As you can see from the prior photo the kiddos hadn't exactly cared too much about making sure the screws were lined up. This does cause loss of signal and so far it hasn't mattered. However once this became an antenna that now has to feed four televisions instead of one and also that has to send that signal through many feet of cable with some splitters, every dB of energy loss counts.
That said, according to the TVFool.com we are 65 miles from Mt. Wilson, the source of roughly 97%+ of all antenna television. We get every channel we are supposed to get with no drop out at all from a home-made coat hanger antenna stuck in my second story bedroom window with the exception of ONE. That is a pretty amazing result if you ask me.
The one that does drop out is the wretched KCOP and so I decided to properly align the screws to try to fix this problem. Right now two of our televisions receive it, one intermittently as the signal will sometimes drop. The other two get enough signal to know it exists, but not to display it due to the "cliff effect" with digital television signals.
So anyway, I align the screws and since I have an old side to a tower computer case laying around, I decide to screw that on to the back to act as a flat reflector. The improvement is pretty considerable. The signal goes from low 20's to high 50's according to my receiver. The two televisions that received the channel before continue to receive it but now with no drop out, the other two, well they don't.
With the analog pass through I can see that we do receive KCOP just fine on channel 13. After the transition the digital version will move from channel 66 back to channel 13 so I should probably just wait it out. However it killed ten minutes on a Sunday and my ghetto antenna is even more fabulous now with the addition of the computer case reflector.
At the AVN forums, there is a thread for people who are building these antennas. I'm a geek but even I have my limits. There are people on those forums who are computer modeling the results of these antennas and varying the element lengths and distances to tune them for specific locations. Of course I should note that when I say I have my limits, this whole things started off as research for possible stock purchases, and a fun way to fart around on a Sat. while grabbing coupons from the government. Then when I saw the rabbit ears pulled in some amazing channels but not others, well... as you can see I've only let this thing get away from me a bit. I'm not building PVC antenna mounts with nylon washers to minimize signal loss yet.
However clearly I have read up on such things which is I think proof of geek guilt right there.
Maybe I don't have the limits. Is there a twelve step program for coat hanger antennas?
