TV aerials

[DUNCANNEALE]

Hi. Has anybody any views on the type of TV arials that Eldidis are fitting at the moment. Any good compaired to the vision Plus.

 

[RichL812]

I have one on my new 2014 Elddis Superscirocco and its very hit and miss. At the weekend in wind, rain ,bad weather and we got 9 channels (ITV, Ch4, CH5, ITV2 and shopping channels... no BBC) on a site we use regularly, all very jerky and on an Avtex 21.5 DRS TV. On Sunday morning in bright calmer weather we got 60 odd, mostly jerky and still no BBC. Our Samsung TV that has been superb got a few more and interestingly, a jerky BBC1! On our old Crusader Aurora with the directional Status, we used to get 75+, all great quality and on the same pitch but it was subject to the weather.

Now debating whether to get a satellite dish as the van has built in satellite connectors and the tv has built in satellite decoder. Have contacted dealer and waiting for a reply.

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

I have one on my new 2014 Elddis Superscirocco and its very hit and miss. At the weekend in wind, rain ,bad weather and we got 9 channels (ITV, Ch4, CH5, ITV2 and shopping channels... no BBC) on a site we use regularly, all very jerky and on an Avtex 21.5 DRS TV. On Sunday morning in bright calmer weather we got 60 odd, mostly jerky and still no BBC. Our Samsung TV that has been superb got a few more and interestingly, a jerky BBC1! On our old Crusader Aurora with the directional Status, we used to get 75+, all great quality and on the same pitch but it was subject to the weather.

Now debating whether to get a satellite dish as the van has built in satellite connectors and the tv has built in satellite decoder. Have contacted dealer and waiting for a reply.

I'm not sure what part of the country you were in at the weekend, but we didn't even have any BBC channels at home for part of the weekend. We are in South Wales. There might be nothing wrong with your aerial, just missing BBC feeds !!

 

[bertieboy1]

A bit surprised that any caravan manufacturer would choose to fit an omnidirectional aerial as standard.These aerials are only any good in strong signal areas and caravan parks tend not to be in such areas.
Aerial amplifiers will amplify any faults in a signal and will not make a bad signal good or better.
So if you are in an area where there is a lot of interference an amplifier will only increase (amplify) the interference.
One of our previous vans had one of these aerials fitted and it always worked well at home (fortunately in a strong signal area ) we always took a pole mounted directional aerial with us when away which we invariably used instead of the roof mounted omnidirectional aerial.
The aerial was probably selected in terms of financial merit rather than any technical or practical merits.

 

[RayS]

Not a great fan of TV but SWMBO likes to watch gardening and cooking etc (although pretty expert in both says he trying to get out of the hole)
However, in the caravans I have bought new since 1992, not a single one has had the TV leads terminated correctly, I suggest you checke each individual connecter between the antenna and set for correct and sound connections and you may well find that getting theree right will improve things no end.

 

[DUNCANNEALE]

Thanks for the input. I haven't actually used this type of arial yet. I am waiting for my Elddis to come off the production line as we speak. Must say I don't know much about the ins and outs about arials but what I can say is my vision plus on our swift was first class. Yes, sometimes we only had a few channels but most of the time it was spot on. Can't say I'm looking forward to not having something that I can adjust myself. Well we will see. Thanks again.

 

[Woody3]

I wonder if the problem here is the TV tuning. If channels are missing it usually means that the TV thinks it knows where to find them but what it thinks is wrong for the location.. I would suggest to anyone that when they arrive on site the first thing to do with the TV is to dig around the menus and find something like factory/system default/reset and activate it. This will wipe the TV memory as if it was fresh out of the box, then retune. If the TV has manual tuning it is always the better way to find the stations. As all TV's start tuning at channel 21 and go up the band, if it finds a week station in the low numbers it will remember these and may not overwrite them with stronger stations in the higher channel numbers. Many TV's, if they find a duplicate, will put said duplicates at 800 and above. The stations serving any given location can be found at www.wolfbane.com although the aerial requirements still seem to relate to analogue TV so should be taken with a large pinch of salt. What it will tell you is the nearest station, its distance and bearing, and an estimate of the signal strength and the channels used. Remember that with digital TV several stations come on one channel, e.g. all BBC TV and national radio.

 

[bertieboy1]

Another web site to try is http://www.ukfree.tv/starthere.php and you'll need a compass as well.Gives you all the digital station locations and bearings from where you are located.