As promised in Part One of this antenna installation Hub series, this page begins with the antenna already riding the sky and ends with a watchable TV program in progress. Yesterday's progress came to a whimpering halt when it was discovered that one of the pieces of coax on hand was too short due to the antenna lead terminals being located farther from the mast than had been believed.

Yet another trip to Radio Shack worked out, although barely. Trading in the two foot length of coax still in its package presented no problem, but the store owner had to look rather closely to find even one six foot piece. Nonetheless, problem solved.

Our camp trailer is nicely situated to make the extension ladder truly safe, i.e. stable, in that a previous antenna holder mounted to the trailer's sidewall provides a great spot over which to drop the upper portion of the ladder. The ladder is thus literally incapable of falling over sideways, and placing the ladder feet well back from the wall ensured that neither could it flip over backward. Even so, the wind around here is something else. A mild breeze on the ground, buffered by structures and plenty of vegetation, becomes a Git 'R' Done Gale once you clear the roofline, roaring in one's ears so loudly that hearing much of anything else is highly unlikely. Seldom did I abandon the three point rule while on the ladder, and then only with the greatest of awareness and caution.

But neither was I about to let a little air movement delay TV reception. In order, then:

1. The new piece of coax was screwed snugly onto the transformer (which was already in place).

2. That connection was then wrapped with plastic electrician's tape to protect it from the elements. Note: In the photo below, the tape job looks a little sloppy. It was, but was corrected shortly after the photo was taken.

3. The coax was then run back along the antenna boom to the mast, where it made a 90 degree turn to begin its descent along the mast. Wire ties were used to secure the cable to the mast at intervals (Instructions recommended placing the ties about 18 inches apart; I placed them much closer together than that.)

4. The next step was to clamp the outside half of the preamp assembly to the mast. "Preamp" is short for "preamplifier". All such units are rated in terms of "dB of gain" with the bigger numbers indicating higher gain. Bottom line: Installing a powerful preamp with a high gain number pulls in a stronger signal than using an antenna without a preamp. If the TV stations you're attempting to receive are too close, there is such a thing as too much gain. Since we were targeting stations 80 miles away, however, high gain was good gain.,,but a cool feature of the Radio Shack unit is a little knob that allows the user to adjust gain downward from the maximum in case that works better. Ours is set on maximum; we need every dB we can get.

In the photo above, the coax cable that drops down the mast is the one that will be heading into the camp trailer to bring signal to the TV itself...after passing said signal through the indoor amplifer/power source combo.

Note: When doing any installation of this sort, look out for the precise type of coax cable you use. If it does not have RG6 printed on the sheathing, run, do not walk, to your nearest supply store and get some. We have oodles of old coax around here, and the longer cable is a fifteen foot piece of RG6 that did happen to be on hand. Most of the rest of what turned up in our storage trailer was not RG6 but RG59, a thinner cable that most knowledgeable folks agree will not do the job, or at least not do it as well. The old rule of caveat emptor is obviously still in play.

Not only that, but it also pays to carefully inspect the contents of any package purchased for the task at hand. Our preamp seems to be a great little unit, and it came with two pieces of coax included. Never mind that neither piece was long enough to take care of business in many real life installations; the key point is that both pieces were RG59.

With the finish line in sight--we thought--I was careless about remembering to take pictures of the hookup behind the TV. Since that could vary a lot with individual setups, perhaps that's for the best. At the very least, I can rationalize virtually any error....

The coax line running through the wall was then connected to the inside half of the preamp (which also serves as a power source for the preamp), and then a separate piece of coax (RG6, of course) was run from the power source to the TV. Since our TV set is a digital, not an analog set, no converter box was involved. Unfortunately, we hit a humongous glitch anyway: No way to get the TV to even go to a desired station. Pam always disliked the RCA set that I had in my office in Colorado, and I finally had to admit that I couldn't make it sit up and beg properly, either.

That triggered yet another search in the storage semi trailer for her set, a 2005 Toshiba model. Found it immediately. For whatever reason, I'd convinced myself it had come to Arizona in its original box. It had not, instead making the trip in a TV box, yes, but a Symphonic carton...and we haven't owned a Symphonic in what seems like decades.

Sadly, the contents of that box did not include the remote control. We knew we'd have been extra careful with that but could not get it to manifest. After running to Sierra Vista and buying a $5 universal remote from the Dollar General store, I returned home...just in time to hear Pam announce that she thought it might be in "that big blue suitcase".

Of course.

After an hour of fiddling with the remote, we had discovered something remarkable: Running up through the channels prior to adjusting the antenna, we saw nothing on any of the Tucson channels we wanted to snag...but did get reception on several others we hadn't even known existed. These consisted of an NBC station and two Spanish channels (we live within a mile of the Mexican border). Both Spanish channels were pretty snowy, but they had color and could be heard. Not understood, not unless you're more fluent in the language than we are at the moment...but seen and heard, definitely yes.

The NBC station had great reception, a somewhat mixed blessing: Getting at least one major network in watchable condition was awesome...but it would have to be Pam's least favorite network of the whole bunch.

Ah, well. At least we knew the antenna did work, and I was secretly ecstatic while outwardly sympathizing with my redhead. You know the rule: Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Now it was time to play Spin The Antenna. Good news / bad news. Bad news first: No matter where the antenna was turned throughout the degrees of the compass, nothing else came in at all. Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody-- Good news: The NBC station didn't care much where the antenna was pointed; if it was pointed anywhere close to either north or south, reception stayed about the same: Not quite cable quality, but not that bad, either, and definitely doable.

A bit of online research uncovered the fact that the channel we receive best (Channel 20) is a Sierra Vista based pass-it-on station which provides the signal from KVOA in Tucson (Channel 25). The Sierra Vista version is located something like 20 miles from our homesite. Pam and I, by early evening, had independently come to the same set of conclusions:

1. The $300 or so we invested from start to finish is kind of a pain is kind of a pain considering we're short on cash and one station is a far cry from the five we hoped to receive. Additionally, we've done about all we can to try snagging those Tucson signals except for possibly adding more height to the mast--and that would be a disastrous move: The winds around here would waggle that big boat of a topheavy antenna around like a drunk trying to flag down a bartender at Last Call.

2. It could have been a whole lot worse. At least we enjoy Deal Or No Deal, America's Got Talent and Biggest Loser, Pammie can learn the characters on one or two of the NBC soaps, and the daily news will be available now.

3. With the monsoons due to arrive in Arizona shortly, we'll be best off settling for what we've accomplished for the time being. Battening down the hatches for the annual monster rains is without question moving up in the rankings to Number One Priority. No way to pay for gravel to help out the yard, but many hours can be profitably poured into sealing leaks in the cargo trailer, storage trailer, and the camp trailer.

In the meantime, there are Hubs to write and TV to enjoy--TV because even an entertaining Arizona sunset only lasts for a short while--while Pam sleeps and the TV stays on mute. Hmm....  Wonder who invented Closed Captioning....

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32