okay, its an 80: boom length on the antenna I have from radio shack, also i am shooting through trees, I am in airport traffic, I used 50 ft quad shield rg6, no I dont notice breakup when its windy, my wife said it happens during the day, and for me it will happen about 3 times in a half an hour program. its bad enough to just stutter the program, with once going to a screen saying it lost signal, BUT it was constantly at a high level, also I dont see it through my tv, as I have a cable run to the tv as well, with the same levels, but no break up.
Ok now this is just my opinion based on... well... something I can't see. But I think you've described pretty well so here goes.
#1 Using an 80" yagi for stations that are actually really close, you might actually have too much gain. That may sound dumb, but in this case it really could be that you're getting too much of a good thing. Try angling your antenna slightly OFF from being pointed directly at the towers that are closest.
--#1a. Seeing a "lost signal" message while the signal strength is still indicating plenty of signal could be an indication of the above, but it could also be true that the signal strength indicator is just lagging and the sampling intervals are not catching a signal dropout
#2 Your TV not having problems when the satellite receiver apparently does have problems, sounds to me like your TV's tuner is better than the satellite tuner at figuring out multipath. Not surprising. I'm certain that my panasonic plasma's tuner is better than the 622's OTA tuner, but .... I have it working fine anyways. And I did have to tweak my antenna for the 622 when I went from being directly connected to the TV, to running OTA through the 622.
I'm not doubting what you're seeing. There's obviously an issue somewhere. And I'm certainly no antenna expert. I'm just an old guy that has more experience with antennas than satellite dishes
And I know I keep coming back to multipath issues, but that's what this sounds like to me. That, or too much gain. I am assuming that you've checked all connections and connection hardware, made sure the cables were stripped correctly with a proper length stinger and all that stuff. I am also assuming that since you've used 50 feet of RG6, that this isn't combined with satellite signal anywhere. It's just a straight dedicated antenna cable run to the satellite receiver.
Here are a couple more questions:
Does this happen primarily on one or 2 channels in that tower cluster you're aimed at?
Is there a channel on which this never... or almost never.. happens?
Can you find the output power of the stations on those towers.
If you have a mix of high powered and low powered stations, it could be that the low powered ones are ok whereas the high powered ones, which you would think would give you that much BETTER of a result, are actually, in effect, overpowering the antenna.
