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hey folks was curious if anybody would know why the signals for some stations on an antenna would go in and out at night ? my buddy was saying he has a hard time getting cbc toronto station at night but during the day its fine would they be able to send a weaker signal out at night ?
thanks
Has buddy tried scanning at night to see if Rabbit Ears work better with a night scan?
Oh scooby I thought you were looking!! for a buddy
Too funny...not that I am buddy material anyway lol but I was trying to make you feel welcome
Then I see you are not newbie
I'm leaving now, have a great week
you are just to cool..Quote:
Originally Posted by orchidgirl
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifonlyihad1
I think this is a Hijack
it's going to be interference from something that is turned on at night that isn't on during the dayQuote:
Originally Posted by scooby8888
tell your buddy to turn off light switches one at a time and see if it's one of them causing it
Could be florescent light,Dimmer switches and maybe even an electronic grow light ballast in the house or a neighbors house close by.Quote:
Originally Posted by scooby8888
Weather will cause bad ota reception.Temperature drop at night..The colder it gets the less your antenna picks up.I have a 360% antenna on top of my house and see what weather does.Just a thought.
One possible problem would the mirage effect....Have you ever driven down a road and seen what looks like water on it? But when you get to that spot it's totally dry....That is a temperature inversion layer on the ground or road reflecting the sky, in some cases the radio waves from the TV stations will reflect the same way off the ground or large body of water under certain conditions.
This reflected signal (or signals) are 180 degrees out of phase from the main signal(s), when the two are at the same signal levels (or very close) they will cancel each other out (or the main will get weaker) and the station(s) will drop out, this is a common occurrence at some locations at or around dusk or just after nightfall.
A second possibility is again an out of phase signal problem, at certain distances, paths and elevations a transmitted signal(s) will bounce off one the layers of the Ionosphere or Troposphere and be reflected back to the ground, in the case of night time fade problems, this layer is during the day is being scattered by the Sun, when the Sun goes down the layer is activated and the signals (one true, the other reflected) are received at the antenna and one is out of phase from the other, so they will cancel each other out, or if the reflected signal is weaker will cause a partial fade on the main signal.
This problem is hard to fix, we in the broadcast industry usually have the expensive equipment needed to track down the problem(s) and try our best to solve it.
But as a consumer it's not possible to fix this very quickly as you do not have access to the required equipment.
What you can try is to one: raise the TV antenna up higher, this would get you a better shot at the TV stations, this may or may not fix the problem.
Two: move the antenna to a different location, sometimes several feet or more can make a difference.
Three: get a bigger more directional higher frontal gain antenna, this may fix the problem as the main signals will be stronger and a tighter front beamwidth may help overcome the reflection problem.
There is a solution four, but you probably don't want to move to a different location.
You can go to a site called TVfool,com, and do a signal report for that location, this will give you an idea on what may be going on, the better signals will be listed as LOS (Line Of Sight) the others may be listed as first (1edge) or second edge (2edge) or Tropo (signals bouncing off the troposphere), these signals are bouncing or reflecting off something big in the way.
Good luck, hope I helped a bit.
ya he says when he had it outside it did the same thing and not near any power he seems to think they are cutting the signal because its 80% all day then goes in and out at night. oh well thanks for your time guys really appreciate it :D
In most cases, with TV antennas the higher you can get them, the better they may work.
i think that the stations increase their power in the day because of more users and even more important because of more interference from other sources, so in the evenings they reduce their power, there is less interference but then again there are times when at night you will be able to get signals that may be bouncing off the clouds, go out and put up a and old wind mill as an antenna, they are sturdy and you can always tell the neighbors that you are pumping water, or better yet put up a flag pole that is really your antenna, no one should complain that you have a flag pole in the front yard
The RF outputs on the TV transmitters stays the same day or night, raising or lowering or raising the output power of a 25,000 to 1,000,000 watt transmitter (output power depends on the authorized ERP of the stations transmitter frequency (VHF or UHF) and antenna gain) takes a bit of doing, you just don't turn a knob like on a stereo.
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Originally Posted by scooby8888
Have him do a tvfool report, then E-mail the report link to you, post it here (with code brackets) so I can take a look at it, the report will not give away his exact address.
hxxx://xxx.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d9038044fc1a05 4Quote:
Originally Posted by Terryl
The requested report ID is no longer on our server.
80% signal strength with an indoor antenna
I would still put my money on it being interference :)