Nuevo TV aerial

My wife and I own a Nuevo EK two berth, bought new and registered in 2010. Last week my television would not re-tune when we moved onto another site in Devon. We had no problem earlier in our holiday. On returning home I contacted Avtex who manufactured the TV. They advised me to test the TV using our home digital aerial. It worked. Therefore, I am assuming that there must be a problem with the roof mounted Teleco TV aerial which was fitted as standard to the vehicle.
Any advice, suggestions as to what I should do would be gratefully received. However, if the problem cannot be solved, any further advice on which basic TV aerial should be fitted would equally be appreciated.

Jaime 007 wrote:They advised me to test the TV using our home digital aerial. It worked. Therefore, I am assuming that there must be a problem with the roof mounted Teleco TV aerial which was fitted as standard to the vehicle.

It may have been a locality problem, which is easily eliminated.

The TV works on your home aerial, so assuming you keep the van at home, try it again using the van aerial. If it works you were in very poor signal area in Devon. If it doesn't work, then it probably is a fault with the van aerial.

Hope this helps.

Try a sausage on a piece of string, preferable to any omni-directional aerial I have found.  

There are quite a few others like myself who have the exact same issue, this topic crops up quite often, and if the issue persists in other locations, you may want to look at getting a dish and using the satellite capability on your Avtex as a solution.

Try aerial in the search box.

Phil

Hi  

phil1855 wrote:Try a sausage on a piece of string, preferable to any omni-directional aerial I have found.  

I disagree! Total waste of a sausage. Just use the piece of string - cook the sausage.      

Brod

brodco wrote:Hi  

phil1855 wrote:Try a sausage on a piece of string, preferable to any omni-directional aerial I have found.  

I disagree! Total waste of a sausage. Just use the piece of string - cook the sausage.      

Brod

That's incredible. My wife has just informed me that sausages are on the menu for tonight's meal.

Jaime 007 wrote:

brodco wrote:Hi  

phil1855 wrote:Try a sausage on a piece of string, preferable to any omni-directional aerial I have found.  

I disagree! Total waste of a sausage. Just use the piece of string - cook the sausage.      

Brod

That's incredible. My wife has just informed me that sausages are on the menu for tonight's meal.

Did she send you a signal   Now you know why we have square sausages in Scotland, you get much better reception  

As others have said, getting a signal on terrestrial tv is very often difficult. It's worth checking on line to see what kind of coverage there is in the area you are visiting and whether the signal is transmitted horizontally or vertically (h or v). It does make a difference if you get your aerial set up right before tuning the telly in.

We are back to using our Avtex 3000 aerial here in Portsoy and only receiving none BBC channels, we thought our new status aerial was the bees knees, however this year we haven't been getting a very good reception from it see how it goes at Rosemarkie .
Boaby

Jaime 007 wrote:My wife and I own a Nuevo EK two berth, bought new and registered in 2010. Last week my television would not re-tune when we moved onto another site in Devon. We had no problem earlier in our holiday. On returning home I contacted Avtex who manufactured the TV. They advised me to test the TV using our home digital aerial. It worked. Therefore, I am assuming that there must be a problem with the roof mounted Teleco TV aerial which was fitted as standard to the vehicle.
Any advice, suggestions as to what I should do would be gratefully received. However, if the problem cannot be solved, any further advice on which basic TV aerial should be fitted would equally be appreciated.

Take the aerial off and sell on e-bay and buy a vision plus and your problems are over. The one i got is directional and it has given no problems even in poor reception areas.

wondera wrote:

Jaime 007 wrote:My wife and I own a Nuevo EK two berth, bought new and registered in 2010. Last week my television would not re-tune when we moved onto another site in Devon. We had no problem earlier in our holiday. On returning home I contacted Avtex who manufactured the TV. They advised me to test the TV using our home digital aerial. It worked. Therefore, I am assuming that there must be a problem with the roof mounted Teleco TV aerial which was fitted as standard to the vehicle.
Any advice, suggestions as to what I should do would be gratefully received. However, if the problem cannot be solved, any further advice on which basic TV aerial should be fitted would equally be appreciated.

Take the aerial off and sell on e-bay and buy a vision plus and your problems are over. The one i got is directional and it has given no problems even in poor reception areas.

Thank you Wondera for your comments. Which Vision Plus model would you recommend?

I don't want to cast doom and gloom, but we had a Vision Plus on the previous van and it was about as much use as a chocolate tea pot.

We don't bother much with TV when we are away in the van, so I never took the trouble to investigate the problem. It could have been a faulty aerial, or perhaps more likely something wrong with the leads built into the van.

We now have a Teleco, and that gives an equally underwhelming performance!! 

I've come to the conclusion that the TV signal varies so much from one area to another that the low level, very compact aerials on vans often don't stand a chance of picking up a good signal.

The only ones which seem to work at all well are those used mostly by tuggers, mounted on a long pole fixed to their A Frame. These are basically domestic antennae very much like this one.  The gain on these must be far greater than any of the tiny models fitted to van roofs.

My tugger friend has one, and he almost never fails to get a good signal. 

One thing that would help a lot is if commercial site owners and the big clubs could give us a clue which direction the signal is being generated from. It would save us doing the "which way are the aerials pointing" dance, where we bob and twist, trying to see the tops of other vans  

Hi  
Have you noticed that discussions on aerials on the forum always end in disagreement and confusion?  

wondera wrote:Take the aerial off and sell on e-bay and buy a vision plus and your problems are over. The one i got is directional and it has given no problems even in poor reception areas.

Gromit wrote:I don't want to cast doom and gloom, but we had a Vision Plus on the previous van and it was about as much use as a chocolate tea pot.

If you look at the reviews on Amazon (other sites are available) you'll see exactly the same polarized views about the same aerial - any aerial!.

The problem is that field strength  varies so much that it's impossible to compare aerials unless they are in exactly the same place at the same time and under exactly the same conditions. A college of mine who lives in the coast only gets  a decent signal when the tide is out (or in I can't remember which) and so lives in a good signal area twice a day and a poor signal area twice a day.  Solved by going to cable.

Somebody that always visits locations near cities or areas of large population is probably ok with an omnidirectional and won't see what the problem is. Someone (like me) that goes to out of the way places will find no aerial works and the default is "no signal".

Another problem is what is a poor signal area? You can have a very strong signal here a TV works without an aerial connected and a no signal area where no aerial works and everything in between. Every aerial will have a point where the signal will drop out it's just a case of at what level. The more gain you have the more likely you are to get a signal.

Gromit wrote:These are basically domestic antennae very much like this one.  The gain on these must be far greater than any of the tiny models fitted to van roofs. .

I agree. Not sure about the "far" but even a small increase in gain can make all the difference. I think one of the problems comparing aerials by spec is the great "dB" con. The figures tend to be meaningless.  The aerial needs to pull in a minimum signal level to feed to the amplifier and how well it can do this is indicated by the aerial gain.

It then gets amplified by an amplifier that has its own gain figure. Most manufactures normally quote is aerial gain plus amplifier gain so a low gain aerial and high gain amplifier can look the same as a high(er) gain aerial and a lower gain amplifier. The latter will be more effective even if the published gain figure is the same.

It's been referenced many times in the past but the ATV tutorial is well worth a read:

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/touringaerials.html

Brod

Askit wrote:One thing that would help a lot is if commercial site owners and the big clubs could give us a clue which direction the signal is being generated from. It would save us doing the "which way are the aerials pointing" dance, where we bob and twist, trying to see the tops of other vans  

I have an app on my android, it is called "DVB-T UK".
It uses the gps and compass on the phone to list the transmitters, after selecting one you place the phone on the palm of your hand and turn around until the compass setting turns green, that is the direction to point the aerial.
Of course you need a directional aerial.

Thanks Brod. Very informative.

No deliberate disagreement from me, although I guess that's what it counts as.  I was more concerned with passing on my observations before anyone spent a fair amount of cash - only to find they had no significant improvement.

The "Tugger" type aerials (shown in the photo) do seem to be streets ahead of the rooftop ones, but we watch so little TV in the van I can't be bothered with one. It wouldn't be much of a problem to mount a pole on the bike rack though. I've seen several set up like that, and they can be set up and running in just a few minutes.

Like you, we tend to avoid the city sites, so I concluded that the choice was simple. Either accept the storage and set up problems of a domestic antenna aerial, or don't bother at all. Having a small van and being of an idle disposition on holiday, we chose the latter! 

Hi

Gromit wrote:No deliberate disagreement from me, although I guess that's what it counts as.  I was more concerned with passing on my observations before anyone spent a fair amount of cash - only to find they had no significant improvement. !

I wasn't suggesting that you or anyone else was disagreeing deliberately. Just that peoples experience can be very different with the same aerial. In fact you've summed up in one sentence what it took me a page to say.

Gromit wrote:The "Tugger" type aerials (shown in the photo) do seem to be streets ahead of the rooftop ones, but we watch so little TV in the van I can't be bothered with one. It wouldn't be much of a problem to mount a pole on the bike rack though. I've seen several set up like that, and they can be set up and running in just a few minutes.

I agree that a cheap domestic aerial (probably with an amplifier) is likely to outperform any caravan type aerial and at much lower cost. Let's face it all caravan aerials are pretty grott in the scheme of things (puts tin hat on).   What they have going for them is convenience as opposed to performance.

Size is everything!  As a rule of thumb the gain of an aerial is related to its directivity (think looking through a telescope).  The more elements it has the more directional it is and the more elements it has the larger is. Caravan aerials are just too small  but probably the best compromise bearing in mind that you couldn't sensibly carry a full size high gain aerial and most people probably couldn't be bothered with a small domestic aerial and a pole.

Although mostly replaced by a satellite dish nowadays you still see houses in the countryside around here  with a pole getting on for twice the height of the house with a massive aerial on top and with a masthead amplifier fitted. A little caravan aerial has no change in this sort of area.

Brod.

brodco wrote:Hi

Gromit wrote:No deliberate disagreement from me, although I guess that's what it counts as.  I was more concerned with passing on my observations before anyone spent a fair amount of cash - only to find they had no significant improvement. !

I wasn't suggesting that you or anyone else was disagreeing deliberately. Just that peoples experience can be very different with the same aerial. In fact you've summed up in one sentence what it took me a page to say.

Never thought you were (  ) but it's easy to misconstrue the written word so I thought I would elaborate the point.

Cheers

Hi  the model i use is vision plus status 570. i have fitted 4 of this model in last 18 months(2 for my self and 2 for friends)and had no problems.

wondera wrote:Hi  the model i use is vision plus status 570. i have fitted 4 of this model in last 18 months(2 for my self and 2 for friends)and had no problems.

Have you and your friends used them out in the sticks Wondera?

Based on Brod's very useful information, that could be quite significant. If they have been used only in or near residential areas you would expect to get a decent signal. Out in the wilds it may well be an entirely different matter! 

If you are using the normal useless type aerial then you need to download the app for your phone which locates the nearest transmitter or repeater and if they are horizontal or vertically polarised

roli wrote:If you are using the normal useless type aerial then you need to download the app for your phone which locates the nearest transmitter or repeater and if they are horizontal or vertically polarised

Well......... I have certainly created a lot of discussion and comment on this subject since my first post a few days ago. Thank you so much to each and everyone of you for taking the trouble to send in your contributions.

I downloaded 3 different apps to my phone and tablet to find transmitters but none worked, the direction arrow just went around to whichever way I pointed it. Then I found out that neither my phone (Motorola) or my tablet (Lenovo) have built in compasses. No wonder they don't work. I now use the little box that you plug your aerial into and turn the aerial until I get the most lights illuminated.

I do not know what you call "going out in the sticks" but i do go to Lake District,mid Wales,Scotland,and have not had a lot of issues but you sometimes do not get all of the channels you would get near a city. Hope this helps

Just a little postscript. When camping at Hawes, last week, we connected the external aerial socket on the van to the pillar and got really good reception. Thereafter, we moved to a site in the Lake District which has new, fully serviced pitches. I tried the connection from the van to the pillar and got nothing so used the flat aerial adaptor to get a feed from the pillar to the tv, result was getting over 100 stations (for all of the three days we were there).

So what, I hear you ask. Well, the warden came over on our last day to tell us the aerial boxes on the pillars had not been connected up yet  

Just in case you have missed the obvious - assuming you have the little aerial amplifier in the wardrobe, check there is power to it (LED light on) and then check that the little knob that adjusts the gain is turned fully up.  It might have got knocked/adjusted taking clothes in and out of the wardrobe.

Status aerial worked fine in Rosemarkie , back to the Avtex at Portsoy, booming through here at Dunnet bay.
Boaby