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MNtundraRet
Bloomington, MN
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Joined: 12/06/2007
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Tom:
From your distance of 12 to 13 miles, any antenna will work with the amplifiers turned off. The incoming signal is overloaded (for your test), and actually drives down the "strength meter" reading.
My Sony Bravia from 2005 has Menu for TV repairmen. It gave all the necessary information they needed. It included dB readings, actual RF channel, and other useful technical information.
Cutting back any unneeded amplification could either keep their best reading, or actually raise it for really close stations, or stations transmitting under higher power.
Jeff's method is best. He could do readings using the Sensor Pro, but the test was for comparison of the antenna-heads.
Mark B.
Mark & Jan "Old age & treachery win over youth & enthusiasm"
2003 Fleetwood Jamboree 29
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Tom_M
New Hope, MN
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Bill.Satellite wrote:Something is very wrong here. There is no such thing as a non-amplified Batwing with Wingman.
The rest of your information is confusing so if you could explain what you were doing and how the 2 (3?) antennas were pointed would help in understanding what you have posted. The Wingman is only effective on the UHF frequencies and the Jack has very little in the way of VHF reception elements. Where are you located? How far from the antennas (TVfool.com if you don't know)? Are there VHF broadcast networks in your area?
There are lots and lots of variables with UHF and VHF being the largest.
Bill,
The two batwing antennas that I have are the following:
RV-3095: Sensar III
RV-5095: Non-amplified Sensar III
I purchased the RV-5095 in 2005 from Amazon so perhaps it is no longer available. The Wingman was purchased later and will attach to either antenna.
As I stated in my post, I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I obtained heading and distance from antennapoint.com. I am located due west of the transmitter site and 12.46 miles away.
The channels that are listed in my test results are RF channels not virtual. Both TVFool and Antennapoint list both the RF and virtual channels.
You state "There are lots and lots of variables with UHF and VHF being the largest.". I am well aware of this and that is why I stated that more tests are needed.
MNtundraRet wrote:Tom:
From your distance of 12 to 13 miles, any antenna will work with the amplifiers turned off. The incoming signal is overloaded (for your test), and actually drives down the "strength meter" reading.
.
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Jeff's method is best. He could do readings using the Sensor Pro, but the test was for comparison of the antenna-heads.
Mark B.
Mark,
Perhaps you mistook the SensarPro gain setting as five db, it was set at 0.5 db (1/2 db). The SensarPro can be set to zero but that basically lets nothing through. The SensarPro also supplies power to the antenna head so I can not turn it off. I am aware of the effects of too much gain. My TV displays both signal strength and signal quality. Unfortunately it displays percent and not db. If I go too high with the gain the signal quality starts to degrade. I doubt that the SensarPro is overloading at 0.5 db.
I agree that Jeff's method is best and he did an exceptional job. If I had access to a spectrum analyzer I could do the same with my setup. But as Bill stated "There are lots and lots of variables with UHF and VHF being the largest".
Tom
2005 Born Free 24RB
170ah Renogy LiFePo4 drop-in battery 400 watts solar
Towing 2016 Mini Cooper convertible on tow dolly
Minneapolis, MN
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SCVJeff
Santa Clarita, CA.
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The question is where your TV is picking off this measurement? It is quite possible that its being picked off downstream of an AGC amplifier, and that will affect the screen reading you see as its trying to adjust the receiver with lots of fancy automatic gain adjustments.
It's also quite possible that you have something close in that is affecting your receiver (local FM, AM station, commercial repeater, or a really close cell site, etc.), changing the gains and you don't even know it. That's why I wanted to do this with an analyzer since I have nothing to influence the measurement, and if there is, I can pretty easily see it on the spectrum display. This is pure what you see is exactly what it is, with no automatic anythings. One measurement I did but did not take a picture of was essentially a full screen display from about 20MHz, all the way to 3000MHz+ to make sure there was nothing out there that might saturate either the Jack or the Batwing amps and contaminate the results. Because I did this where I did, I have nothing within miles that can bother the amplifiers . But I checked anyway..
Jeff - WA6EQU
'06 Itasca Meridian 34H, CAT C7/350
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SCVJeff
Santa Clarita, CA.
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Bill.Satellite wrote:Trail-Mate wrote:Now use the supplied amp with the Jack and re-test, I have an been using a Jack for some time now. I can say for me, Big Improvement happened when I switched to use the amp supplied with the Jack and not the one for the batwing.
Just so it does not sound like someone here is giving you a hard time about this post, he is right but just short on words. At the time I actually was. The Tylenol wore off and that post popped up after 5 hours on the CAD PC with no lunch. Sorry about that. But if you read the post and the notes on the pictures it's pretty clear what gets through the antenna with the amplifiers off. Look at the 1st picture since it was the very 1st test done.
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Tom_M
New Hope, MN
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SCVJeff wrote:The question is where your TV is picking off this measurement?
Jeff,
My signal strength readings were taken from the SensarPro display not the TV. The antenna feeds directly into the SensarPro.
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wa8yxm
Davison Michigan (East of Flint)
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Joined: 07/04/2006
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Someone commented on "The supplied amplifier"
Folks. Normally the box inside your RV is NOT an amplifier (There are a few exceptions, the Sensar Pro I use being one of 'em) The amplifier is in the antenna head.
The box inside is a combination switch/power supply. Nothing more and should be interchangable.
The King singnal finder thing is just a signal finder
The Sensar Pro is much, much, more.
Home was where I park it. but alas the.
2005 Damon Intruder 377 Alas declared a total loss
after a semi "nicked" it. Still have the radios
Kenwood TS-2000, ICOM ID-5100, ID-51A+2, ID-880 REF030C most times
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Bill.Satellite
Full-timer
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Joined: 12/25/2012
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Tom_M
Thanks for the clarification. It explains why something sounded wrong.
The Wingman does not work with the Winegard non-amplified head using it or not using it would make no difference. Also, the non-amplified head used an interior amplifier and not the current power supply used by the current Batwing and the Sensar Pro in it's place would not be the same thing.
The comparisons you have between the Jack and the amplified Batwing with and without the Wingman using the Sensar Pro should be valid but there is no way of knowing how the gain setting or the signal strength reading of the Sensar Pro would effect the Jack as it was never designed to work with that antenna.
I am also not sure of your dB info on the Sensar Pro or what settings you are using. A gain setting of 10 is the default and that setting should be used for all search routines. The gain would only be adjusted up or down if a received signal was too weak or, in rare cases, too strong.
* This post was
edited 08/20/13 07:45am by Bill.Satellite *
What I post is my 2 cents and nothing more. Please don't read anything into my post that's not there. If you disagree, that's OK.
Can't we all just get along?
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MNtundraRet
Bloomington, MN
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Just a note for any people reading this post who go for extreme range using different RV antennas (purchased or home-made), and adding additional amplification.
The best search tool that will show the map, transmitter locations, lines from RV location to transmitters, list of located stations, and station transmitter information, seems to be "tvfool.com".
Using in map version of locator works best for me. You can enter name of nearest town and state to start with. Then back off the map slightly to see where the campground location is found on the map. Use the mouse selector to hold and move the ICON to your location. The program redoes the station list.
Now the fun part begins. If you can now amplify signal to be around or more than 20 dB you will find way more stations than predicted in the list (10 foot antenna).
I now go to the Antenna input box and change input from 50 to 200 feet (depending on daylight or night signals). The list of channels grows to include all stations found by my system. There is a box to check for lines to show to transmitters on the map. If I get stations (digital) around 150 miles or more at night upping the antenna height number will make the program map and show stations found.
Mark B.
* This post was
edited 08/20/13 10:12am by MNtundraRet *
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SCVJeff
Santa Clarita, CA.
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Tom_M wrote:SCVJeff wrote:The question is where your TV is picking off this measurement?
Jeff,
My signal strength readings were taken from the SensarPro display not the TV. The antenna feeds directly into the SensarPro. Thats what I exchanged the Jack for. Maybe I'll being the toys back home and look at that amp just for grins..
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Tom_M
New Hope, MN
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Joined: 04/24/2011
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Bill.Satellite wrote:Tom_M
Thanks for the clarification. It explains why something sounded wrong.
The Wingman does not work with the Winegard non-amplified head using it or not using it would make no difference. Also, the non-amplified head used an interior amplifier and not the current power supply used by the current Batwing and the Sensar Pro in it's place would not be the same thing.
The comparisons you have between the Jack and the amplified Batwing with and without the Wingman using the Sensar Pro should be valid but there is no way of knowing how the gain setting or the signal strength reading of the Sensar Pro would effect the Jack as it was never designed to work with that antenna.
I am also not sure of your dB info on the Sensar Pro or what settings you are using. A gain setting of 10 is the default and that setting should be used for all search routines. The gain would only be adjusted up or down if a received signal was too weak or, in rare cases, too strong.
The Wingman is a passive device and works whether the antenna has a built in amplifier or not. It requires no power. It has three director elements that concentrate the UHF RF toward the UHF receive elements in the central hub of the batwing. I know for a fact that it works with the non-amplified batwing. Winegard's literature states that it works with all Sensar antennas. I replaced the original Delta non-amplified antenna with a non-amplified batwing. The wallplate on my coach was a Winegard with amplifier. I was having less than stellar reception so I then added the Wingman. I later replaced this wallplate with the SensarPro. After reading many positive responses about the Jack I decided to give it a try. The amplified batwing comes from my pickup camper that I had prior to my motorhome.
The SensarPro is a 10db amp. The gain setting can be set from 0 to 20. 20 equates to 10db and 0 cuts off the signal completely. I am assuming that the scale is linear but who knows? I chose to set it to 1 (0.5db) for readings of the amplified antennas because that's the lowest that would pass a signal. The SensarPro works well for either the batwing or Jack.
I'm not trying to disprove Jeff's findings. I tried to do as objective of a comparison with the equipment I had. Both of our tests show that the Jack sucks for VHF.
Jeff,
I'm looking forward to your findings on the SensorPro.
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