Hi,

Any advice on resolving this issue would be gratefully received!

I thought i would be the dutiful son and over Christmas i purchased a UHF Aerial for my Dad as a gift.

He lives in Pakuranga, in a dip where there is no direct line of sight to the Waitakeries. Up until now he has been watching Sky digital(via Dish) on TV, which has been fine but the picture quality is no where near as good as Digital HD. He recently bought an new TV (DSE brand) and a Panasonic "My Freeview" hard drive recorder, so It made sense to see if we could get him a better picture for his new TV. So I looked on the Freeview site, put his address in and it said that with a high aerial that it was probable to get Freeview HD.

I purchased a new 93 element high gain UHF 'Yagi' style aerial from Jay Car, new Coax RGB6 Cable and connectors etc (about 15 meters used) and have installed the aerial on a high mast (telescopic) on his flat iron roof. We used a DVB-T signal meter and found that I could only get '50' dBuv (whatever that is?) on the meter, almost regardless of where I pointed the aerial.

The only time the 'meter' went higher than 50, was when a neighbor started their lawnmower (or weedeater), and it shot up to between 60-80 for a brief moment- but this may just be a coincidence?

In the end, I looked at all the neighbors antennas, and pointed Dad's one in the same basic direction (still a solid '50' on the meter). We tried to tune the TV in and it picked up all channels except for TV1 & TV2 (and the '+'1, versions). So we connected the Panasonic My Freeview hard drive as we suspected that it would have a better quality tuner than the DSE TV), and it tuned in all channels, straight away, however it did say that signal quality on TV1 & TV2 were only 7 out of 10, but that strength was 100%.

We noticed that the picture on TV1 and TV2 would sometimes pixulate for a moment or two, but i put that down to the mast moving around. We secured the mast with solid struts and everything was fine for a couple of hours., - all channels crystal clear without pixulation. Yippee i thought!

However, later that night and now, regardless of 'retuning' several times, we can not get Tv1, TV2, TV1+1 or TV2+1. all the other channels seem fine? I don't think the antenna has moved direction (it is up very high and does wobble a little bit in the wind).

I feel a bit rude asking an installer for advice - but wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem and how it was resolved?

I know with my own install (done by a professional) where I live in Karaka, he had to fit a 'Power' injector, however I think that is because my antenna is inside the roof cavity?

Do You think I need something else to make the system work so that it will pick up the signals, or do we need to just try a different type of antenna (maybe phased array).

Any help, pointers or suggestions gratefully received.