Winegard FM Omnidirectional Antenna Brings in VHF and UHF HD TV Signals!

May 28, 2020

#388

Gentle reader,

I am old school in many ways, I read real books and magazines, I drive a car with a manual transmission that has NO "tech" of any kind.

I greatly prefer my PC with a 24" screen to a tablet or any other "device". 

I use a flip phone. There I said it.

I also enjoy streaming, and prefer to get my TV over the air via an antenna.

And, I still listen to the radio. I have a retro floor radio that I updated with speakers far older than it is. I added a coaxial terminal to the back of it so I could screw an antenna to it. It sounds wonderful.

I have a stack of vintage Yamaha stereo equipment next to my PC with an excellent FM tuner. And, yes, even a cassette deck.

For the longest time I used an old pair of "rabbit ears" TV antenna for it, but decided to mount a good FM antenna above the roof.

We have a chimney on the other end of the house and I had already installed a TV antenna there.

So, I made these brackets. I drilled holes through the studs bordering this vent inside the attic, inserted 1/4" threaded rods through the holes and bolted everything together. 

At first I bought this simple dipole antenna that a fellow makes out of car aerials and sells via eBay. It worked OK.

I did some research and the reviews of other types of omnidirectional FM antennae had mixed results. Here are two other types:

Both use looped elements. 

FM radio bands reside between TV channels 6 and 7 on the frequency spectrum. Since car radio antennae have always been straight and the Winegard model had consistently good reviews, I bought one.

 The Winegard model is solidly constructed and not very heavy.

Since I have a TV in this room (for simulation racing) I decided to hook this antenna to it to see what results it might bring.

To my utter surprise, it pulls in stations as far away as Baltimore, Maryland (we live 25+ miles southeast of Washington, D.C. as the signal flies) and the signal strength from the D.C. TV stations are 100% ?!?

I knew that splitters lose a minimum of 3 decibels for every split and found out that distribution amplifiers solve that problem.

Amazon.com: GE 4-Way TV Antenna Amplifier Splitter Clears Up Pixelated Low-Strength Channels Distributes Signal to Multiple TVs 50-1006MHz Low Noise Antenna Signal Booster HD Digital VHF UHF Indoor 34479: Electronics  

This General Electric model is compact and works perfectly. With it off, the reception suffers greatly. But then, as I said we are more than twenty-five miles southwest of the TV towers in D.C. and almost fifty miles in the same direction from Baltimore.

Before I knew much about TV antennae, I bought one of these cheap Chinese "150 Mile Range HD TV Antenna!" which the Antenna man (2) Antenna Man - YouTube repeatedly tells us not to buy. But I did not know about him either. It worked OK for a while. 

After coming across Tyler's YouTube channel and watching a lot of videos, I bought this Channel Master 45-mile-range antenna and mast mounted a preamplifier.

I am in the process of replacing the white RG6 cable with black quad-shield RG6 cable. The extra shielding blocks interference better and won't degrade from UV sunlight like white does.

That antenna gets ALL of the Baltimore channels with no problem. 

Our local TV stations are 4, 5, 7 and 9. Only seven and nine still broadcast on VHF frequencies, all the rest are on UHF. 

See the smaller metal pieces above? All are UHF elements. The higher the frequency, the shorter, in length, the antenna elements need to be. 

Yet, these elements are L-O-N-G. So it makes NO sense that it pulls in stations as high as 68 on the UHF spectrum. But it does.

I will be replacing the cables to this antenna with the same black quad-shield as the TV antenna will have. As well as securing the cable to the mast.

I have three televisions and the Yamaha AM/FM tuner hooked, via the GE distribution amplifier to it. All of the pictures are excellent and all but the Baltimore stations show 100 per cent reception!




The Robb Collections: FM Radio, A Thing of The Past? Choosing and Installing External FM Antennas.

The Robb Collections: Cord Cutting. Get TRUE HD Television Via A Roof Mounted TV Antenna.

The Robb Collections: Dissection of "200 Mile Range" "HD" TV Antenna.  

Above are links to previous articles about my adventures with antennae. Please take a look for more information on the various things I showed you here.

Thanks SO much for reading my humble blog! Please click FOLLOW above and feel free to leave comments below.

Scott

May 28, 2020

#388