Distant Locals OTA

[bpickell]

Is there any way to get antennaweb to display distant locals. I live approx 115 miles from Indianapolis, IN and I want to buy some kind of super antenna to pull in the channels from the Indy market. The local channels here in Ft. Wayne are a little slow in the conversion to HD, and I'm tired of waiting. Indy is showing HD on all their channels.

I need the azimuth of those channels so I know where to point the antenna when I find one.

 

[bpickell]

For those of you who have never been to Indiana, it is very flat. I don't think you can find a more wide open state, well maybe Oklahoma.

 

[Lorenzo]

If you get a map and draw a line between your city and the Indianapolis transmitter site you will see some cities on that line closer to Indy. If you use their zip code at antenna web the azimuth to Indy will be the same as yours.

I hope Indianapolis has UHF HD and you're able to get your antenna up say 60' or more above ground level, you use an CM 8 bay bow tie and a low noise preamp. You just might stand a chance in pulling in 115 mile HD sigs. I hope you're not North or Northeast of Fort Wayne as your antenna will have to look through the much stronger Fort Wayne signals.

 

[bpickell]

Actually I am on the North side of Fort Wayne. However the towers for our locals are on the west side of town, don't know if that matters or not. I'm just frustrated all I want is football in HD. None of our local channels are broadcasting football in HD.

 

[Lorenzo]

The problem I was thinking about was that you'll have to use a preamp for the 115 mile stations but the more Fort Wayne signal you pick up the more likely the preamp or the tv will overload making the distant reception impossible. Are people in Fort Wayne with big antennas able to watch Indianapolis UHF analog stations?

A great 8 bay bowtie, the Channel Master 4228 has reception nulls around 30-40 and 90 degrees. If the difference between the Fort Wayne and Indianapolis towers are around those marks you've got a better chance. In those cases I would point the antenna to null out Fort Wayne as the nulls are very narrow in degrees but the strongest reception is over a 20 degree or more radius. In other words you can be off a little for Indianapolis if it will put Fort Wayne in one of the nulls.

check out http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/cm4228.html ...for a polar diagram showing the response of the CM antenna and you'll see the nulls around 35 and 90 degrees.

 

[roashru]

bpickell, if you want to do some ota hdtv dxing heres what i use

Convert zip code if needed:
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer-tbl/
Enter longitude with - (minus) in front of number, latitude, and miles then select by distance:
http://www.2150.com/broadcast/

The maps show exactly where the towers are i like this way better than antennaweb.

 

[TuxCoder]

Ok, since that's probably the 827th time I've seen someone say "dxing" or "DX'ing" on here, it's my cue to ask...

What does DX'ing stand for? I understand it just has something to do with "receiving signals" or maybe specifically receiving TV signals. And I know RX and TX. But what does DX mean?

I'm not trying to hijack this thread...
In show of good faith, here is another question, on-topic. I like the idea of the reception null patterns for a given antenna. I first saw these diagrams at the Winegard presentation at Satellite Expo in Memphis. The question is, could one use these angles of low reception to one's advantage when attempting to combine two antennas? That is, if the angles work well for your location and tower angles... say you point antenna A toward town A's towers, and antenna B toward town B's towers.

If you pick antenna A as one that has a reception null in the direction of town B, and pick antenna B so it has a null area toward town A, this should help reduce multipath/ghosting issues, no?

 

[roashru]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXing

 

[TuxCoder]

Thanks! I suppose I could have just used "dxing" as a search term...

Now my eyes refuse to blink :shocked, there's so much info to read (damn wikipedia). The dxing.info site is very intriguing, just at its front page no less.

 

[jolt]

Good Luck!
I can sometimes get Buffalo, NY from where I am in Ohio (209 miles!) I regularly get Detroit without that much trouble (77 miles). However, I can't get CBS from Toledo or Cleveland to save my life (35-50 miles).

This is with a CEA Blue rated antenna, with a RatShack booster (I'll get a CM later), and Voom box.

Then again, it might help that it's perfectly flat to where I'm DX'ing... Lake Erie helps!

Personally, I'd get a good map, and do the compass heading by hand. Then bring a TV on the roof and fine tune it from there. Sometimes, just tightening down the antenna will throw it out of whack.

 

[Lorenzo]

Using the nulls when combining two antenna pointed in different directions is a great idea.
Also when just using one antenna it's advantagous to put reflections (ghosts) and noise sources in the antenna null directions.

Channel Master has 2 vhf antenna lines- one more a yagi type antenna (the crossfire) which is designed more for maximum gain and the other a log periodic (the quantum) which is designed to reject signals from directions the antennas isn't pointed but has slightly less gain than the crossfire. In todays environment with multiple noise sources being very common I almost exclusively used quantums especially in weak signal areas where manmade noise and distant co channels was often the limiting factor in getting good reception.

 

[Lorenzo]

I lived in Bend, Oregon in the 70's and 80's, it was a VHF DXers delight as the nearest regular VHF stations were about 120 miles away across the Cascade mountains and very weak. I think I was up to about 12 states received and 3 Canadian provinces. Hot summer days seemed to be the best for Dxing. Some summers it was all Idaho, Montana and Saskatchewan stations and other Summers it was New Mexico, Texas and Oaklahoma that were booming in. Sometimes by carefully rotating the antenna I could for instance get 3 different states on CH 2 or 3. Sometimes it was weird in that there would be multiple pictures on top of one another but the best picture's sound wasn't dominant.

 

[dougruss]

Is there any way to get antennaweb to display distant locals. I live approx 115 miles from Indianapolis, IN and I want to buy some kind of super antenna to pull in the channels from the Indy market. The local channels here in Ft. Wayne are a little slow in the conversion to HD, and I'm tired of waiting. Indy is showing HD on all their channels.

I need the azimuth of those channels so I know where to point the antenna when I find one.

Wouldn't it be easier to get the Broadcast programming out of South Bend ??

 

[bpickell]

Isn't South Bend about the same distance? I haven't checked yet but with it being West of here it might be harder to get with the Fort Wayne Towers being west of here as well.

 

[bpickell]

After further review I might be able to pull in Battle Creek a little easier. It's North of here, at about 70 Miles. I'm thinking of either the CM3671 or the Winegard HD8200P. Anyone have experience with either?

And will I need to add an additional pre-amp to it?