do I really need a rotor?

[bfranclemont]

you guys are pretty good at advice on these forums and i need some guidance.

I cancelled cable a long time ago (over a year now) and have had both good and really bad days with my Phillips antenna. I have signal drops every time a car drives by, which is frequent. And there is reasonable forestry around, but level ground. I am remodeling the living room and want to do it right this time.

I want to install a system in the attic (about 3 ft of room height) about 12 ft from ground level. Going to hook up two TVs, possibly three. The main tv will be less than a 20ft run, the Furthest is 50ft. I'd really prefer NOT to do a rotor system. Lowest cost is my goal.

here's what tvfool tells me:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapp ... a5858bb34f

any help would be greatly appreciated, as I do not know the full science behind determining these systems.

forgot to mention, I am using a Samsung LED HDTV with built in HDTV Tuner.

Thanks,
Ben

By the way, I don't care at all about the Christian channels.

[bfranclemont]

not one suggestion?

[gcd0865]

Ben:

The problem that you have is that most of your stations are literally at 90-degree angles to each other, with your ION station (WPXJ-23) in yet a third direction, making it difficult to find an orientation for any antenna that will receive from all desired directions at the same time. In addition, you have one VHF-high station (WBBZ-7), which will need a different antenna from the rest, which are UHF channels.

For lowest cost, and in the attic, you might consider the following. For the UHF stations, try building your own simple UHF bowtie antenna from plans such as these:
http://www.tvantennaplans.com
http://www.diytvantennas.com/bowtie.html

One thing to keep in mind about this type of antenna is that if you do not include the reflector part, it will be bi-directional to the front and back, but with reduced gain compared to having a reflector and facing the elements broadside toward the station(s) of interest. As such, a UHF bowtie antenna without a reflector could face broadside toward your 279-280-degree stations and at the same time, be broadside to WPXJ-23 in the opposite direction. If the antenna has sufficient gain for your location (and your attic does not have any metal materials (metal roof, foil insulation or ductwork) to block the signals), this type of antenna might work for those stations. But it is unlikely to receive the stations at 175 to 199 degrees very well when oriented in that way. Of course if you rotated it 90 degrees to face broadside to those 175 to 199-degree stations, they would probably come in fine, even without the added gain of a reflector.

Perhaps you could find some orientation for this type of antenna (somewhere in-between the two directions) that might work for all stations (you'd have to experiment, maybe positioning it to face around 235-240 degrees). If not, you could build a second antenna just like the first one and use two downleads and an A/B switch at your tv, but that's inconvenient for your multiple tv's.

For the VHF station (WBBZ-7), try making a simple folded dipole like this one, with an overall width of 32" (sized for channel 7) and face it broadside to 204 degrees:
http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.html

If these work individually when tested, you can join them together into a single coax downlead to your tv's using a special UVSJ combiner specifically designed for combining separate VHF and UHF antennas (don't use a standard splitter in reverse) and two short coax lengths a few feet long each:
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=UVSJ

Mount all antennas as high as possible, use the shortest lengths of coax possible (including placing your antennas in the closest part of your attic to where the downlead will go) and use the minimum number of connectors possible, to preserve maximum signal strength.

Hope this is helpful - good luck!

[bfranclemont]

Fantastic!!!! Thanks for the detailed explanation! This is more than i could ask for!

Is there no way to integrate two separate facing UHF antennas without a switch?? I know there is a huge signal benefit of having it separate, but would LOVE to not have to deal with the switch. In regards to the issue with to TVs, I can just build two separate antennas (one for each TV).

Honestly, I have no desire to receive the VHF channel. I'm am very sorry you took the time to provide a detailed solution.

Thank you for all of this help!! I did not know building the antenna would be so easy/simple to do. Now instead of buying on ebay, I will build my own antennas instead! AWESOME!

[bfranclemont]

so I couldn't wait and made the antenna from http://www.tvantennaplans.com like you suggested. Cost me $5 in materials from home depot and Wal-Mart.

all I gotta say is WOW! I can't believe how well it works. It out performs my $30 HDTV powered antenna from RadioShack.

I can't thank you enough! I've already got a few buddies planning on making their own.