Varying signal strength.

teamerickson

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 20, 2006
1,716
0
El Dorado Hills, CA
I'm trying to solve a problem and wondering if anyone has any input.

My OTA signal varies. It seems too be related to the time of day. Morning is ok. Afternoon seems to be best. Starting around 8pm signal starts to go down and hits a peak low around 9:30-10pm. Last night was about 20 point variance. Does the sun affect signal? Some channels are worse than others. I'm 35 miles to towers, and have tried different antennas. Any thoughts?
 
OTA signal can be tricky due to it not being as directional as dish's signal, it could be trees, it could be the sun, it could be a million things, but the best advice i can give is try turning your antenna and seeing if that helps out at all, if not, then best of luck.
 
I noticed the same thing a few weeks back.... On the hottest days of summer, being 90+ degrees and who knows how hot in my attic, I was getting really high signal strengths (correlates with you getting higher numbers in the afternoon). Then we got a cold spell .... in the 70s .... and the same channels had lower signal strengths.
 
I have noticed that when I watch the signal strength on my H-20 directv receiver, the OTA signal goes up and down a lot. My antenna is not moving at all, but it'll go from 65% to 85% constantly changing...
 
Just a reminder that most receivers are NOT showing signal strength. They're showing signal QUALITY. You can have a strong signal with lots of multipath and end up with a low reading. Weather conditions, the condition of the atmosphere, the temperature of a reflecting surface, foliage, and lots of other stuff can affect your signal.

Larry
SF
 
Why complicate things ?? 100 is good, 50 is not. If I'm getting 95+ on all of my local stations, should I be concerned that I in fact have low signal "strength" ??
 
I changed antennas and that seemed to help. I was using an amplified multi-directional and switched to a non-amplified directional. More stable and better signal strength (Or signal quality :D ).
 
Directional over mulit-directional is always a good choice, espesially with digital signals.
 

ATI TV Wonder 650

Indoor HD antenna

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