fitting new digital high gain airial...

[george07]

i think i need to replace the old airial on the roof which has been there for yrs as some of the channels on either my freeveiw tv/free veiw boxes suffer poor reception channels breaking up etc..
had a local airial co. around this week who quoted me £140 to fit a new high gain airial on the chimney new bracketing etc & re-tune all the house tv/free veiw boxes..
would consider buying and fitting 1 myself as screwfix do reasonably priced high gain digital airials at £38..only problem i have is getting onto the roof etc borrowing a roof ladder etc..
or is it worth all the hassle of saving lets say £100 or so installation/set up costs + tuning by a local expert ?
if i do hire the fitter what type/quality of airial shall i expect him to supply to efficiently do the job..also would this receive hd freeveiw signals cheers mark

 

[Ricardus]

Well at £40 for an aerial, £20 for mast and brackets, is it worth £80 to not find yourself laying at the foot of a ladder with your missus saying "I told you so.." ?

 

[Sam Gangee]

There's no such thing as a "digital" aerial. Anyone who tells you there is is a hype merchant.

See http://www.paras.org.uk

Why do you think you need a "high gain" aerial? A low-gain or medium-gain one might be appropriate for your location and would be less susceptible to interference problems. If you are unsure, go for a "log-periodic". It's a true wideband aerial, generally better than a "Yagi" and cheaper, too.

See http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/best_aerial.htm

 

[SimonH2]

First off, see what sort of signal you should be getting, Wolfbane have an excellent tool for this :
http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe

Secondly, while the Satcure site Sam links to is excellent, it is geared more towards satellite. One offering a whole mine of information on terrestrial can be found at http://aerialsandtv.com/
I bought my TV aerial from here, and they seem good to deal with. Personally I chose a large Yagi of the right group for our transmitter (C/D, Winter Hill). It's turned out to be a tad more than we need, bit IMO it's better to have too much signal and throw some of it way with an attenuator) than to have too little. One of our PVRs works better with something like 12dB attenuation, while the rest of my kit works fine without (we've a distribution amp in the loft).

 

[george07]

ricardus my mates said "i told you so" when the ex missus took me for 60 grand after being pre-warned be-atch

 

[Sam Gangee]

It's turned out to be a tad more than we need

It's nice to have plenty to spare but a so-called high-gain Yagi in most instances is over the top and more prone to damage and probably more expensive. In addition, the gain falls off dramatically away from mid band and they are more prone to side interference.

I feel confident in suggesting the V10-040, based on my own personal experience. (I'm not a professional installer; I fitted a few for friends in the Winter Hill area.)

 

[SimonH2]

Yeah, it was a toss up between the Yagi and the Log Periodic. IIRC I decided the Yagi had higher gain for the frequencies I'm interested in - and looking again at the gain chart I see that there's about 3db difference. That's one of the important things - look at what channels are involved and choose an aerial that's suitable for them.

Given that we'd been plagued by problems due to poor signal for some time (as in, the professionally selected and installed aerial was never acceptable), I decided to "go for it" signal wise - but I did buy a selection of attenuators at the same time. OK, the old aerial was old, and the coax was probably past it's best, but on evenings like it is outside now (nice summer evening) we used to lose the digital mux with C5 on it, and analogue C5, and other stuff would sometimes go off as well (IIRC even the 'main four' analogue channels used to degrade) until a few hours after sunset when they'd come back again.