Attic antenna experience

I have just spent 2 frustrating days trying to instal a GE Pro Attic antenna. While I fiddled around in the attic in a twisted manner, my wife was repeatedly doing channel scans. All to no avail. This antenna was to be good for 70 miles. It was supposed to be one of “the best”. NO WAY. The best I could get was 14 channels. Very dissatisfied with this product. Buyer be ware!!! It’s going back to “A”. Do not get taken in by all the advertising hype. It’s best to buy locally and have it installed by a reliable pro. Lesson learned

It’s discouraging to hear your frustration… great to hear you’re not giving up on OTA.

How many channels do you anticipate receiving? It appears directional.

While many say “It’s not that hard” …well that mean different things to different people. In your experience, location, location, location makes a difference. Then there’s how to get the cable to where you want it - and how you want it to look when you’re done :neutral_face:

Everyone has different talents and skills - hope in the end things work out for you, as the hype goes due to government mandates you can get crystal clear free over-the-air HDTV

As a former tech teacher i’m not exactly a “klutz”.This GE 29884 attic antenna was supposed to be good for 70 miles. We are only 15-19 miles from the transmitters, in direct line of site. There are no obstructions.Most of the stations are 330-350 degrees. I used a compass for direction, as well as a plot from the station location site, to get the correct direction. Am totally “pissed”. My wife had warned me about buying products from Amazon, but I hadn’t had any previous bad experiences, so ignored her. She had read somewhere that Amazon was experiencing a problem with counterfeiters product. Maybe it was just my turn. Maybe the GE product was faulty. I have been in contact with a professional installer. Lesson learned.

I have an antique antenna by today’s standards, haven’t mounted one for some +25yrs.

I have read a couple of topic here regarding Antop - seem to be highly liked

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https://community.tablotv.com/search?q=antop
other mentions of them… if it matters

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Just curious - do you know what brand your antenna is? I used to have an old Radio Shack VU-210. Big honker! It was great at VHF, not so good at UHF at the digital cutover. Went to a CM 4228.

Notice how much bigger the RS is than an airplane (above it) :laughing:

vu210

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No idea. Originally there was a monstrosity tripod tower constructed with angle iron, it rusted at it’s concrete base, while I was climbing it’s ladder.

So I “knew a guy” who took down his tower and a giant antenna. When putting it up, we realized we barely knew what we were doing with this big “thing” next to the house, so it ended up with 2 10’ sections and the base. That antenna didn’t survive the weather, so I ended up with this little guy. I kind of recall the specs supposedly were for shorter distances, but if I can get some channels with “rabbit ears” …really? According to fcc.gov I’m ~40mi from towers.
I think the smaller size made it possible to replace it… I recall working from an extension ladder swinging the antenna and rotor into place overhead. Short of renting some lift - that’s likely the last antenna I’ll ever have.

So at ~25’ high next to the woods with an “old rod” antenna not truly close to any broadcast towers – I don’t have any issues getting the TV stations I need - ok so there are only 5, each with 3-4 sub-channels, not that I ever watch some of them (occasionally I do get a couple more)

image

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When I went to the 4228 for UHF, I sawed off the UHF portion of the RS VU-210 and used it strictly for VHF.

My fancy setup, if you click on the pic (after you break-out) to bring it to full size. There’s an FM antenna, the wiring didn’t survive, cheap (I don’t even remember what they are) 75-300 ohm du-dads with steel lugs. Looks like I put the right one on the TV antenna with enough cable ties to anchor it.

The Radio Shack pre-amp, at one time, seemed to work. Don’t recall if I bypassed willing I was still able to climb ladders or a rennet of the past.

The rotator is rather benign. A larger antenna may have gotten other channels. Back-in-the-day when you had to get up to change channels , a person may be more inclined to move to antenna… well maybe not just because you had to get up. There was a time before sub-channels, you had even less options… so, ok… maybe we did get up, sometimes. :neutral_face: (OTA wasn’t always a newly discovered option)

The square in the front in my wireless internet access. It uses LTE (used to have WiMAX technology - 700 vs 350MHz) at 2Mib it’s my high-speed

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I got my Antop antenna from Amazon. No issues. Yes you have to review where the products are sourced…

I have an FM antenna in my attic. It’s the cubical quad type similar to this picture (mine only has 4 elements - half the size of the one in the picture below). I use it for HD Radio (a Sangean).

cubical_quad1

Several years ago I put up another FM antenna, just above the roof, don’t use it anymore. I used to use a receiver with big speakers cranked up so I could hear music anywhere in the house. Well, I used to live life differently.

Now I have several Amazon devices through the house synced in a group. I play music an a “listening” level hearing it as I pass through rooms. Sadly I only listen to the radio in the car :slightly_frowning_face: The internet kill my OTA radio experience :frowning_face:

Yep, I have an Internet radio and use my TV\Roku for Internet radio as well. The HD Radio is good for local sub-channels that don’t always appear on the Internet. HD Radio gives CD quality performance.

Well back to the OP’s frustrations…hopefully he’s gotten the hint about the Antop :wink:

It’s possible that you might be overdriving the Tablo’s tuners in this case. This means that the Tablo is getting TOO STRONG a signal.

You might have better luck with an antenna that is slightly less powerful. Look for one with a 40-50 mile max ‘range’.

One more thing… If you have a metal roof or a radiant heat barrier installed this could make a attic installation a poor choice.

I was going to say, I’m about 15 to 20 miles from a whole pile of TV towers here in Atlanta, and I’ve got a GE model 33692 antenna just hanging in my second story window facing east.

I think this antenna is really similar to the original poster’s antenna.

I pull in 72 channels. About 50 of them are usable after removing a few weak ones and also ones that I am not interested in. I keep the Spanish channels because I’m slowly learning Spanish.

Quality is pretty good. No amplifier. I just have a 6 ft cable from the antenna to a splitter and then a short little 3 ft cable from the splitter to each of my two dual tablo lite units.

I think antenna placement is an art. In my case, in Mableton, the TV stations are all between about 90° and 100°, So the fact that my house faces east makes it extremely simple.

This is a good point and easy to test - why don’t you add an attenuator or 1-2 splitters before the tablo and see if it improves?

I’m in the boston area in Lancaster, MA about 25 miles from a slew of towers in Needham, MA that have all my channels. I have a 70+ mile range Antennas Direct DB8e and get 5 out of 5 green circles signal on the tablo. I don’t have line of sight – I have to go through some woods as my attic is about 25’ off the ground and i’m surrounded by 100’ tall pine trees.

My setup has worked wonderfully – no issues at all. Perhaps give the DB8e a try?

I noticed something similar a while ago, turned off the signal boost feature of the antenna I have and receive a much better quality signal now.