
	Already a member? Login here. If not, Register Today! \| Help

Newest | Active | Popular | RVing FAQ

Forum Rules | Forum Posting Help and Support | Contact

Open Roads Forum > Technology Corner

This Topic Is Closed | Print Topic | Post New Topic |

Sponsored By:

pa traveler

usa

Senior Member

Joined: 04/04/2010

View Profile

Good Sam RV Club Member

Offline

Posted: 11/28/13 07:20am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

I had rv dealer try both side by side and the sensar 4 with batwing worked much better, had him install it,got rid of the jenson junk.

MNtundraRet

Bloomington, MN

Senior Member

Joined: 12/06/2007

View Profile

Offline

Posted: 01/08/14 05:50am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

Hi everyone:

I just revived Jeff's old post since many have been reading the recent posts on using different RV antennas and added amplifiers. [emoticon]

I hope it helps some of you.

Mark B.

Mark & Jan "Old age & treachery win over youth & enthusiasm"
2003 Fleetwood Jamboree 29

RoyB

King George, VA

Senior Member

Joined: 04/13/2008

View Profile

Good Sam RV Club Member

Posted: 03/29/17 01:23pm

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

I did my comparison test here in King George VA with my antenna mount about 12-feet in the air attached to the side of my OFF-ROAD POPUP antenna.

King George is almost located right in the cent of Richmond Va and Washington DC HDTV Towers being 50-60 miles apart...

The Richmond Towers are for the most part all in the same location where as the Washington DC towers are spread apart many miles on the East and west side of the town.

I used the BATWING with the added dipoles and the JACK antenna both powered by the same 12VDC going up the RG cable from the Antenna Panel inside my POPUP trailer...

This was all done with just being able to pick the HDTV channels with no logging in of signal strength readings...

Both antenna picked up all of the transmitting HDTV Digital frequencies. i.e. I scanned in all of the same digital transmiter frequencies on my VIZIO HDTV set.

The problems I encountered was I had to move the KING antenna more precisely to zero in on the transmitted HDTV signals than I did with the BATWING antenna.... Once tuned in they looked the same quality on my VIZIO HDTV set.

I did not have to move the BATWING antenna around to pick up all of the transmitter station. I did have to find the good center position to do this however. I had problems with my CBS station which is the one Ilike to watch the most here. I could zero in on the CBS tower but would lose some of the others. I finally found the happy medium spot where all them worked with one position setting. I also noted that when using the JACK antenna overhead aircraft would sometimes give me pixel break-up in the received signal reception. Never seen any of that with the BATWING antenna.

All of this simple testing made the BATWING the winner for me haha

I now use the JACK antenna here on my house pointing towards Charlotsville and the BATWING Antenna on my off-road popup trailer...

[image]

Roy;s image

Actually the best reception I got was using a different 8-bowtie antenna panel but I am sure it would not survive all of the putting up and taking down so it lives on the peak of my house here in King George. This $60 dollar antenna has two banks where you can point to different directions and it really works great pointing towards Washington DC to pick the wide spread of HDTV towers on both side of the local town. I am picking up a good 80 plus OTA TV signal free to the public doing this... All in high def TV reception...
[image]

Google Image

My plan B for when the local cable company goes down...

Roy Ken

My Posts are IMHO based on my experiences - Words in CAPS does not mean I am shouting
Roy - Carolyn
RETIRED DOAF/DON/DOD/CONTR RADIO TECH (42yrs)
K9PHT (Since 1957) 146.52M
2010 F150, 5.4,3:73 Gears,SCab
2008 Starcraft 14RT EU2000i GEN
2005 Flagstaff 8528RESS

SCVJeff

Santa Clarita, CA.

Senior Member

Joined: 07/28/2006

View Profile

Offline

Posted: 03/30/17 01:23am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

Move 20 miles farther out and repeat [emoticon]

Jeff - WA6EQU
'06 Itasca Meridian 34H, CAT C7/350

MrWizard

Traveling

Moderator

Joined: 06/27/2004

View Profile

Offline

Posted: 03/30/17 09:35am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

I think...Unless he went West, aka sideways
His 60/50 would become either 80/30 or 40/70
He did say his campsite was between D.C. and Richmond Va.

I can explain it to you.
But I Can Not understand it for you !
....

Connected using T-Mobile Home internet and Visible Phone service
1997 F53 Bounder 36s

BcBorn

British Columbia

New Member

Joined: 06/10/2021

View Profile

Offline

Posted: 06/15/21 05:13pm

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

King Jack has improved/redesigned their King Jack in the last couple years.

Time for a new shoot out.

Dutch_12078

Winters south, summers north

Senior Member

Joined: 10/07/2008

View Profile

Good Sam RV Club Member

Offline

Posted: 06/15/21 06:24pm

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

BcBorn wrote:

King Jack has improved/redesigned their King Jack in the last couple years.

Time for a new shoot out.

Unless they've done a radical redesign that isn't obvious in the photos, it still sucks at low-VHF reception.

Dutch
2001 GBM Landau 34' Class A
F53 chassis, Triton V10, TST TPMS
Bigfoot Automatic Leveling System
2011 Toyota RAV4 4WD/Remco pump
ReadyBrute Elite tow bar/Blue Ox baseplate

LouLawrence

Traveling the US!

Senior Member

Joined: 03/16/2021

View Profile

Posted: 06/16/21 07:27am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

BcBorn wrote:

King Jack has improved/redesigned their King Jack in the last couple years.

Time for a new shoot out.

Since the basic size and shape remains the same, the interior elements are still limited in size and capability.
It's highly unlikely that the results would vary by enough to be notable.

Blaze1024

Sacatomatos

New Member

Joined: 07/10/2004

View Profile

Posted: 02/01/23 08:37pm

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

Very interesting, I did similar testing a few years ago, the only difference was I was using Agilent equipment versus R@S
and my results were significantly different than yours ?

On UHF both antennas performed nearly identically which is to be expected because if I remember correctly both are simple 3 element designs.

whether it's a yagi or log periodic design it doesn't matter as a 3 or 4 element yagi is gonna perform pretty much identically to any other 3 or 4 element yagi and likewise a 3 or 4 four element log periodic is going to perform nearly identically to any other 3 or 4 element log periodic.

so if you're seeing a couple dbm difference between two four element antennas then you need to question your setup because something is not right. In engineering we call these sanity checks.

I mean something as simple is forgetting to move one antenna out of the near field of the DUT will cause problems. I mean you do understand that leaving say the winegard antenna anywhere within a dozen or so wavelengths of the king while the king was being tested would impact the performance of that antenna.

The bottom line is that there are so many variables when doing antenna system tests that without a video or detailed explanation of the setup it's hard to take the results seriously.

There is a reason why antenna tests are performed inside an Anechoic Chamber or for larger antennas at a remote antenna test range

By the way, I'm a retired engineer, my primary area of expertise is in RF electronics primarily microwave. I was also former VP in charge of prototype development for a well known aerospace company, many of the projects I worked on are flying in space right now.

The bottom line is your results don't seem to pass the sanity check, you're seeing significant differences in received signal strength between two nearly identical antennas at least on UHF, In Fact if I remember correctly the UHF add-on to the batwing is purely parasitic to it's active VHF side.

the king antenna is primarily a UHF antenna, so it's performance on VHF is not gonna be nearly as good as the winegard which has a dedicated VHF dipole. If anything the VHF dipole acting as a parasitic element on the UHF side is going to cause problems. Keep in mind dual band antennas are never as efficient as single band antennas, primarily because you can never eliminate all the interaction.

Anyhow if I recall correctly when I performed a similar series of tests the results were nearly identical on UHF between both antennas with the king being ever so slightly more sensitive on UHF, so you might wanna go back and review your setup, it's even possible that one of the antennas may have been defective

oh but hey good job with all the snapshots.

SCVJeff wrote:

I finally had time to buy a King Controls Jack antenna (on sale) for a shoot-out with my existing Winegard Batwing antenna with the Wingman add-on.

* This post was edited 02/01/23 08:48pm by Blaze1024 *

Tom_M

New Hope, MN

Senior Member

Joined: 04/24/2011

View Profile

Offline

Posted: 02/02/23 05:32am

Link | Print | Notify Moderator

This thread is almost 10 years old. I do not have access to a spectrum analyzer but my tests were vastly different from SCVJeff's. For me the Jack was on par with the Batwing for the UHF band but did poorly on VHF.

SCVJeff has not been active on this forum for several years.

Tom
2005 Born Free 24RB
170ah Renogy LiFePo4 drop-in battery 400 watts solar
Towing 2016 Mini Cooper convertible on tow dolly
Minneapolis, MN