# Best indoor antenna for VHF station



## enjoywatchingTV (Dec 18, 2018)

Hello all,
I live in the Philly market and I have hard time receiving WDPN:
WDPN-TV - Wikipedia

I did discover locast.org started Philly market service and surprisingly carries the main signal (MeTV) of WDPN. However, I'm a bit greedy and want to get all it's subchannels includes Decades TV, and be able to record them, so my best option is getting it over the air. I'm not far from the Roxborough TV farm. I would like an indoor antenna as I'm in an apartment, and I was wondering if any are suitable for VHF digital channels?

Is the Smartenna+ advisable, or something else?
Buy Smartenna+ Amplified Indoor TV Antenna | Channel Master CM-3001HD


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

Channel 2 is the longest wave VHF channel. In order to build a 1/2 wave tuned antenna for channel 2 reception it must be 2.5 meters long, tip to tip or about 97 inches. That is your first problem.

The second one is that Channel 2 is fraught with interference from all sorts of common ordinary things especially around city life, like power transformers , air conditioner motors, all sorts of stuff generates RF noise at or near 57 MHz where channel 2 resides.

Being near may present problems also, in the form of multipath, that makes multiple versions of the signal arrive at your tuner slightly out of phase, sometimes cancelling themselves out. Re-orienting or moving your antenna may help with this problem.

Few solutions here just reasons for your troubles.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Reconsider to put your VHF antenna outside... under window, at a porch, etc


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## jimmie57 (Jun 26, 2010)

enjoywatchingTV said:


> Hello all,
> I live in the Philly market and I have hard time receiving WDPN:
> WDPN-TV - Wikipedia
> 
> ...


That has some good specs but it appears to be pretty expensive.
I bought one of these for my mother. FLATenna: Best Rated Indoor Antenna | Channel Master
She had TV stations scattered around her about 16 miles away. This got all of them with very good pictures. It is so cheap that if it does not work for you it could just be tossed. I put hers in/on a window.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

Even Channel Master leaves me a little skeptical about such a small antenna being able to capture such a long wave, like riding the pipeline in a skateboard.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Stay away from those fancy "HDTV Antennas" that many times are either optimized for UHF only or only go down to VHF-Ho. If you're close enough to the Roxborough farm get a classic VHF Rabbit Ears/UHF Loop combo, although all bets are off if your apartment faces the opposite direction.

I don't know how old your building is, but if your building still has a master antenna on the roof, you might have a functioning connector somewhere in your apartment, which should also be good for VHF 2 since during the analog era CBS was on VHF 3.


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## TedHTL (May 3, 2019)

This was by far the best advice I’ve gotten to receive Philly stations. I went through four fancy, expensive HD antennas until I took this advice. A simple, unamplified, RCA HD compact antenna did the trick. I’m even getting WDPN. Thank you!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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