I have a GE 34700 aerial with electrical enhancement. It has a flat plate, and dipole antennas. I seem to get the best reception when I aim the whole antenna 90 degrees from where I know the stations are.
I don’t know why. All the instructions i have seen say you should aim a dipole antenna AT the station, not 90 degrees from it.
Are you pointing the panel at the signals, with the dipoles perpendicular to them?
The panel should face the source. The rabbit ears will ultimately be positioned based on empirical performance: try & see. I don’t think they make any difference in most settings as they were for VHF stations that have been made obsolete. But sometimes weird stuff seems to help pull in a weak signal without explaination and wiggling the antenna for better reception is a tradition from before Revolutionary War times.
This is all old analog signal, VHS home remedies, but…
My old house was in a long, narrow valley that blocked the direct line-of-sight signals from the stations. After much time on the roof my father found an angle that seemed to “bank shot” a usable signal off a large building.
I understand people who lived in Manhattan had a lot of trouble getting signals from the Empire State Building because of the blockage from other skyscrapers, so they resorted to the same kind of twisting and turning.
A dipole has maximum gain perpendicular to its length. So a horizontal dipole’s long axis should point 90 degrees away from the source.
This works in free space. In a building or with a lot of clutter around the signal field may be very distorted, and the best signal found at weird angles. Hence how impossible rabbit ears antennas can be.
There can be complicating issues with the direction of polarisation. Mostly TV signals are horizontally polarised, so the dipole should be horizontal.
This is a reply to all of you: Dear friends, the majority of the towers are 108-115 degrees from my location. I seem to be getting my best reception with the panel pointed 190 degrees! I wonder why? I think I will try removing the dipoles, since they are mainly for VHF. Jim
Dear Jnglmassiv, thanks, See reply to all… Jim
Dear Friends, I disabled the dipoles and aimed the panel at approximately 108-115 degrees from my location. 108-115 degrees is the direction to the towers of all the major stations here.
Guess what? Still need a little tweaking for the individual stations, but the reception is much better. I think the dipoles were interfering. Jim C