[TriLUG] HD Antenna Suggestions

[Pete Soper]

On 03/08/2012 11:49 AM, Matt Pusateri wrote:
> All,
>
> I'm looking for a recommendation for a HD antenna to get over the air HD TV broadcasts.  It will be going in a commercial office building. I know a lot of HD antennas suck, do I'm looking for real world experiences.
A few technical hazards to be aware of no matter what antenna you use.

If you really mean "in" a commercial building vs "on top of", or "stuck 
on the side of", then it isn't clear there is a good solution for you, 
depending on the nature of the building. Aside from all the structural 
steel and metal foil and other opaque material in the building a killer 
factor to watch out for is heat-reflective glass. If this represents 
most of the surface the antenna would be trying to look through (and the 
RF path is going to be a very low angle: almost parallel to the ground, 
not up or down), that could be horrible, as a lot of heat-reflective 
glass strongly attenuates RF. When I ran into this I only needed to hit 
a single destination at 1.9ghz and could position the indoor antenna 
adjacent to the building's brick facade between window panes. For TV if 
you need reception in one direction (e.g. the gaggle of towers near 
Clayton), then maybe OK, but otherwise reliable operation could be a 
real pain in the butt no matter what antenna you use.

Related to this (and independent of the inside/outside question) is 
whether the antenna has to look through another building. If the 
building in the signal path is a fraction of a mile away then maybe OK 
by virtue of reflections around the building. But if the obstruction is 
close and mostly opaque to RF you're only option is to get the antenna 
high enough to look over the obstruction or arrange a remote link 
(probably outside your budget!).

Another big factor is to avoid the antenna having to "look through" a 
lot of trees. When the trees are wet the result can be fading so severe 
it doesn't matter how good the antenna/amp/rotator setup is. But my 
experience with this involves acres of trees in all directions and with 
any luck a commercial building wouldn't have this issue.

-Pete

> Thanks,
>
> Matt P.
>
> Sent from my iPhone