TV Antenna for RV Options

For years, we didn't have a lot of choice when it came to antennas for television reception. Most of us relied on this old what we called the batwing for many, many years. Once the analog signal was done and the digital came out, everybody said, "Oh, I have to do some type of a different antenna." Well, this old bat wing will still work, will still receive a digital signal. It's just the difference between digital and analog is the analog we could kind of tweak the antenna around a little bit. We could get a fairly good picture and still see it. With digital, it's either on or it's off, it pixelates and it's done. So we don't get quite the distance in this that we did before. There are some enhancements. They've come out with this little piece here, they call it the wingman, to go with the older style batwing. And it simply mounts right underneath, pops in like this, we push these down and tighten them up and it would go up and do the exact same thing as the old one before, you have to directionalize it. You do have to make sure you've got it in line when you bring that system down. This'll get about twice as far as the batwing will with the new wingman in it. And now to upgrade from that, we have a couple of different versions here. This is a new Rayzar, they call it. You simply take the old batwing off the mast up on the top, you can even take one of, if you've got two of the posts up on the top, you can take one of them off so that you only have one going up. This will give you two directions so when that goes up in the air, you hook your coax to this, the backside you'll have your post coming up, and it'll have to lay down flat so it is directional. You don't want it coming down this way. But the nice part about this is it doubles the reception area but I also have on both sides, so it's a little less directional than the old style. Now, an upgrade from that even, a lot of manufacturers are going to a single mount like we see with this version here. Now there's a variety of different ones out. This one happens to be a Winegard as the rest of them are. This just sits up on the top, it sits up not very far up on the top of the roof, in fact less than your air conditioner. It's got the directional that you can, you're gonna have to move it a little bit as well but I don't have to put it up and down, I don't have to worry that I didn't put it down when I take off down the road. Now just introduced is the newer system here. And this is a Rayzar automatic. What this will do is we put this up on the roof. We replace the old antenna, they've a plate that will go in and to cover the hole that was in here we've got the three legs. And then inside, we just go in and hit a search button. And this will rotate around and find the towers. And you've got to remember that we may know that there's larger cities that have a TV channel in our local areas, but that tower may be located someplace completely different. So this is going to go around and search for the towers. It's going to give you three positions. Number one will have the most towers available, number two, and number three. And then when you do your TV search, it will automatically find those channels. So if I want to switch from ABC to CBS, it'll automatically go find that, I don't have to move it around. A nice new product that came out in the market by Winegard. And then if I really want to rough it, one of the antennas I can do is a satellite antenna. This happens to be the Pathway by Winegard. The nice thing about this, I can either permanently mount this if I want or I can use it portable. So if I get into a location that I can't do my roof satellite even, I can take this one, hook into that service center where I've got the coax and then take this out past the trees or building or wherever it's at. I can use it temporarily tailgating, anything. So a nice option. Now, the last antenna I want to show you is just this portable version right here. And this is designed for a place that you want to, you know, maybe you want to pop a TV in the bedroom. You don't have coax back there, you want to use it temporarily in some place. I can just hook this flat panel right on with these suction cups to a window and then plug it in. It does have an amplifier. I do have to have a 120 volt source to amplify this, but I just have a coax that goes in the TV. I tried it in our office where we typically don't get much reception at all and I was able to pull in about 10 different stations. Digital stations looked great. Just again, a good portable. So you've got a variety of different antennas available, got a variety of different price points, permanent mount ones or just upgrades to the regular ones. And you may not watch a lot of television, but it's always good to have some reception to be able to see whether, if you have any natural disasters coming in, any emergencies in your area that you need to know about. Now you have the antennas to extend the reach and see more television.