Help With Chicago WBBM 2-1 (3)

[tsully71]

Pretty Simple- I have an indoor antenna (Terk HDTVa Antenna Pro-Amplified), I live in a townhouse so it has to be indoors. It is in my attic, the travel distance to my TV is about 30 feet, so not too far. I live in Tinley Park, IL 60477 about 20 to 25 miles away from the Sears Tower antenna so definetly within range. All my HD channels come in good, no problems except CBS, it freezes up and pixelizes all the time no matter, any advice, different antenna, booster or anything else???

I have read all over the internet that CBS HD in Chicago sucks but just wanted to see if anyone came up with something that might help.

B-Ball is painful to watch and have to back to standard Direct TV signal to watch games.

 

[charper1]

Unfortunately for you a decent VHF/UHF outdoor combo.

Channel Master CM 3030
Channel Master CM 5646
Winegard PR 7010
Winegard HD7080P

 

[NightHawk]

Agreed, you need a bigger antenna. Being on channel 3 hurts as the antenna requirements are physically large. Combined with the the fact you need to also receive a number of UHF channels means a large combination antenna. Hopefully you have room in the attic for this.

 

[Jim5506]

A sidenote: When the digital change over happens (2009) WBBM is scheduled to move to channel 11.

You might consider a temporary patch rather than buying an expensive VHF low antenna - like making your own channel 3 tuned dipole antenna out of 300 ohm twinlead.

 

[charper1]

AND FYI just because you live in a rented townhome and/or have an HOA, DOES NOT MEAN it has to be indoors.

 

[dougruss]

A sidenote: When the digital change over happens (2009) WBBM is scheduled to move to channel 11.

You might consider a temporary patch rather than buying an expensive VHF low antenna - like making your own channel 3 tuned dipole antenna out of 300 ohm twinlead.

That's 3 Years away yet !! And since the Govt. is involved....add another 5 years to that date !!:devil:

 

[Jim5506]

That's 3 Years away yet !! And since the Govt. is involved....add another 5 years to that date !!:devil:

As a matter of fact, the government has been rolling the date forward recently.

 

[GeorgeLV]

You might consider a temporary patch rather than buying an expensive VHF low antenna - like making your own channel 3 tuned dipole antenna out of 300 ohm twinlead.

It doesn't work. Because of the impusle noise problem with low-vhf you can have a 90+ signal that is unwatchable. You don't just need high gain, you need to be highly directional as well. (My first hand experience with KVBC 3-1 (2) in Las Vegas)

 

[NightHawk]

It doesn't work. Because of the impusle noise problem with low-vhf you can have a 90+ signal that is unwatchable. You don't just need high gain, you need to be highly directional as well. (My first hand experience with KVBC 3-1 (2) in Las Vegas)

The tuned dipole is not a high-gain antenna. You are correct that channel 3 is in a frequency band highly degraded by man-made noise but there are only a few practical choices to mitigate that problem.

The tuned dipole makes some sense because it is almost certainly going to have better performance on channel 3 than the diminutive Terk toy antenna. Additionally it can be made cheaply as implied by Jim so if it doesn't work, no great loss. The problem is integration into a system.

Gain and directionality are directly proportional and are basically the exact same thing. You can't have one without the other so if the dipole doesn't work the next best option is a single channel yagi array with higher gain and higher directionality. The problem is this antenna is going to be physically larger and now needs to be integrated seamlessly into a system with a separate UHF antenna. More difficult to do because it requires additional hardware.

That leaves a UHF/VHF combination antenna as I suggested.

 

[dodge]

CBS 2 Chicago

Get a winegard HD8200p antenna with a chromstar ap8275 amp and that should solv your problems