearby obstructions like buildings, fences, and trees. You are probably seeing the signal get worse because the trees around you have leaves on the branches now. You probably had better reception when the trees were bare, right?
There are lots of things that can affect your signal reception. You can't assume that if you can receive a distant station, then the local station should come in fine or vice versa. TV signals bounce around all over the place... and can even curve around objects... distorting the original direction of the radio waves... which could explain why you can receive a station now that you could not receive before.
Federal law prohibits your condominium association from placing unfair or overly-burdensome restrictions on the installation and placement of antennas. I recommend roof-mounting your antenna. Depending on your location and distance from the transmitters, the antenna you have may or may not be the correct one. You can go to antennaweb.org to get a similar report to the one on TVFool. Pay close attention to the color chart on antennaweb.org for the weakest station that you want to receive. You will need to select an antenna that is the right size and type depending on those colors. The colors are explained in the image attached below.