[SBE] digital TV for field checks

[Jerry Paonessa]

We have the luxury of an engineering van with a 1.5 Kw inverter; it is enough to power an Avcom spectrum analyzer, a Harris ARX-H200 DTV receiver and if I wanted it to, my laptop.  We already had all this gear on hand.  The Harris ARX, despite its bad rap, delivers a lot of useful information to the laptop via its serial port.  A VGA monitor (an LCD will work just fine) on the output of the ARX will give you a useful picture.
 
Our antenna is a very basic RV-style preamplified disc with internal rotator.  It actually allows us to pan around to flatten the haystack and get very informative measurements.  I have used this rig to help viewers solve multipath problems caused by poor receiving antenna placement.  A better antenna might be one of those inexpensive UHF corner reflector jobs from Radio Hut; I use one of those at home and I find that it delivers pretty good front to back sensitivity ratio and good directivity )for a cheapie.)
 
Jerry Paonessa
Assistant Director of Technology
KENS-TV/DT
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