My wife and I are new to caravaning, a couple of enjoyable trips so far but I can't get the tv to work. The TV provided a weak signal with its own aerial but as soon as I used the Omni directional aerial connections it was terrible. Below the omni directional aerial inside the van is a signal booster which seems to be working okay it has power etc. All connections inside the van look okay. and the cable that runs under the van is one complete length with no connections and appears okay.
We were in North Yorkshire (Osmotherley) when we tried it and maybe this was a poor signal area but I still would have thought the Omni directional aerial would give a better reception than the little round aerial that come with the portable TV.
Also for information the signal booster box has a high and low output and both of these were tried with no joy.
Any advice would be appreciated. I am currently thinking about just buying an external aerial and fitting and external aerial socket. What with the world cup coming up!
Which is probably the way to go Paul as for whatever reason the generic Omni aerials seem to be pretty poor.
Some use a sat dish, others a standard hi-gain directional that you can fix to the van itself, whilst others like myself go to the trouble of making up a telescopic pole and bracket system that fixes to the A-frame by the jockey wheel and then run a lead in through the gas cabinet/bonnet into the van. I have a coax joint just inside the gas cabinet.bonnet so it just requires plugging in each time. No big deal in itself but it'll do until I get around to changing our generic Status omni to one of these new Status directionals that by all accounts work ok. As long as you don't forget to wind them down again before moving off.
Similar problem at Wareham Forest last week. Bought a new 7inch that worked fine at home on its telescopic aerial. Connected to van aerial and nothing. Tried telescopic nothing. Noticed most vans had an external aerial connected to jockey wheel. Quick peeks into vans as we passed showed reasonable pictures (unless they had dvd's on). Perhaps I need to get an external aerial. Also noted that the CC site at Hunters Moon just down the road stated poor TV reception in its handbook.
This is one of the reasons i set up a satellite dish, if however you want an aerial and telescopic pole I have a brand new unused one for sale at half the new cost.
Same problem here, we too were at Wareham Forest, week leading up to Bank Holiday we left on the Saturday, we also couldn't get a good reception, so OH put up the Aerial which we attach to A Frame still wasn't a great picture but OH says watchable.... so we now have bought a extra pole to give a bit more height to see if that helps when we go Yorkshire in two weeks time, as I seem to remember seeing on here somewhere reception is not so good up there. If not will probably look at Satelite dish......
yep, i beleive that most, if not all omni type aerials are pretty poor unless your in a strong signal area, so-much-so in fact the i notice in the new bumff on vans the high end vans come with a directional, or an option to upgrade to
I too take my sat dish for 3 reasons , the first being that they are going to switch off the anologue signal in a few years and secondly I find it takes about the same amount of time to set it up as it does an ordinary aerial the third is that it,s going to give me good practice for when we have no choice but to have digital.
We have the aerial kit from argos and use a freeiew box (so not a problem when they turn anologue off)and have always managed to get a signal even around york and up in scotland
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Quote: Originally posted by vario on 05/6/2006
We have the aerial kit from argos and use a freeiew box (so not a problem when they turn anologue off)and have always managed to get a signal even around york and up in scotland
got the same kit here and it seems to work ok in the beacons this weekend. stuck on the side of a mountain with hills towering above us.....damm sheep make hell of a noise tho
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Topic: TV Reception
