I was wondering what purpose the horizontal steel bars on an hdtv antenna served. I was told to remove half of them - which would "open it up to Toronto" by the antenna dude. I am situated in the Falls and receive Buffalo and Toronto stations. I apparently recieve all available channels with current setup except citytv.

What is an HDTV antenna?, lol.

By horizontal bars , you probably refer to the reflector and like its name implies it Reflects the signal back to the Dipoles (or 2 or 4 or 8 bowties depending on the antenna model). It also helps rejecting unwanted signals coming from the back.

So if you live so far away in the Falls and want to get the so low powered CityTV then you either need a bigger reflector (a 2 meter Mesh Parabolic Dish being a good choice) or convince the station engineers to broadcast with way more power but removing them will not help you at all.

Well althought I am not the antenna dude , lol , sometimes when touching the center conductor of a coaxial cable behave quite well like an antenna , lol.

Well I guess it would just be easier to convince a station engineer to up the power than to get up on roof and set up Anabolic Dish. HD fan, do you think that removing half of those horizontal bars actually improved my signal catching ability.

NO. BTW, The geometric shape is Parabolic not Anabolic. Unless my Geometric teacher back in Cuba forgot to mention that one , lol. Maybe you are taking Anabolic Steroides to get in SHAPE , lol , therefore your confusion , lol.

I do not think they would have designed an antenna with extra elements that decrease the performance. Like I said the horizontal elements form the Reflector , which reflects as much signal as it can into the Dipole (bow ties in this case)

Unfortunaelly I am assuming it is a particular antenna (the 4 bay and the likes) since it is the most popular these days , but it could easily be an Uda-Yagui that indeed also have horizontal bars but in that case they are the director elements therefore if you remove the far ones then indeed "it opens it up" since the beamwidth will become wider but at the same time the Gain decreases therefore I still recommend to keep them and just get a rotor if needed to rotate the whole antenna.

Could you please post the antenna model? , but remember than in any case , CityTV its the lowest powered station from CN Tower and on top of that it uses a directional antenna facing north so if you already get everything else then forget about modifiying or changing your current set up. Enjoy TV instead , you might as well get CityTV in the high powered Analog format untill they finally increase power for the digital signal in the future.

AS has already been said those bars are the reflectors and they are needed to get as much signal as can be had. Now if you remove them, and you will need to remove them all your gain will drop quite a bit but you will see a gain coming in from the back of the antenna.

Is it a good idea? Naw I don't think so, either get a rotator for it or get another one and point it out that way and either combine them or put in a switch or hook it to a second RF input if the tv has one.

Jabba, that combining idea sounds like it may be for me. I have heard that I would need a reverse splitter and two identical coax lengths. Since Buffalo is south south east from me and Toronto is north north west is it possible to have them face the same way but with the open sides opposing each other.