Digital OTA antenna used on new 2012 Winnebago?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
The Jack certainly has peaked my interest.
It seems I can purchase the antennae only and mount it to my existing Winegard Batwing mast.
By doing so I forego a highly desireable feature of the all in one unit that completly replaces the existing Wine
gard Batwing system and still have to raise and lower the antennae.
However  the reason for replacing it is performance.  Would being up higher by a few feet be of any performance increase that would be of significance?
The all in one unit has some very nice features also, that would be nice in addition to not having to raise and lower it, the signal strength meter and its ease of rotation.
One thing in the installation instuctions, it says you need to enlarge the existing hole in your roof if the slope is over 3 degrees.  I assume they are refering to the Wingard  installation.
I wonder what the slope is on the roof of our Journeys.
I personally favor the all in one unit unless, the extra height of the Winegard mast mounted unit offers any significant advantage.
 
RCtime said:
...It seems I can purchase the antennae only and mount it to my existing Winegard Batwing mast...
Click to expand...

That is correct

... Would being up higher by a few feet be of any performance increase that would be of significance?
Click to expand...

Hard to say, but my guess is no significant improvement -unless- being up a couple of feet would clear any obstructions on your coach roof and you are in a marginal signal area.  But, if you are in a strong signal area, then it wouldn't matter one bit.

The all in one unit has some very nice features also, that would be nice in addition to not having to raise and lower it, the signal strength meter and its ease of rotation.
Click to expand...

Those are indeed very nice features and benefits!

One thing in the installation instuctions, it says you need to enlarge the existing hole in your roof if the slope is over 3 degrees.  I assume they are refering to the Wingard  installation.  I wonder what the slope is on the roof of our Journeys.
Click to expand...

Don't know
 
Wow!  A great thread of information.

I seen The Jack article in this month's MotorHome magazine and was interested what feedback I could find.  I should've known that there would be lots of comments at rvforum.net.

I think I've found my next weekend project!
 
Warning.....A rotary rasp is a must have for enlarging the hole if replacing a batwing. Other than enlarging the hole, make sure everything sets in place and you can turn it before putting sealant.
 
I did not install mine myself, had Coachmasters in Bend, OR, install it for me. Very pleased with it so far.

Chris Shaker
 
I'm thinking about replacing my complete Winegard batwing antenna with this Jack contraption when I get my roof air installed next week.

John, did you just replace the head unit on the winegard existing crank up mast?  Can you use the existing front Winegard distribution panel, including the 12 volt power supply without rewiring the cable using the new faceplate?  Another words, I don't want to use the new faceplate and have to re-wire anything on my distribution panel. 
 
Mark - completely compatible with the existing batwing hardware and power supply.  The only work that needs to be performed is to remove the batwing thingy and install the Jack - a ten minute job.
 
I have several issues with the Jack.  1st, when it came out I called them and went through several people asking for real specs on the antenna. Absolutely nobody had a clue what I was asking. That's a pretty straight forward question to a company that claims to be in the antenna business.

For the antenna itself, it's not necessarily a good thing that this antenna appears more directional than a Wingman/ batwing. Regardless of what "they" claim about ATSC being multipath resistant, I have found in more than one instance that's not the case. And the only way to reduce multipath at the receive end is with a directional antenna.

Construction-wise the batwing is considerably more well-built just looking at the pictures. Why?: Because there are probably millions built as opposed to what aooears to be hand built Jack PCB's, probably only a few thousand at a time. That will probably get better as has the Winegard over the past 20+ years. Just because there are tons of coils sprinkled on the board means nothing other than there is a lot of tuning required to make this work. The Batwing is clearly more elegant construction-wise. As far as the VHF elements go, that's where I worry.The batwing is a batwing because that's the VHF element. Nice and long, cut into the band and just works. The Jack elements are at least 1/2 the length, and the rest appears to be made up by all those loading and matching coils. Another maybe not important nitpick is that all of the batwings and directional saucers I have been into are all fed 300ohn balances lead. The Jack comes off the board with a couple of pieces of wire. Having already done the testing on the Batwing with & without the wingman, as soon as CW or someone close gets a Jack, I'll buy one (maybe just for the afternoon) and see how it really compares. Too bad you can't test the antenna by itself without the pre-amps  :(
 
SCVJeff said:
...Construction-wise the batwing is considerably more well-built just looking at the pictures...
Click to expand...

Excellent points Jeff!  I agree the batwing is the more robustly engineered product.  If the Jack is successful in the market, they might improve it over time.  The critical factor for me is performance followed by design and I think the Jack has the batwing beat in both categories, but I would LOVE to see some hard data with a comparison.  As I mentioned earlier, my performance evaluation is based on anecdotal and non-scientific testing of both (but not simultaneously.)
 
Not sure which is the best one yet.  But I do know this.  Yesterday we picked up our new 2012 Sunova 33C which has the Jack.  We have it parked in the same spot in front of the house.  The old Bat/Wingman had to have the power boost on to get the 19 channels we get.  The Jack does not.  Now I don't know what the reception from any other spot will be but it much better in my opinion setting at home.  Yes, we watched "I Love Lucy" all day while working on the new one.      I am not sure which is worse unloading or loading and sorting.
 
John Canfield said:
Mark - completely compatible with the existing batwing hardware and power supply.  The only work that needs to be performed is to remove the batwing thingy and install the Jack - a ten minute job.
Click to expand...
John, thanks for this info...and FrontrangeRVer for the question.
I have a terrible time aiming for best reception for local stations. I was looking at just a digital signal strength meter but they carry their own baggage (they want to be installed in line somewhere and have power routed to them, etc.)
The Jack appears to solve all this for a price that is not much more than a meter by itself and in one package.
Being able to reuse the Winegard power source makes this a planned new project back home during our next down time (when it isn't 110 degrees outside- Texas summer).
Bob
 
Since they both have in-line pre-amps that cannot be bypassed, if you are seeing more channels on the Jack with +12V off, that indicates that there is probably leakage around the amplifier; In a perfect world you should see nothing. The point is to have ALL RF come through the antenna, to the pre-amp, and into the coax to your TV. This can cause lots of whacky problems, including the pre-amp oscillating, phase cancellation between signal receiver off the antenna and/or other points of entry into the coax, including coupling directly into the pre-amp sitting on the roof and un-shielded.

I've now seen this twice, the last time camping at the beach where my neighbor's antenna was pointed into a hill for best reception to a transmitter 45 degrees offset, and 40 miles across the water, because of the leakage problem he had causing phase cancellation. We never found the cause, but the problem manifested itself the same way with significant leakage around the preamp. And in this case it was a batwing.
 
SCVJeff said:
Having already done the testing on the Batwing with & without the wingman,
Click to expand...
                                                                                                                           
Hi jeff,would be interested in your opinion of the wingman .cheers bill.   
Edit: Fixed quote.              
 
bobsharon said:
. I was looking at just a digital signal strength meter but they carry their own baggage (they want to be installed in line somewhere and have power routed to them, etc.)
Click to expand...

I bought the signal strength meter that King re-branded and sells (some Chinese generic product I assume) and it isn't real helpful except to get a gross idea of where the majority of the transmitters are located.  It uses a 9V battery internal to its case.

This thread is looking more and more like it belongs in another board - probably PC, Communications, Electronics.
 
I'd love to have the new Winegard signal finder just as a fun thing to look at, but I have a handheld spectrum analyzer that scans the entire VHF/ UHF band in about 3 seconds.

Bill: I think I'm gonna go over to the local RV store and buy a Jack for the afternoon. problem is that it will be the fixed height system as opposed to the batwing replacement, can't find those around here  :(

For the test, the coach is still is the same spot I did the original batwing/ Wingman tests, so it will be apples to apples, and I'll use the same pointing solutions to be fair. It'll probably be 2-3 weeks.
 
Hi scvjeff, thanks for the reply, i await the results of your tests with interest, tho i was interested if there was any noticable benifit to the batwing by fitting the wingman. bill.
 
It's nice to have toys... :)

Bill: Did any of that make sense? To most it looks like a lousy lawnmower blade...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 769 (members: 28, guests: 741)

Forum statistics

Threads
131,966
Posts
1,388,391
Members
137,718
Latest member
urnwholesaler
Back
Top Bottom