Add these to the lore about TV antennas.

An ex-boss of mine had a job in his twenties as the kid who did minor technical things for a major TV station in Salt Lake City. One customer had antenna problems. The kid rolled the van to check signal strength. Long story short, the customer was some fifty miles from the transmitter and had horrible signal strength. Van had a fifty foot mast and could not get the station. After giving up, he and the customer were chatting while he cranked down the van's antenna tower. At about twelve feet off the ground, the signal was really strong!

Higher antenna does not guarantee better signal. You can't see the signal so you'll never know.


I got horrible ghosting on several channels from an antenna mounted on the single story roof of a retail building. There were many taller buildings between me and the stations, as well as many taller buildings beyond my location. I moved the antenna so it backed up against a 20' high section of wall and the picture cleared right up. The interference was coming from behind the antenna.

Check your antenna specs: directional antennas pick up signals off the back almost as well as signals off the front.


I also solved a similar problem by moving the antenna about ten feet sideways from the expected signal path.


All of this was VHF. On the negative side, UHF is even crazier. On the positive side, digital transmissions are less susecptible to multipath, which is to say ghosting.


With a DirecTV signal, receiver said client wasn't getting enough "signal strength," He insisted on my adding an amplifier to the dish signal. I did. Signal showed lower than before. See, the satellite receiver's "signal strength meter" was a "quality" indicator and the amp delivered a distorted signal.

That same client was getting some TV signals from between two buildings and the antenna worked better not parallel to the ground but at right angles to the ground. I was kinda glad I missed out on that science project.*


*See Post 7 at [Link: remotecentral.com]