MWmetalhead wrote: βSat Dec 11, 2021 5:50 pm
Is your antenna a flat panel style? If so, that antenna type is optimized for UHF, not VHF, reception. If field strength is good enough, VHF-hi reception is still very doable, but the unit will be less forgiving than a simple set of rabbit ears when it comes to reception impediments.
Let me try finding a picture and link it ...
https://www.amazon.com/QFX-ANT-106-Outd ... B0065MCEW4
That's the POS, alright ...
Sad thing is I bought that to replace this one I accidentally knocked over and busted ...
https://www.amazon.com/TV-Antenna-Outdo ... 7266&psc=1
That antenna rocked!
I once owned a Radio Shack set top combo VHF / UHF antenna with built-in amplifier. Bought the unit for about $40 in 2006, I believe. I lived in Warren at the time. With the gain dial on the amplifier turned up about half way, some minor improvement in both analog and digital TV signals was noted. For example, reception of the low power analog station TV-26 from Detroit and of WFUM-TV from Flint was improved, as was the digital signal of WKBD. But if turned that gain dial all the way up, my reception worsened dramatically, and I could hear WOMC's audio bleed through on channel 9 from Windsor!
My mother lived just west of the Monroe County Fairgrounds and bought a pair of cheP QFX rabbit ears from Ollie's and commissioned me to figure out why she couldn't get them to work. After some trial and error, I found that the best place for the antenna was on top her fridge and pointed out the kitchen window towards WTOL but I couldn't let the coax dangle as either she or her two pekingese fleabags would trip over it. The distance between the fridge and the TV was 10 feet. So with white duct tape that matched the ceiling, I taped both the coax and AC adapter cable overhead in strips and then down the side of the opposite wall. When the tape would give, she could tear off a replacement.
Channel scan later, she got half of Detroit and all of Toledo except WTOL and WWJ and WJBK we're dropping out. She was not having that at all. She couldn't miss her afternoon CBS soaps! Oh, heaven's no. Everything I did didn't help until I noticed the gain was set awfully high. I slowly dial it back until WTOL came in, and that also fixed WJBK and WWJ. So I had her do a final scan ... and she got everything from Toledo, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Windsor except the LP channels like WMNT. That setup lasted until her passing in 2016 and one night 5am or so she did a rescan only to call out to me, "Come here and look at this!" I come out there and see a silver CBS logo and gold "2" in the corner. "That's not Fox2, ma!" Turns out her rescan picked up Channel 2 from Pittsburgh and mashed them together with WJBK. As she kept flipping channels, I'm seeing WKYC, WEWS, WJW, CTV, WOIO, TVO ...
They had knocked out everything local. Since I couldn't explain to her the concept behind DXing, I said, "Just watch something until the sun comes up and then rescan. That'll fix it!"