[SBE] Wilmington test

[Carl Sundberg]

Hi All,

I'm a guy who likes to really check things out before I'm going to be put on the spot. I knew that I had to forget everything I knew about RF and try to be more like my viewers long before the analog TV shut off date. Toward that end, I bought every kind of indoor antenna I could find, both new and used from places like Goodwill and tried them all. I bought 5 digital TV's and bought every converter box I could get my hand on, also both new and old. I soon realized the real challenge my viewers were going to have with DTV and here is what I learned:

There are a lot of indoor antenna's that should be recycled. Antenna's that pick up well from all directions really give a DTV receiver or converter box a lot of trouble. While investigating, I found out that multipath caused by stuff in the home is real and it really bothers DTV. Investigating with a DTV analyzer, a spectrum analyzer and a directional antenna, I found out the biggest enemy in the home is the refrigerator, large silver coated mirrors and large appliances like stoves and the washer/dryer. These babies make great signal reflectors. If you do the math, every digital bit transmitted in DTV can be canceled out by an out of phase signal less than a room away. In my home, no indoor antenna worked 100% on all stations until I put it near the gabled ceiling to minimize reflections from those objects. The stations with the strongest signals had the biggest problem.

In addition to that, I have been taking calls at my station daily from people who are having trouble with indoor antenna's with both receivers and converter boxes and my experimenting was a good thing. So far, I have been able to help because I've used what they are trying to use.

Because of this, I decided to write an article that I hope our station will add to our web site. I have attached it and hope all will read it, edit it, change the graphics if you find betters ones and correct any misinformation or add anything you see fit. I think its up to us to come up with something for our viewers to refer to that will make them smarter, like the computer people did when they wanted us to throw away our typewriters. I look forward to hearing about anything I missed or suggestions before I post it. 

So far, nothing I have found tells the whole story. As crazy as this may seem, for a long time, I couldn't figure out where three multipath signals were coming from until I tracked one down to a mirror. I've never seen an article mention a mirror as a source of mutipath and that was the strongest multipath signal I found. When I found it, I went, "Duh! How could I be so stupid? It's a sliver coated reflector. What could be more perfect for reflecting RF?"

Read on, make changes and send your version back if you think this is a worthwhile.
 
Carl Sundberg
3318 Coraly Ave.
Eugene, OR 97402-6544 


Cell: 541 520-2867
Landline: 541 461-2324 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/sbe/attachments/20080911/21f24758/attachment.htm>