I live north of Lake Erie, and use a rotor to access Cleveland (south), Toledo/Windsor/Detroit (west) and London (NE). What I would like is to be able to scan each of these three directions so that all the channels are listed in the guide. It is easy for me to rotate the antenna if required to watch something. I realize that recording won’t work if the antenna is not in the right position for the channel to be recorded. But I would like to change channels without having to recan.
The Tablo does not have the ability to add channels when scanning, so there is no way to do what you want with a single antenna (unless the antenna can receive all channels while pointed in a single direction).
I had the same problem as you, and I solved it by getting 2 antennas and pointing them in different directions. You can do the same thing with 3 antennas, and eliminate your antenna rotor. You will need a way to combine the antennas without them interfering with each other. A good solution is to use something like theTeleves TV Antenna Pre-Amplifier Combiner (3-Input Mast-Mounted - 536041).
I know it is a little pricey, but you can run more than one antenna concurrently to get signals in multiple directions. I am actually getting ready to mount a second antenna to get a few stations that I am missing.
Here is some information on getting signal from different directions from the AntennaMan. I hope you find them helpful.
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I have a rotor as well. When buying our last tv, I had to buy a Toshiba because they were one of the few brands that allowed you to save scans and manually input channels. You could point the antenna north (as an example), lock in those channels, then move the antenna south and manually input the channels that would be found in that direction. Any manufacturer could do this but few do. They just don’t care too much about the small market of ota viewers. Likewise with the quality of the tuners in tvs, which vary widely. Tablo could make it possible to accommodate us, as well, but they’re not going to do it. You could buy multiple antennas as others suggest, but it seems absurd. If you have a nice antenna with a rotor, you should be set. In my case, I found a sweet spot where I can lock in the southern channels and most of the northern (more local) channels facing at 153 (almost south) degrees And there’s a lot of duplication, so if not for a few subchannels, I wouldn’t even bother with those south facing channels. Good luck with your situation. It is frustrating.
Welcome to the community, @ronsat. This reminds me of watching Canadian cartoons as a kid in the early 70’s. We lived in Erie and rotated our antenna north across Lake Erie to Kitchener and London to get Space Ghost and others - and here we’re using the same technology today. We lived about 200’ above the lake on the South Shore. Talk about nearly ideal line-of-sight.
Thanks for all the comments. We have a Channel Master 8-bow antenna - on a 40’ tower - about 100 yards north of Lake Erie. So, line-of-sight to Cleveland. We can often pick up channels from Erie to Toledo. Detroit channels are badly interfered with by the massive numbers of wind turbines between here and Windsor - depending on how windy it is. (Any thoughts about how to deal with interference would be most welcome).
Don’t really like the idea of going up the tower to replace the antenna with a bi-directional antenna - as I am 18 years older that when we first installed it. And we there are stations in 5 different directions from where we live.
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It sounds like you already have a great setup. Changing your antenna may or may not improve your reception, but those bowtie antennas are omnidirectional. Maybe you could do better with a directional antenna built for distance. I call them the old Archer style.
Also, if I remember correctly, slightly tilting such an antenna upward can get better signal bounce off the atmosphere. This may not be necessary with a bowtie antenna.
Short of this, I think there are some very technically-capable users in this community and they will have better configuration advice and tweaks.
Good luck.
Edit: you could up your game to a DIY 16-bay antenna.
The big problem with rotors and recording OTA is there is no guarantee which way the antenna is pointed when it’s scheduled to record a show. It would be hit or miss and someone would have to be rotating the antenna to keep up with the recordings. I too used to use a rotor until they all pretty much became cheap imported junk. When my last rotor failed (probably around 2013) I purchased 2 antennas then aimed them precisely north and south and never looked back. I currently have 2 Televes long range mix antennas that work superbly.
I included a photo of my original antennas I installed before purchasing my legacy Tablo in 2015. They were (2) 8-bay antennas reassembled/rewired/pre-aimed so one side of 8-bays aimed south and the other aimed north. It worked great for UHF channels but not so much for the VHF ones. That’s why I eventually went to the two Televes antennas.
LOL wysiwyggin I didn’t look at the link you supplied for the 16 bay antenna before posting this about my 16 bay antenna.
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As I said in my original post, I was lucky enough to find a sweet spot (facing south) that pick up all the stations 50 miles south of here while still pulling in most of the northeastern stations 25 miles from here. But if not, it is simple to press a button and swing the antenna the direction in needs to be. It’s not complicated and requires essentially no effort.
By the way, they must make junk these days. My channel master antenna and rotor date to 1984, the controller to 2015. Everything works flawlessly.
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Where I live the towers are nearly 50 miles north and south so getting any stations opposite the direction the antenna was aimed was very unreliable. But glad it works for you.
Yeah, that wouldn’t work. I get the local NBC, ABC, and CBS, but I can’t pull in FOX or PBS. But I get all of the above in the ‘out of market’ area 50miles south of here by aiming the antenna in their direction. If the “locals” were also 50 miles away this would definitely not work and I’d have to make a choice.
I used 3 antenna in my attic and put a combiner (some splitter works).