Great signal but have dropouts???

I have a dish network HD receiver and I'm getting all the HD channels
off air great. Expect one that says the signal is 90 % but its keeps
dropping out when you watch it. I have moved my antenna and no luck.

Please help me its drving me nuts.

Thanks

Dave

Sounds like multi-path. You probably need a better antenna.

wrote in message
oups.com...
I have a dish network HD receiver and I'm getting all the HD channels
off air great. Expect one that says the signal is 90 % but its keeps
dropping out when you watch it. I have moved my antenna and no luck.

Please help me its drving me nuts.

Thanks

Dave

Contact DISH and the channel originator, if your signal strength is good and
the antennae are pointed correctly the rest is achemedically in their hands.
wrote in message
oups.com...
I have a dish network HD receiver and I'm getting all the HD channels
off air great. Expect one that says the signal is 90 % but its keeps
dropping out when you watch it. I have moved my antenna and no luck.

Please help me its drving me nuts.

Thanks

Dave

He is asking about a local station that he is receiving over the air,
not from the satellite, if I read it correctly.

If this is a local broadcast station, large signal strength variations
are an indication of multipath or varying signal level due to trees &
leaves. If the problem started recently and you have trees & woods
between you and the broadcast tower, this is not an uncommon problem in
the spring when the leaves come out on the trees. Moving or raising the
antenna may solve the problem or you may need a better antenna.

If your problem is from a local broadcast station, post your zip code,
antenna location (indoor/outdoor/attic), some info about your
surrounding terrain (woods, hills, whatever), what type of antenna
you have and exactly which station or stations are you having trouble
with (call sign is the best shortcut). Then we can give some useful advice.

Alan F


Art wrote:
Contact DISH and the channel originator, if your signal strength is good and
the antennae are pointed correctly the rest is achemedically in their hands.
wrote in message
oups.com...
I have a dish network HD receiver and I'm getting all the HD channels
off air great. Expect one that says the signal is 90 % but its keeps
dropping out when you watch it. I have moved my antenna and no luck.

Please help me its drving me nuts.

Thanks

Dave

Yes, I was talking about local station that I'm getting over the air.
I live in the madison wisconsin area (53508 zip code)and I live in a
new neighhood that has no trees and small hills around. The attenna is
a phillps mant 901 and I have it the attic above my garage facing
Madison. I had a smaller attenna up there before and it was doing the
same thing as this bigger one. That is what is so confusing about
this. The channel I'm having problems with it CBS channel 3.1 (Wisc-
tv). Its Frequecy assignment is 50.

Thanks for the help

Dave

Dave3670 wrote:
Yes, I was talking about local station that I'm getting over the air.
I live in the madison wisconsin area (53508 zip code)and I live in a
new neighhood that has no trees and small hills around. The attenna is
a phillps mant 901 and I have it the attic above my garage facing
Madison. I had a smaller attenna up there before and it was doing the
same thing as this bigger one. That is what is so confusing about
this. The channel I'm having problems with it CBS channel 3.1 (Wisc-
tv). Its Frequecy assignment is 50.

Thanks for the help

Dave

Dave, just to double check, you have the Philips 901 51 element antenna
that looks like this?
http://www.consumer.philips.com/cons...CSHQFHKFSESI5P

There is a satellite dish clip-on MANT 910 antenna which is a much
poorer antenna, so I want to be sure.

Your antennaweb.org results, using an antenna height of several
hundred feet for your zip are & deleting the color codes for clarity:

Your locals:
uhf WKOW-DT 27.1 ABC MADISON WI 6° 12.9 26
uhf WHA-DT 21.1 PBS MADISON WI 6° 12.9 20
uhf WBUW-DT 57.1 CW JANESVILLE WI 17° 13.0 32
uhf WISC-DT 3.1 CBS MADISON WI 6° 12.9 50
vhf WMSN-DT 47.1 FOX MADISON WI 6° 12.9 11
uhf WMTV-DT 15.1 NBC MADISON WI 17° 13.0 19
(more distant stations in Rockford)
* lt green - uhf WTVO-DT 17.1 ABC ROCKFORD IL 155° 44.8 16
* blue - uhf WREX-DT 13.1 NBC ROCKFORD IL 159° 42.8 54
* blue - uhf WQRF-DT 39.1 FOX ROCKFORD IL 155° 44.8 42
* violet - uhf WIFR-DT 23.1 CBS ROCKFORD IL 155° 44.2 41

I am going to ignore the Rockford stations, although you might get
some of them by rotating the antenna. BTW, all of your Madison stations
will be staying at their current digital channel after the analog
shutdown, so need to worry about a shift to VHF.

If you have a MANT 901, that is a large antenna and should be getting
those stations. The FCC database (can get to via
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISC-TV) show that WISC-DT is broadcasting
at either 380 or 603 kW on UHF 50 which is plenty of power for you range.

One possible issue is that the 901 is a large long range antenna for
deep fringe use which in turn makes it very directional. It may be too
much antenna for such a close range. What was the smaller antenna you
had up in the attic before? If you were starting from scratch, I would
have recommended the Channel Master 4221 4 Bay or a AntennasDirect DB-2
2 bay or a much smaller medium range VHF/UHF antenna for the attic. Or
even a indoor Silver Sensor UHF antenna with rabbit ears.

Another possibility is that the antenna is located in a weaker zone in
the attic for WISC-DT. Can you raise or lower the antenna a few inches?
or better yet, move it around by a foot or so?

Alan F

On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:56:28 -0700, Dave3670 wrote:

Yes, I was talking about local station that I'm getting over the air.
I live in the madison wisconsin area (53508 zip code)and I live in a
new neighhood that has no trees and small hills around. The attenna is
a phillps mant 901 and I have it the attic above my garage facing
Madison. I had a smaller attenna up there before and it was doing the
same thing as this bigger one. That is what is so confusing about
this. The channel I'm having problems with it CBS channel 3.1 (Wisc-
tv). Its Frequecy assignment is 50.

Wow, talking about overkill.:-) That's a deep fringe antenna. Would
probably really work well if you were 40 miles or more from the towers,
but I don't think it's really appropo for the roughly 12 miles you are at.
I'm no expert, but I see your stations broadcast from 2 locations at 6 and
17 degrees. I haven't had very much luck with the yagi type of antenna in
this situation. I'd point the antenna direct at 6 degress and see if that
helps. If it causes problems with the other stations then you may have to
go to a different (smaller and cheaper) antenna. I didn't check, but with
that large antenaa you could be picking up stattions from a 100 miles away
causing problems. A CM 4221 might work good for you there and still pick
up the one vhf station on 11.

Just looked. From where you are, you could get stations from Mlwakee
and a number of other places with that antenna, pointed in their
direction. If you don't want them, I'd definately use a much much smaller
antenna. There's an analog 10 and 12 in Milwakee that may be drifting onto
11. Good luck.

--
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Alan F wrote:
BTW, all of your Madison stations
will be staying at their current digital channel after the analog
shutdown, so need to worry about a shift to VHF.

Need to fix a couple of stupid typos:
That should read: "so NO need to worry about a shift to VHF."

The FCC database (can get to via
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISC-TV) show that WISC-DT is broadcasting
at either 380 or 603 kW on UHF 50 which is plenty of power for you range.

That should read: "which is plenty of power for your range."

The bottom line is that you have a long range deep fringe antenna for
stations at 12 miles. That may not be the best choice.

Alan F

Alan F" wrote in message
...
Alan F wrote:
BTW, all of your Madison stations
will be staying at their current digital channel after the analog
shutdown, so need to worry about a shift to VHF.

Need to fix a couple of stupid typos:
That should read: "so NO need to worry about a shift to VHF."

The FCC database (can get to via
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISC-TV) show that WISC-DT is broadcasting
at either 380 or 603 kW on UHF 50 which is plenty of power for you range.

That should read: "which is plenty of power for your range."

The bottom line is that you have a long range deep fringe antenna for
stations at 12 miles. That may not be the best choice.

Alan F


I would agree-- too much for such a short range BUT, how could that be a
negative?
I have never heard of an unamplified antenna overloading the 1st stage of RF
reception

--
All the Best,
Richard Harison

On Apr 6, 4:22 pm, "Richard Harison" wrote:
Alan F" wrote in message

...



Alan F wrote:
BTW, all of your Madison stations
will be staying at their current digital channel after the analog
shutdown, so need to worry about a shift to VHF.

Need to fix a couple of stupid typos:
That should read: "so NO need to worry about a shift to VHF."

The FCC database (can get to via
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISC-TV) show that WISC-DT is broadcasting
at either 380 or 603 kW on UHF 50 which is plenty of power for you range.

That should read: "which is plenty of power for your range."

The bottom line is that you have a long range deep fringe antenna for
stations at 12 miles. That may not be the best choice.

Alan F

I would agree-- too much for such a short range BUT, how could
that be a
negative?
I have never heard of an unamplified antenna overloading the 1st
stage of RF
reception

--
All the Best,
Richard Harison

Simple. So _much_ signal you could be overloading the front end of the
receiver which causes cross-modulation with other channels. Since WISC
is on their final channel, they're probably running at full power -
meaning at 12 miles you absolutely do not need or even want a deep
fringe antenna. I run the little Winegard SquareShooter at 35 miles
with a 4-way split and have no signal issues at all.

When I lived in Whitewater Wis back in the '70s I used a pre-amped
deep fringe antenna (Winegard CW-980) for Milwaukee and Madison. When
unpowering the preamp, the signal on the TV did not change noise level
at all. This was changing from +12dB to approx -10dB. I was 4 times
farther than Dave (16 times less signal) and STILL had way more than
needed. Point is, you have way too much antenna. I bet that
SquareShooter would be ideal there.

WISC was running 56 kW ERP at 1000' at the time. I'm certain of this
as I was a maintenance engineer there later and did transmitter
alignments. Not fun at 61 MHz trying to get power, bandwidth,
efficiency and phase response simultaneously. If you need to know
their actual power level, I still know a few guys there.

GG