TV Antenna

Des,

My van came with a Majestic 12volt TV and UFO X Antenna.
It is mounted on a Supa Peg tent pole (with the locking screw on the outside) at the rear of the van and depending on where you are there is no set up just turn the TV on and away you go. If we are away from town we raise the pole up and down till we get a signal. The antenna is omni directional so you either have a signal or you don't. The antenna has a "power head" that requires power which we run through the same 12 volt circuit that powers the cig lighter for the TV so power to the TV means power to the Antenna... done

Enjoy

T-Bar type , best thing since sliced bread...gets good reception ,(travelled around oz with ours and if there was a reception to be got, we got it) omni directional, lightweight, easy to put up , packs up into a nice neat well made bag and takes up sweet b...ger all room..cheers

T-Bars...from Dick Smith

My antenna is somewhere on the great central road. Fell of the roof rack. Replaced it yesterday with a Happy Wanderer, the one with the two plastic rings and the fold out bars.
Better than the old one a does not need an amplifier.
I use a USB Eye TV tuner on the laptop.

In the not so distant past, TV antennas by necessity where large things.....for good performance on channel 2 they needed to be about 8 feet across the back eliments.

just about all antennas came folded up in boxes or bags and required assembly.

now with the digital restack and the abandoning of band 1 & 2 for television in capitol cities and more or less all reigonaly TV going UHF, TV antennas have go a hell of a lot smaller.

a lot of TV antennas now come completely assembled.

On VHF...for most capitol cities, the predomonatng design these days is the twin beam log periodic....a good high gain VHF only example like the Fracarro LP4F is about 2 feet across the back and about 2 feel long and pretty light...and it gives about 9db gain....and cheap as chips

On UHF there are Three antennas that are known performers the yagi, the log periodic and the phased aray or cake rack.

The Yagi tends to need a rear reflector so does not pack flat

The twin beam log periodic like the Fracarro LP4F and it coppeis comes assembeld and is about 2 feet long about a foot wide and produces arround 10Db gain on UHF band 4 with no electronics..if you want compact....you will not get more performance in the space than one of these.

The phased array.....they look like a cake rack with a couple of bow tie eliments in front is a known good performer...like the WISI EE06 and its coppies.....but they are less compact than the log periodic for performamce delivered.

As for the T antennas that look like a couple of bits of conduit glued together in someones back yard.....they have been a joke in the aerial business for years.
you could build the actual aerial part out of a coat hanger in about 10 minutes and they are dependent on the amplifier for any performamce that they produce.

If you need an amplifier....buy a decent one from a decent manufacturer like Kingray.

There has always and there will always be joke antennas being sold in the caravan market......unfortunately lots of people are convinced that they are wonderfull.....sorry...they just arent.

Buy a decent aerial and a decent booster if you need one.

cheers

I purchased a Happy Wander tee bar antenna for the caravan some time ago.
It had substandard reception when compared to the conventional type mounted on my house. Sold it on Gumtree for about 1/3 of its original price and stuck with a satellite disk.

I use a extendable pool leaf cleaner (brunnigs) $27 , on our fold up antenna,
fita neatly in C T

The original question was info from anyone with a Foldaway. This forum has been hijacked.

Had a Foldaway TV aerial for 8 years and it was very good. Got it when purchased a new van in 2006. Sold that van earlier this year & we let it go with the van as our new van had a built in one.
We had better reception than lots of others, particularly Wineguard.