Over The Air - Digital TV

Over The Air - Digital TV - About

I knew from the start that my antenna location would be fairly limited. There are a number of tall trees on the property and we also had a brand new roof installed the week prior. For these reasons I opted for a wall mounted installation just underneath the eaves. The plan was to use 2 Channel Master 16 gauge 5 feet swaged poles with a Channel Master 4221 aerial aloft.

I initially started out with a pair of Channel Master 18" heavy duty wall mount brackets but was not comfortable with the amount of stress they were put under. A quick change of design saw me introduce a 10 foot fence rail (from Home Depot) to support the 2 Channel Master poles. The fence rail was buried in over 2 feet of soil on some old interlocking paving stones. This greatly improved the stability of the mast and allowed me to use the wall brackets solely for holding the mast to the wall.

To make the set up as safe as possible I grounded both the mast and the antenna. For the mast, I secured a short piece of #6 copper wire using a pipe clamp and curved it very slightly to the 4 foot copper ground rod. The mast itself is also buried in 2 feet of soil.

The antenna was grounded through the use of a lightning arrestor which feeds into a coax ground block. A piece of solid copper stranded wire was fixed to the coax ground block and tacked down the wall where it meets up with the above mentioned copper ground rod. I opted to house the lightning arrestor and coax ground block in a weatherproof box in an attempt to keep rain and moisture out of the vital connections. The coax was also grounded again at the service panel (white cable attached to the ground block) to an existing #6 copper cable.

My coax run from the antenna to the house entry point was almost 100 feet. I also had 1 join in each of my 2 weatherproof boxes. However, I did use good quality RG6 coax (white cable in pictures) and I guess at some point in the future could add a pre-amplifier to the set up if I need to boost the signal strength.

There was already some RG6 cabling running through to the house from an unused satellite dish so I used that by adding a second weatherproof box containing a coax f connector at this location rather than having to drill a new hole through the wall.

Despite my long coax cable run and my less than ideal antenna location (it only just clears the apex of the roof) I am receiving excellent reception for transmitters from the CN Tower and Buffalo. I used my online tool to tell me where all the transmitters are and then aimed the antenna at around 80 degrees so that I could receive an acceptable signal for Canadian and US stations. My initial goal was to be to pick up CBC and WNED in high definition but I'm also receiving the following digital stations.

CBLT (5.1)
CFTO-DT (9.1)
CHCH-DT (11.1)

WNED-DT (17.1)
WNED-DT2 (17.2)
WNED-DT3 (17.3)

WNLO-DT (23.1)
CBLFT (25.1)
WUTV-DT (29.1)

CTS-HD (36.1)
OMNI1 (44.1)
CITY-DT (57.1)
OMNI2 (64.1)
CKXT-DT (66.1)

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