Currently, I still have my Voom box hooked up for OTA tuning. I am curious about how to put up another OTA antenna facing the opposite direction in order to pick up another market's set of stations. According to antennaweb I am within range. Since the Voom dish is still connected and the cable is run, could I just attatch the second antenna to the coaxial that is currently hooked to the dish? If not, what is the simplest way to get this going?
How do I recieve an OTA signal from a nearby market?
- Thread starter theph0xx
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use a rotor, there is not really any good way to connect 2 OTA antenna's together, you are ASKING for trouble (multipath, ghosting, etc)
Mitch
Mitch
Mitch is right.....
A rotor is the way to go. Some people out there recommend or have two separate antennas hooked together with a splitter being used backwards to combine the two signals. Like Mitch said, you run into lots of problems going with this scenario. If you want a good rotor, I'd prefer getting a channel master rotor. They make one that features a remote control and allows you to program up to 69 stations total. You also might pick up more channels than those listed on antennaweb. Go to the FCC's website for more accurate results. Just type in a callsign and see if their reception map is marked for your area. http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/audio/tvq.html
Even though some of the maps are not 99.9% accurate, the website has more accurate information than antennaweb does. There were more channels that antennaweb listed out of my reception area that I could receive than those listed at the FCC website. I think that there were only two stations which were shown on the reception map that were not receivable that I'm able to get. There's also certain atmospheric conditions where you can receive stations you wouldn't normally be able to receive. This is most notable during the evening hours when the sun is setting and the air begins to cool. It also happens during the early morning hours when the sun rises and the air begins to warm up. During these atmospheric conditions, there are 4 frequencies and 9 channels total that I can receive.
A rotor is the way to go. Some people out there recommend or have two separate antennas hooked together with a splitter being used backwards to combine the two signals. Like Mitch said, you run into lots of problems going with this scenario. If you want a good rotor, I'd prefer getting a channel master rotor. They make one that features a remote control and allows you to program up to 69 stations total. You also might pick up more channels than those listed on antennaweb. Go to the FCC's website for more accurate results. Just type in a callsign and see if their reception map is marked for your area. http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/audio/tvq.html
Even though some of the maps are not 99.9% accurate, the website has more accurate information than antennaweb does. There were more channels that antennaweb listed out of my reception area that I could receive than those listed at the FCC website. I think that there were only two stations which were shown on the reception map that were not receivable that I'm able to get. There's also certain atmospheric conditions where you can receive stations you wouldn't normally be able to receive. This is most notable during the evening hours when the sun is setting and the air begins to cool. It also happens during the early morning hours when the sun rises and the air begins to warm up. During these atmospheric conditions, there are 4 frequencies and 9 channels total that I can receive.
Lobstah said:The other option, if you have more than one VOOM boxis to run two separate antennas, and use two inputs on your TV, one from each box.
Lob
That sounds like an affordable proposition considering the fact that Voom boxes are going for $40 or less on ebay. However, how would this be affected by the problems mentioned above, ie attenuation, multipath, ghosting, etc?
To keep the clutter down, I'd go with the rotator. Who really wants 2 OTA antennas and 3 dishes on their roof, then two receivers on their TV.
I took the amplified directional antenna voom installed and pointed it toward the west and the large directional I had was pointed it toward the south. The MIT. has antenna A and B inputs that are looped out to the voom box. This is a good instillation for 1 TV witch is all we have.
Anyone know of a wireless rotator? One that could be controlled without wires going from the rotator to the tv. I'd like to install a rotator on the antenna in my attic but don't want to run any wires through my attic. I know the rotator motor needs power but is it possible to control the motor remotely without wires?
Never heard of a wireless rotor
All rotors I've ever known of use wires to both power and direct the rotor to turn one way or the other. The only exception is with Ku-band satellite motors for FTA that use power supplied from the receiver and runs through the coaxial cable. It would be nice to have a concept like this for OTA antennas. Instead of flipping a switch on the rotor and changing the channel or punching in a number on the rotor and then punching in the channel number on the receiver, you could instead punch in the RF on the receiver and through software settings programmed by the user, the rotor would move to the optimal point for that frequency. The best rotor I know of is made by channel master. It is a remote controllable rotor that a little box hooks to via three power wires. It's programmable with up to 69 channels, which is the total number of OTA frequencies currently available by the FCC until they reduce the amount to 52. It's more pricey than others, but this baby will allow you to program to one degree of accuracy compared to those turn dial rotors where you have to sort of guess where the hot spot is. It's amazing how much difference a single degree of turn can make on a weak signal. Oh and this rotor also synchronizes itself after a total of 50 turns to keep each degree aligned correctly. You can also synchronize it yourself as well.
All rotors I've ever known of use wires to both power and direct the rotor to turn one way or the other. The only exception is with Ku-band satellite motors for FTA that use power supplied from the receiver and runs through the coaxial cable. It would be nice to have a concept like this for OTA antennas. Instead of flipping a switch on the rotor and changing the channel or punching in a number on the rotor and then punching in the channel number on the receiver, you could instead punch in the RF on the receiver and through software settings programmed by the user, the rotor would move to the optimal point for that frequency. The best rotor I know of is made by channel master. It is a remote controllable rotor that a little box hooks to via three power wires. It's programmable with up to 69 channels, which is the total number of OTA frequencies currently available by the FCC until they reduce the amount to 52. It's more pricey than others, but this baby will allow you to program to one degree of accuracy compared to those turn dial rotors where you have to sort of guess where the hot spot is. It's amazing how much difference a single degree of turn can make on a weak signal. Oh and this rotor also synchronizes itself after a total of 50 turns to keep each degree aligned correctly. You can also synchronize it yourself as well.
