Cancel Your Cable/Satellite, FREE Over-The-Air HDTV, TV Antenna Review, Cut The Cord!!!

hello everyone I am Eric amateur radio operator kj4 y zi you're watching ham radio concepts hopefully you're a subscriber hopefully before you leave this video you click the subscribe button you see stuff like this that you learn on and that could actually help you save money and check this out two years ago this week I quit my career at AT&T and DirecTV and moved on to a better career involving radio that I'm a lot more happy with but two years ago when I quit DirecTV AT&T I decided to make that video the complete documentary on how to cut the court how to go 3 over-the-air HDTV antenna and how to save money and put it back in your pocket guys I installed those services for seven years how many houses did I go in and people said I can't really afford this is there anything you can do to lower my price or I can't believe I'm doing this i watch five channels and I'm about to pay 150 a month as I install their service you know there's people that can't afford it if people have got to have History Channel and then there's the people that watch you know news and they have there's some good shows on intent of TV it's all in high-definition most of it and with the repack lately there's a lot more channels that are being added to different transmitter sites and more programming if you can't find it on antenna you can find it on Amazon fire stick but what I have here is episode 2 here I'm setting up my grandmother you know with Co vid 19 and coronavirus in these days my video two years now my video is five thousand views a day and people are watching it and saying wow I got laid off I don't have the money to pay anymore how do I get antenna TV and they've stumbled upon my first video the link is in the description and they've learned on how to cut the cord and in that video I explained coax cable differences of power amplifiers and how to get your signal optimum but in this video I'm a grandmother's house I'm up on the roof I purchased the same db8 II antenna from antennas direct comm that's where I purchased mine two years ago it's still the best intern I've ever had and my house I get about 94 channels my grandmother here I'm installed a push up pole here and I'll show you about that in a second I decided to pick up an additional antenna that I don't have this is the clear stream 5 for me antennas direct my grandmother said I gotta have my NBC my WESH 2 News okay this is UHF up here db8 ea8 Bay bowtie you H F style antenna and then this is a VHF style both are directional this way okay and this one I've never used before but I'll show you about assembling it real quick and we'll see will it pick up the VHF frequencies or VHF stations there are still stations on VHF even with the repack sometimes you got to get a whole antenna like this just to pick up those two or three VHF stations but in her situation it's worth it because she wants those channels and my lovely grandmother here hello nanny and she what are you tired of paying the directv bill and and tell him who your favorite grandson is and I'm the only grandson she has so we're gonna see what we get I'll explain to you what I got here real quick and show you some of the things maybe you get an idea I encourage you to if you want to learn all about it and you go to look at my first video and see about how I installed at my friend's house and got him on an antenna TV and since then a couple things that have been added like the antenna point app created by antennas direct comm on your phone you could use it to point and find which transmitters are in what distance from you and what direction and what kind of antenna you'll need to find it as well as how the VHF works and an update on channel scan so you can see what a channel scan does and why you should do it with the new antenna repack changing frequencies you now I'll show you what she had that I have to take down that's what she'd get right there I know a lot of people watching would be pissed if this is what they had the high would be I knew this was up here like this but the time there was there was no way to really get a wire there's really no attic on this house the way my grandfather built it I got to get one underneath the house up through the floor but hey at least the DirecTV coax it they use handled with the Sun a couple of years that's coming off all right so I'm gonna put this antenna together this is the same D BAE I have again another thing in this video I didn't show you last time a couple years ago in the video was the the app that you can use on your phone from antennas direct that they made in order to get you to point this in the right direction so you're pointing it for the maximum signal now this antenna as I said is UHF only and then I'm facing both of these towards Orlando from Mikko Florida and got the cable it comes with here I should be able to get this up and probably within an hour so the one thing to reiterate and again this is a little bit updated since my previous video a couple years ago and tenez direct puts a lot of you know QuickStart literature they have a lot of you know this is a QuickStart book here but they have some other things in here you know on the VHF retrofit kit also the app and stuff like that kind of they don't give you this stuff and expect you to be an expert or to get frustrated and again it says call to learn don't return have their own helpline they have their own team that will tell you how to scan for channels which way to face it if you're unable to get it on the app and stuff they will help you they they have a whole team of tech support that will help you with this so they didn't just sell an antenna and tell you figure it out that's one good thing you know I always assume people know as much as I do but some people don't and if you're willing to learn and you want to make the change antennas direct has their own help line so check them out on the website and it's in the description in the video so let's take a look at the antenna in its completed form here this is what I would expect because I already have one took me about 35 minutes to screw the bolts together what the wind and the paper is blown around look at us here so we do have you know it comes with the little jumpers from the combiner in the middle there and they do have you know good crimped on coax fittings here with the weather tight seal boots okay this box here is the little weather strip on the bottom and keep the moisture out so far online there is ZERO moisture in that combiner box and then we open it up like brand-new women now this antenna doesn't look too terribly complicated again this is they say up to 65 mile range on this antenna and it's you know any antenna you get gonna be good for 60 to 70 miles because when they say on eBay and Amazon you know 175 miles totally wrong the curvature of the earth plus the line-of-sight for you ham radio operators that follow me you know that it can happen with certain band conditions or atmospheric conditions or propagation but the average TV you know signal antenna really isn't no more than 70 miles that you can pick up from the transmitter so basically we have a driven element this is basically your antenna and then you're going to have the reflector behind it and again the reason I wanted this on top of the bb-8 is because she really wants wesh2 and another fun fact about her location versus mine I'm about six miles north of her but I go for Orlando stations as well and West Palm she's six miles north of me I'm south of her she's closer to Orlando but I have a little more of a problem and the reason is right north of her house is like the largest manufacturer mobile home park trailer park everyone call it Barefoot Bay and I know people know where Barefoot Bay is it's like twelve miles wide it's all metal buildings in the way so I'm thinking that has a lot to do with the signal facing through Barefoot Bay and all the metal that could be interfering I'm guessing you're talking miles and miles of metal and aluminum so that may be a problem that's why I am trying to get the best out of this signal so I'm gonna put this together it only looks like there's you know not much to it I mean there's a couple bolts here couple wing nuts and that's it this is pretty easy to put together though only about ten minutes just the four spacers between the element in the front and the reflector you just screw them in with a screw and washer I mean the spacers fit right into the holes one two three I don't see why that could be any easier how that could be any easier of course if I didn't mention this is the front for those who are non antenna technical who reflect everything comes into the front here and it bounces off the reflector so this is directional that way is the way of the appointment now the clear stream five is also going to be facing in the same general direction for VHF primarily just for orlando and so the combiner taking the antenna up here running it out I'm going to run another combiner to combine which would be called a duplexer or combiner VHF on here you H on here UHF on top combined to one output to the splitter which is around the corner here so before I put this wiring back together and neaten it up this is the four port distribution amplifier see the power light on there and I'm using this line right here is going to where they used to have a TV under the bar room they used to have a TV underneath so there's just an empty coax layer that comes right out here and I'm using that connected to the outlet with the power inserter to feed power out here to the splitter and we're going to see if this does a difference because I know without this channel 9 and channel 6 we're barely coming in so as I was doing my testing so we're gonna find out if that makes a difference or not but again you want to use you know good quality crimps on here these are compression fittings here but I don't have my tool with me see this is a you know RadioShack piece that's a little too long and I'm gonna redo that but for now I got you know TV on there and cover your connectors up on the port's so you don't get moisture in there and if you have 75 ohm terminators to terminate the unused lines now to keep reflections and lost signal into the amp instead of having it you know lost where else alright let's check out the antenna point app here this is really a good app for those who want to see where your transmitters are so you can go when you first start the app but I'll give you some ideas and basics and functions on the app we're gonna go here - got it now it's going to load up by my GPS location in my phone location and you can see it shows me which way I'm pointing and where the you know near or distant transmitters would be now if you're looking at the circle here the circle in the middle represents pretty much obtainable probably with a really modest antenna - something very very small or just you know standard then the yellow circle would indicate stations that are a little bit farther away that you need just a little bit of a better antenna and then a red would be fringe that's like the edge there outside of the red you know red ring you're pretty much not getting anything and what you can see is the station's here are what I'm after right there there on the fringe area between Orlando Kissimmee you know right there there are some down south at West Palm but I says I'm not close enough to get them west palm red would negate 60 miles yellow 50 the gray 35 so I'll use the phone and I'll you know align the phone with my antenna okay so the antenna is going to be basically pointed in that direction actually what I'm probably gonna do is point it here like this okay and then I'll you know face one section of the db8 just a few degrees to the left and one of the few degrees to the right try to cover that whole area right there also in here it'll tell you towers and channels right here the local towers the range you know how far it is from you the callsign now see look VHF okay tells you two channels that's channel 10 and then if you go through it'll show you you know 50 mile radius on UHF it's got all the stations that are in your area here on the app and it'll tell you you know what kind of signal you're looking at so so now that I have my antenna set up and connected to the TVs and all that I need to do a channel scan on each one of the TVs and that's going to search through all the frequencies and see which channels I can receive and which ones are coming in now real quick a learning thing and this is what's good about antennas Direct again I can't answer thousands of comments a month that are going on that previous video and I can't answer thousands on this one but I could teach you or point you in the right direction like this website and this is another reason why I may know a lot of the stuff on this site and about these products you may not their Learning Center has a lot of information here about this but we'll go to TV station channel moves real quick on the antennas direct website now to explain to you briefly here that you know there's over a thousand TV stations must move frequencies to make room for wireless services between 2018 and 2020 now I know at my career there I've talked to some tower climbers and they are going around the country and they're making big money these companies to climb these towers at these TV stations and change out antennas and to adjust feed lines and all kinds of stuff to change frequencies you know from high UHF to low UHF or wherever they need to change and adjust their transmitters and all that you don't have to buy anything and you don't have to replace your antennas you just need to go into your menu and do a channel scan have you seen a couple of your channels recently that disappeared that's probably because they moved frequency never said anything by law I think it was supposed to be they had to warn you thirty days prior where the ticker on the bottom it says this channel is being reassigned you need to do a rescan on your TV to continue watching but I haven't seen too much of that so if you haven't scanned your channels in a year you need to do that after you watch this video because a lot of these frequencies may have not existed the last time you did that a year ago and you know you may keep your channels but get new ones now so this is just in a nutshell what they call the repack the channel repack some of the channel numbers are changing you know and the virtual channel stays the same but the RF channel change is different now that's one thing that's good on their learning center they have some other stuff here but I'll show you the FCC guide on the FCC information a website here the links are all in the description it'll show you here some reception maps also so you can see what the channel changed to after the repacked based on zip code or go to my location you I'd rather use the antenna point app and the locator on the antennas Direct website but this gives you an idea of you know where those would be and look the RF channel is 48 the repacked channel is now 14 the repacking dates are expected from October you know or it was at October 19th to January 17 says should already be done you see so that's some more information about doing a channel scan and every TV it's a different scan I've walked through a lot of those at AT&T so I know a lot of the different TVs but it's very simple you know in the menu somewhere you go to you know channels and auto program is usually what it says and give it 20 minutes and see what happens there is NBC right there that's the one channel that I added that clear stream five for and so far right there that means we're getting that channel so right there that was a proven you know it is working let's go up to 2 me TV right 6 what's the signal level on 6 now with the booster let me see here info just over half okay so without the booster it was somewhere like here as you call me and she'd say when I put the antenna up just the DB ad before and I said you know what's going on well 6 is flaky you know and you have multiple channel sixes let's do it 9 this what's the signal and 9 9 is in Orlando as well yeah look the booster is definitely making a difference that is good I'll show you my favorite channels 27 - right here love this channel it's got all the old stuff man Columbo I don't really watch The Partridge Family but I'd rather watch that than what's coming on today's day and age you know what's your garbage but Sanford sons all in the family love it Telemundo una visión if that's how you say it so my grandmother also watches 56 she likes her ion she watches her Blue Bloods you know her Criminal Minds all that stuff she's got two ion channels she also got her HSN QVC shopping all that hopefully she don't go buying stuff on the TV but definitely the clear stream 5 did give us the WESH 2 4 VHF so that was a 100% success right there to add that so here's my deviate II here and again I have one South one North the combiner for VHF UHF and that on the bottom is the clear stream fusion which is a VHF UHF panel mount that I have facing south for the NBC channel 2 now channel 5 south and west palms so that's I'm only using that for VHF overall though it's been solid and I'm continuing to use it see how I've saved thousands of dollars already idea behind this video is the fact that you know for those who want to save the money for those who don't have the money there is a way and if you can't find it on Antenna TV you can find it on Amazon or Netflix whatever but there is definitely interest and you can't argue the fact that there is interest because I'm having probably a hundred comments a day and about 5,000 views a day so people are interested and for those who say well you know I don't get my History Channel I mean I've read a lot of comments about people that say it's all garbage programs but the fact is I don't watch much TV I'm watching YouTube so you know it's just to get the local news to get some other shows something to do if you're a TV junkie maybe it's not for you but hope you enjoyed at least the effort I put into this video check out antennas direct comm I'm firm believer of their stuff and you can make your own antenna you can buy them but just don't go buy in the Amazon Chinese 150 mile range antenna that's really not gonna get you better than 30 miles 7:3 everyone this is KJ for why is the ayah

Channel: HamRadioConcepts

Views: 81,435

Keywords: free tv, ota, ota hdtv, antenna tv, cut the cord, covid19, covid-19, save money, hamradioconcepts, antennas direct, tv antenna, best tv antenna, long range tv antenna, ham radio antenna, ota hdtv free, cut the cord free tv, kj4yzi, ham radio crash course, coronavirus, free wifi, how to get free tv, how to get free cable, how to get free satellite, directv, xfinity, at&t, uverse, dtv, spectrum, install hdtv antenna, over the air hdtv, over the air antenna, clearstream

Id: uUjZBt983aQ

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020