Re: Can I sue the government for taking

Bada wrote:
Jer wrote:

Bada wrote:

numeric wrote:

"Bada" <ba@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:13t8svrq03ngq57@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Can I sue the government for taking my free over the air TV away? It
looks like when they switch from analog to digital, I will no longer get
free over the air TV. For the last 26 years I have received my free over
the air TV from my 80 foot tower with 3 antennas and booster. I get
about 15 analog stations all the time and some days as many as 50
stations. I recently bought a small 20 inch Sanyo HDTV with intentions
of later buying a big one. It has found about 25 digital stations but
most of them only 1 time and the rest of them 2 to a few times. One
comes in almost all the time except when it is cloudy, storming, raining
or snowing. It looks like when they make the switch, I will only have 1
channel most of the time and zero part of the time.




Excluding "Can I sue...", your lament is valid; you are in a difficult
reception location. I did a quick computer survey for your location; your 80
foot antenna should provide about 16 digital stations. I assumed an antenna
gain of 10dbi (80 feet above average height) a 2db noise figure pre-amp and
for simplicity an omni directional receiving antenna pattern. This may not
represent your antenna performance, but it's useful for a conservative
estimation. You may be having trouble with co-channel interference.
Virtually all your digital receivable channels are being interfered with by
significant co-channel analog interference, strong enough to prevent digital
reception. For example, KPLR-DT channel 26 (actual channel) should be
receivable 90%percent of the time by 90% locations, but is interfered with
by WCCU analog also on channel 26. Its direction however is 140 degrees
apart. In addition, the co-channel interference is from full power analog
and low power repeaters or translators. The good news is all of the full
power interference will go away after the cut off date; but the low power
transmitters may remain.
A good directional antenna will help with the co-channel interference. What
are the three antennas for? It's possible that the directionality pattern
will be distorted depending how the antennas connected.


What I call the regular vhf antenna and I think it is called an all channel antenna is pointed towards St. Louis. There is a gold arrow uhf antenna also pointed toward St. Louis. There is a screen type uhf with bow ties pointed in between Springfield, IL and Decatur, IL. The antennas are all hooked to a booster with round rg cable and round cable goes down to the basement to a 4 way splitter with 2 cables coming off of it. One of those cables goes to a little TV in the basement that I never use and the other cable goes upstairs to 3 daisy chained VCRs and then to the Sanyo HDTV. Do you think it might help if I eliminated the splitter in the basement and maybe one or two of the vcrs. Are you also saying after next February when the analog is dropped that my situation might improve? Oh yeah, I wasn't serious about suing the government.



Wow. The first thing you should do is change the 4-way splitter in the basement to a 2-way splitter - that'll quadruple the signal to each of the two legs you are using. Also, each VCR in the daisy chain induces signal loss to everything behind it - eliminate every unnecessary thing you can here. And since this setup seems to be getting a bit long in the tooth, I'd also recommend checking every single connection to make sure each is clean and tight. You might even try eliminating the booster just to see if you really need it, or at least adjust it's gain to be sure you're not inducing more troubles than you're fixing.

I forgot to put in that the cable going to the basement goes to the second part of the booster before it goes to the splitter.




Antenna(s)
round cable
booster
round cable
4-way splitter
1) leg to basement
2) leg to upstairs
3) open
4) open


Nevertheless, that 4-way splitter is killing you - 4 volts in gets you 1 volt out on each of the four legs - that two legs aren't used is irrelevant to the signal level on the other two legs you are using. A 2-way splitter will double the signal level on the two legs you're using - 4 volts in gets 2 volts out each (3db increase).

Change the 4-way splitter to a 2-way splitter, bypass the booster by coupling the input cable to the output cable (don't just turn it off). Check the TVs. If not improved, reconnect the booster and check again. Let us know the results.

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'
.

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