Adding to what has been said... there was another thread a few weeks ago on TV reception antennas.
Another reason VHF
marine antennas don't work well for TV besides the very narrow bandwidth VHF marine antennas are design for is that they are vertically polarized while TV transmissions are horizontally polarized. This 'cross-polarization' results in tremendous reduction of reception ( -20 dB). That reduction is akin to a 100 watt light bulb shutting down to a candle flickering. And, while there are still a few TV stations still near VHF, the far majority of TV station were shifted to UHF frequencies during the US shift to all digital tv. This makes using a VHF marine antenna almost invisible to the majority of today's TV stations.
While there are several marine options for good TV reception, size and height matters. I use a Shakespeare 2030 which looks like a 22" Frisbee and is mounted 40' at top of my mizzen
mast. I get 60 station program viewing options and I'm 45 miles from closest tv station here on eastern shore of
Chesapeake Bay.
I have mizzen steps which allowed me to
experiment with four different popular marine tv antennas and differences in performance with mounting height. The options that were 9" in diameter received less than half the stations and I noticed many of them would fade out or not work on rainy days... just when you want pass the time.
The absolute best location is above the mast/ everything on the mast. To do this I had a bracket made to offset my spare VHF antenna that had the mizzen's real estate and the Shakesphere 2030 took over the original VHF mount using a standard threaded 12" extension that marine stores sells in their antenna area.
Without steps it would be a tedious DYI
project but for months over the
Winter, I just hauled the antenna up using the
spinnaker halyard and used the dangling TV lean-in coax tied out on bow to keep
winter winds from banging the antenna against mast. But at my first wx window after the new VHF antenna bracket was ready, I got the VHF repositioned, and the 2030 mounted and pulled the new tv coax (as well as new VHF coax) down inside the mast. With a helper down below it took about an hour for the work up top.
As I said in the other post, my experience here in
Chesapeake Bay area (much is very remote) and my brother's experience up/ down
ICW to Ft Lauderdale... you'll almost always have 20-60 channel/ programs. In almost every area here and along
ICW is one or more TV stations that use one of their 4-5 sub-TV channels for a dedicated 24/7 wx channel channel w/ live local wx and 200 mile+ wx
radar. Even though my sailboat has
radar, it's hard to get more than 24 mile range which only gives you a 30 minute ahead of time view of a violent Summer thunderstorm moving 50 kts (which we get all the time here in Chesapeake area). Having a 200 mile radar available/ wx analysis at the end of your tv
remote anytime, especially during your late night viewing or during morning coffee/ breakfast assures up to date planning/ and day of departure updates. Of course most of us are using iPhones/ Android devices for access to wx maps/ forecasts. But it seems more accurate when it's coming come a local
weather person familiar with the area/
history and in our case the unique aspects of the areas Bay
water, effects of nearby ocean, & western MD mountains.
Many cruisers/ friends who have been on the
boat have dropped their lusting for
satellite tv
installation after seeing the HD pix quality/ programming choice that's for free after completing a good antenna
installation. One of the best 'nice to have' cruising projects I've done.
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