Terrestrial Alignment

Dasilva81

Dasilva81

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
Motorised setup (dark motor) 42e - 30w
My Location
London
I am trying to align aerial in my loft, i am getting signal however not sure if it is enough.

Channel 23 - signal strength between 40% - 46%

Other channels are slightly higher in there 50's.

Is this enough, i will be connecting to a multiswitch and feeding rest of the house.
 
A percentage doesn't really mean much. What are you measuring with to get these figures?
 
Terrestrial off-air signal carriers or multiplexes are measured in dBuV or dBmV. You need a meter capable of measuring the average power. Percentage is not much use other than using it for peaking the signal.
 
An antenna inside the attic (or loft in your case) will get about 1/3 to 2/3 less of the desired signals, it all depends on what the roofing materials are made of, why cant you mount the antenna outside where it will work a whole lot better?

And running the signals at that signal strength to a splitter or multi-switch without a pre-amp on the antenna will cause a sever loss of signal, unless the multi-switch has a terrestrial input that is amplified.
 
As above, difficult to say with a percentage from a cheap meter, but quality is more important, as long as the signal is above the threshold of the TVs. Which multiswitch are you going to be using? Some have a considerable insertion loss on the UHF input, whilst others are zero insertion loss (they have a built in pre-amp), some will also have a 12v switchble supply on the UHF input, so adding a LTE filtered low noise masthead amplifier is easy.

Try connecting it temporarily straight to a TV which has a signal strenghth and quality reading.
 
Have you got the aerial pointing South East.

Is there a bigger building South East of you ?

Is your loft insulated ?
 
Looks clear to the South East, the majority of the existing aerials look like standard ten elements.Severn South East.webp in view are at least 18 element.
 
Those roofs look like tile, very bad for an in attic antenna. (loft)

The only place may be outside.
 
Crystal palace is only a few miles from Neasden, putting out around 200kW on each Mux.
 
Yes and most of the aerials in the screen shot above will have been installed pre digital switchover and prior to the massive increase in wattage. I've managed to pull in better than 42dbµ with a minilog in lofts from Reading using Crystal Palace and we're 40 miles away, the aerial does of course need to be pointing outward and not through the neighbour's loft.
 
I must admit we get a good digital signal on a small 30 year old basic group A loft aerial in south Bucks looking at Crystal Place. Channel 5 in the analogue days was a bit fuzzy but the other analogue channels came in strong.
 
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