HD Antenna with Over The Air Broadcast, Alpharetta, GA

antenna
I repositioned the antenna rotator in my attic this past weekend. It's got a full range of motion now instead of it hitting some attic joists, which is nice. I lost a couple of pounds in the 120-130 degree temps in my attic. Ah well, it's all for the cause, eh?

I then hooked up the Magnavox Digital to Analog converter box between the antenna and the TV because it had a signal strength indicator. I then rotated the antenna for each channel that I was interested in in 20 degree increments and tested signal strengths. I then went back and tested the "strong ranges" of the antenna direction and fine tuned them.

I know what you are saying in that AtenntaWeb.org or TVFool.com has the information on direction of the broadcast stations, but surprisingly some of the directions were off a small bit, and for channel 46, it was way off.

rotator_control
CHANNEL / COMPASS DIRECTION / SIGNAL STRENGTH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 2 / 220 / 20 -- 5 / 240 / 30 -- 8 / It doesn't matter the direction because it's always strong -- 11 / It doesn't matter the direction because it's always strong w signals in the 70s -- 46 / 340 / 19

I need to go back through some of the other channels and get signal strengths but I'm fairly pleased to get the major channels.

I needed to do a channel scan on my TV to have it pick up these "best" signal strengths. Unfortunately, you can't "Add" a digital channel to my TV one at a time. I'd like to point the antenna and then add "46-1". Nope. You can only Activate and deactivate the channels it has found. I'm not sure if this is because it is a "cheap" digital TV, or whether this is common.

To do the channel scan, I took the Magnavox converter out of the loop. I pointed my antenna rotor to the strongest position for Channel 2. Luckily Channel 5 is pointed in roughly the same direction as Channel 2. I then started the channel scan. Another unfortunate fact is that during the channel scan the TV is not telling me which channels it is scanning. It only tells me the percentage that it is complete. When I *guessed* it was about to scan Channel 46, I turned my rotator to point to 340 degrees and hoped for the best.

Sure enough, when I checked the channel listings, it had picked up Channel 2, Channel 5, and it got Channel 46 too! Success. I now need to go back and turn off the analog channels for the channels that I have HD signal for.

We were watching some sports on Channel 11 and the picture was amazing. I'm liking this over the air HD broadcast!