Antennas, particularly those used for television reception have a directional pattern and when they are installed they need to be orientated or pointed towards the television transmitter if the best reception is to be obtained.
You're usually best off placing the antenna on a wall that runs at or close to a 90-degree angle to the direction of the signal.
A fixed tilt angle can be used in good signal conditions. In this case, you want to optimize the angle for your weakest stations.. Both horizontal and vertical stacking can decrease the beamwidth quite a bit. This makes positioning the antennas very important in locking-in the weakest stations.
Structures such as floors, cabinets, and walls can impact signal, so placing your antenna high in a window is ideal, as long as it's free from exterior obstructions (trees, buildings, billboards, etc.).
The antenna needs to be placed in the same position as the TV transmitter. Because most of the TV transmitter are horizontal polarized it would be best to start putting the antenna in a horizontal position. One For All antennas receive vertical as well as horizontal signals.
For television broadcasting, the most commonly-used antennas send out signals that are horizontally polarized. That is; the plane of the TV signal is parallel to the earth's surface. That's why outdoor TV antennas are positioned horizontally and not vertically.
Higher is always better. Mount the antenna on your roof or in the attic for optimal performance. These locations are more likely to experience fewer obstacles which cause signal interference between the antenna and broadcast towers. Face the front of the antenna toward the broadcast towers.
When up with the TV antenna, simply point it in the direction of the television transmitter mast. Obviously, this required the TV transmitter mast to be visible, but if not, it is often possible to align the antenna in the same direction as other local antennas.
If hills, trees, buildings, or other geographic features are in between the broadcast towers and the antenna, the signals might not be able to reach your antenna. Elevating the antenna, either by placing it in a higher location or using a taller mast, will increase the signal reception.
If you want to focus all of the signal to direct it to a distant target, then the high gain antenna is definitely the best choice. High gain antennas need to be pointed in a preferred direction to send RF signal so that limited signal can be intensified in desired location, as illustrated below.
A: For the best performance, we typically recommend placement of your TV antenna at the highest point available to you and with a clear line of sight to the broadcast towers to minimize the possibility of obstructions between your antenna and the broadcast towers it is receiving signals from.
Your antenna mount needs to be properly grounded for your antenna to function correctly. Without a solid ground, you're bound to get high SWR levels and extremely poor performance.
Wrapping aluminum foil around an antenna increases the antenna's conductivity and surface area. It will then boost the signal received by a television. That works perfectly. Because most antenna wires are thin, this method works.
This is often a result of either the TV box being powered off, not being properly connected to the TV, or the TV being set to the wrong input. In some cases, if you are not receiving a signal on your TV, it could be a result of a service outage.
When you touch an antenna, the capacitance of the touch joint transfers induced RF voltage from your body to receiver already working on noise threshold, resulting in improvement some time. Your body and every other object in path of RF field acts as antenna. More area, more aperture, more gain.
If you put in a huge antenna and you don't need one, the result can be that the signals are so strong that your TV's tuner begins to reject them because they're distorted. This is especially true with antennas combined with amplifiers. It's called “overdriving” and I've written about it before.
The height of an antenna has a major impact on its performance. Aspects including the feed impedance, radiation diagram, radiation losses, distance from interference, reduction in possibility of exposure to RF radiation, etc.
In general, ground-wave propagation is better with a vertically polarized antenna, while sky-wave performance is better with horizontal polarization. Circular polarization is widely used with satellites as their orientation with respect to the ground station and other satellites is constantly changing.
The direction of the TV transmitter tower is also important. If you're using an indoor antenna, you'll want to put it in a window facing that direction. If you're using an outdoor antenna, it should be pointed in that direction.
Directional antennas are much more powerful than their omni directional counterparts, and able to pull in signals from greater distances.
The digital TV signal is a 'line of sight' signal. Typically, the higher you have your antenna, the better the reception. While signals pass through walls and other surfaces, the more obstructions the signal encounters, the weaker the signal and this causes signal disruption.