TV antennea

MIKES342

on my 2013 260 i have a tv and antennea.  There is a light that is connected to a dc source and I think it should have a gain control somewhere.  since i do not have a manual on the antennea does anyone know what it looks like, where it might be located?

OldDogNewTrix

The power booster for our Shakespear antenna does not have a gain control. It's just a small black box where one cable goes in and another goes out. The AC cord has been cut off from factory and is always on 12V with there'd LED. Is that like yours? I'm thinking of switching it out for a more powerful one with a dial gain control.

MIKES342

There is a red light that lights up on the antennae I don't see any black box any where. On my 342 and my 270 there was a black box with a switch I don't see any thing on this 260

OldDogNewTrix

Ahh, I think Michael T wrote about the new type antennas that are powered at the antenna rather than a separate power booster. Maybe he'll chime in.

Michael T

Yes, Mike, you are correct. I'm not at home at the moment and don't have my files but you are correct. I'm not sure what year Rinker started doing it but they started using arch mounted antennas that were powered at the source. There was still the 12v"'box" in the tv cabinet but the signal was powered at the top mounted receicer "saucer". The theory was that enhancing or boosting the signal at sourse gives a better picture than boosting a degraded  signal later. As Mike noted, I mentioned the Radio Shack splitter-signal booster that I have used a lot of times in another thread (along with a picture of it). A signal booster will not help you capture a really poor signal if reception  due to poor broadcast quality in your area is really lousy, It will allow you to make adjustments to marginal reception difficulties and where the boosters really shine is if you have two or more TVs running off one good signal. It will enhance the power up to a few Db to ensure all TVs get the same clear signal. Therefore, in that application the booster maintains the good signal across multiple devices preventing a line level drop. Hoped this helped a bit - if not and I went off in the wrong direction tell me so, as I'd be happy to take a second try at the question. regards  MT   P.S. I'll tell you an idea I saw once that I thought was really creative. An old salt had bought a second sat receiver and box for his house. He had mounted the receiver on a small wooden stand. Wherever docked he placed it on the dock, oreinted it for the best signal, ran the cable to his shipboard TVs and was (with a crowd) watching Monday Night Football - no satellite receiver required. Of course he needed a stationary dock to place the receiver on but still pretty smart in my opinion.