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Old 04-22-2018, 02:42 PM   #1
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Show me your new OTA Antenna mounted where your old one was.

Hi all,

I need to replace the TV antenna on my 05' Northern Star. The antenna is a three post affair with the base that rotates.

It quite rotating and it is a Braune TV antenna system with parts that are no longer available. According to the installation manual for my old antenna there should be a inch and a quarter inch hole underneath the old antenna housing.

I need to replace the antenna preferably with a HD antenna that is fixed (no rotation). Show me photos (if possible) of your new antenna mounted in the old location.

Thanks in advance
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Old 04-22-2018, 03:38 PM   #2
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Here s my story . Hope it helps.
http://www.irv2.com/forums/f103/2006...de-264538.html
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Old 04-22-2018, 03:42 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by azSkier View Post
Says invalid thread...
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Old 04-22-2018, 04:07 PM   #4
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Hi Charlie and Martha,
Replaced my OTA antenna (also with crank) with the Razor. Go to Winegard Rayzar Automatic - Automatic RV Antenna and take a look. Newmar did the install. It is all automatic. Newmar put a cap where the hole in the roof used to be. It works as advertised and I would buy it again.
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Old 04-22-2018, 05:04 PM   #5
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I upgraded to the automatic rayzar but left the crank up Sensar intact. Glad I did. The automatic ( so far ) does a decent job of finding the most channels but many if not most are not always watchable. It works very well where the stations are close, but the Sensar works better in remote locations. At least that is my experience. I will say that remote OTA tv is hit or miss regardless of what antenna you have, always has been.

Unlike Gary I’d save my money and not go with the automatic.
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Old 04-22-2018, 05:17 PM   #6
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Thank you. That took a lot of my anxiety away seeing that you had to deal with. I really appreciate you linking me to that thread. Kudos for a nice job.

One question, what did you do with the signal booster for the antenna?
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Old 04-22-2018, 05:22 PM   #7
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I upgraded to the automatic rayzar but left the crank up Sensar intact. Glad I did. The automatic ( so far ) does a decent job of finding the most channels but many if not most are not always watchable. It works very well where the stations are close, but the Sensar works better in remote locations. At least that is my experience. I will say that remote OTA tv is hit or miss regardless of what antenna you have, always has been.

Unlike Gary I’d save my money and not go with the automatic.
Interesting that you would not buy it again. Our current OTA (Braun) antenna does/did a terrible job of acquiring signals. It may show 20 but when you turn the television to certain channels it says "no signal." It also is subject to turning when the wind blows hard enough. It sucks.
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Old 04-22-2018, 05:46 PM   #8
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Like Forkyfork sais....my experience going from a manual, analog, omni-directional antenna [disc] to a manual, digital [King Jack antenna head] was that digital is much more sensitive to direction and line-of-sight. So its important to point the digital antenna toward the signal source. Digital is also more difficult to capture if you are below a ridgeline/in a valley. So I mounted the Jack head on the old Omni-arm so I could adjust the direction. Example--last Jan, had to point antenna to north in Phoenix to get Super Bowl--most stations are on mountain south of town but NBC antenna was on north side??????
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Old 04-22-2018, 05:50 PM   #9
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If we had an auto antenna my husband would have absolutely nothing to do.

FWIW we removed the old Winegard batwing with the booster because it picked up absolutely nothing except public channels. How on earth is it that you can always pick up public channels. lol. Replaced it with the old style King Jack because it had better reviews than the newer one. We mounted it directly on the old winegard arm. No changes necessary.
https://www.amazon.com/KING-OA8200-A.../dp/B004VF48YO

Also, what channels you pick up depends on what frequency they are broadcasting, there don't seem to be any RV antennas that pick up all. They don't pick up the low frequencies and our preferred channels are usually on those frequencies.
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Old 04-22-2018, 09:12 PM   #10
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The whole world of OTA television has been turned upside down in the last 15 years with some unintended consequences that are amplified in RV reception problems.

A little history. Until 2009 the UHF television spectrum (where digital OTA television now lives) had channels 14 to 69. In 2009 with the conversion to digital OTA television, channels 52 to 69 where taken over by the digital LTE bands, most notably the big expansion by Verizon into the 700 to 800 mHz region for all the new 4G LTE service.

Beginning now for the next several years channels 38 to 51 are going to be taken over by a large spectrum purchase by T-Mobile for new high speed cellular data services. The result is all the stations occupying channels 38 to 51 have to find a new home lower in the UHF band. This has all ready started in the LA market where KCET is running ads telling folks to rescan their receivers to pick up the new frequency.

So what does this have to do with OTA TV reception in an RV? LTE interference is raising hell with OTA TV reception. The reason is we have all these new big LTE towers all over the place pumping out signal which is overwhelming the receivers on televisions with interference. This is bad enough trying to get good TV in a house with an LTE antenna nearby but it gets worse in an RV.

An RV has an antenna on roof pulling in everything going down to TV receivers never designed to handle this magnitude of off frequency interference. But there is more. Directly under that TV antenna with nothing more that a fiberglass roof in between we have people sitting in their RV with little LTE broadcast stations in their pockets: SmartPhones and Tablets. 4G LTE smartphones are now standard equipment and if you have Verizon LTE these devices are regularly using the old television frequencies very close to the frequencies used by OTA television today.

All this gets jumbled up with poor TV reception from bad antennas and being too far from a station. Hard to know what is causing the problem, but if you are in an area with good TV reception yet the picture keeps breaking up periodically it may very well be LTE interference.

So what to do. First mount your RV antenna as far away from the area you normally use or store your 4G LTE device. An antenna mounted on the rear of the coach makes the most sense. Second, find antenna controls that are shielded. Good luck on that. None of the Winegard control heads are shielded. They bring in nice RG6 shielded cable to the control box but the control box circuity is wide open with a plastic front. So all that spurious RF emission coming off your SmartPhone can be easily picked up right in the control head and placed on the cable for your TV to sort out.

There is one item that can help: LTE Filters



I just installed one of these filters and the results are good so far. I don't bring in more stations but the ones I get tend not to break up as much.
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Old 04-22-2018, 10:58 PM   #11
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Thanks for the info about the filter. Some LED bulbs also cause interference.
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Old 04-23-2018, 06:15 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie and Martha View Post
Interesting that you would not buy it again. Our current OTA (Braun) antenna does/did a terrible job of acquiring signals. It may show 20 but when you turn the television to certain channels it says "no signal." It also is subject to turning when the wind blows hard enough. It sucks.
The main reason I would not buy it again, is that I already had a good, working Sensar III with the Wingman add-on which does (IMO) a better job than the automatic. I did want to NEW so I bought one. Yes the automatic lets you scan with a push of a button, and prevents the oops of leaving the antenna raised. You still have to tweak the direction of the automatic just like the manual, except you do it with directional buttons. In my case the control box is near the floor to the right of the passenger seat (thanks Newmar) and is difficult to get to. I just don’t find the added convenience worth the cost.

With the help of an phone app, locating stations is fairly easy now.
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Old 04-23-2018, 06:19 AM   #13
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I did roughly the same except with a Winegard Rayzar Z1 manual rotate. Works fine (about the same as the old Braun).

The old hole is immense because the Braun was recessed into the roof. I covered the old hole with marine ply, covered that with overlapping EternaBond, Dicor'd the edges and stainless screws, mounted the Rayzar and Dicor'd that.

My biggest issue was replacing the Braun control box with the Winegard ... tight space and not much flex to coax cables. Wound up with an extension box to give a smoother bend.
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