Welcome maanpa, enjoy here and out in the playground, be sure to check out all sections of this great forum as there are a lot of very intelligent and knowledgable people here, there is also a bit of fun along the way.

As to your question, I'm not sure what you mean by a "Foldaway Antenna", I have a antenna like one you use for a house that I just carry in the back of the tug, I also have one of those round ones "Saturn" antenna that is in a box in the Avan but never see's the light of day anymore.

I am going to keep an eye on this thread as I would like a GOOD smaller antenna really.

Whatever you decide on, enjoy and,

Welcome to the forum.
We have one of the Ebay ones below. They are cheap ($27), have an inbuilt amplifier that works, long aerial cord, included 240/12v power supply and they fold down to a small size. They are not as well built as ones 10 times the cost but you cannot beat the price and excellent reception IMHO.
We've used ours for a year now with no trouble. It mounts on a portable clamp at the top of our Avan and we rotate it to wherever the reception is best.
Good Luck
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Caravan-Boat-HD-VHF-UHF-FM-TV-Antenna-w-Booster-EM900-/390362884293?pt=AU_Television_Accessories&hash=item5ae370e8c5

 

 

One of the reasons for going camping is to get away from the 'everyday humdrum', and for some that also means getting away from TV - however, 'the Boss' likes her night-time TV. We had a small cheap no-name LCD TV that was used in the kitchen, but before we could really do much with it, it died.  When looking for a decent replacement we found a TEAC flatscreen HD 19" with built-in DVD player for a good price, this set has a 240v/12v power adaptor lead, but when we take it in the Aliner, I leave the bulky 240v/12v adaptor at home - I got a suitable 12v only lead from Jaycar Electronics, and we only use the TV on 12v (36w), this way it is still usable if we have a campsite without 240v power. Normally it resides at home in the kitchen, but when we go camping, it gets put in the Aliner and travels on top of the bed, snugly packed down with pillows to protect it. Once the Aliners' setup, we place it either on the top of the right hand front locker, or it can be moved to the top of the cupboard between the bed and the entry door. We both take a couple of our favourite DVD' each, just in case we can't get suitable TV reception, or the daily programs on offer are garbage (which they mostly are !).

Now the TV aerial has been an 'interesting'experiment - looking through various camping suppliers and magazines, I was attracted to an ad for the Foldaway TV antenna, and the fact that they had a special version for A-frame campers to lift the aerial above the peaked roof - so I bought one. I fitted it so the vertical mast sat neatly between the kitchen window and the front window on that side (see photo in my Avatar) - the mast and mounting are made of plastic - the base of the mast is mounted to the side of the camper just below the hinge line, the top is clipped into a C-clip mounted on the side of the front roof section - then the antenna is attached to one of four plastic tubing (read electrical conduit) sections which plug together to make a mast about 2.5m high, the cable is then fed through and the other three tubes added, the bottom of the mast is then clipped into the wall mount and locked into position, then the top part of the mast pushed into the C-clip to steady it. The actual antenna itself is simply a pair of 'adjustable rabbit ears' which can be angled to suit.

Rather than using a through-wall connector with 'signal sapping' cable joins each side, Foldaway have a hollow wall duct called the Direct Connector - this has a weatherproof plug on the outside, you open the plug, push the cable through the wall to the inside of the van, run the cable to suit, then plug the cable directly into the TV - this means there is a continuous cable from the TV antenna to the TV set without intermediate joints. So far so good! I drilled for the Direct Connector through the wall just to the right of the sink area (looking from inside) so the cable could be easily run along the back of the sink/fridge, behind the dinette seat cushion to the front right locker top, where the TV is normally placed. The cable is held in place with a few small white stick-on cable clips - these open out, the cable is pushed in, and they clip shut to hold the cable - it is also easy to unclip the cable when packing up. By coming through the wall at this location, if we wanted, we could rerun the cable down beside the edge of the mattress, across the end of the aisle, tucked underneath the outer edge of bed base, and up the side cupboard near the door - this gives us two easy TV and cable positions to suit how we want to watch TV that time.

We went to our first campsite at Cotton Tree - now here is the best test of TV antennas around - Cotton Tree is notorious for bad TV reception, as the park is filled with trees - unless you can get a site away from the trees, or can get a 'clear shot' window looking towards the transmitters at Coolum, the TV reception is, well, at best, atrocious! All we could get was the 5 analogue channels with high degree of snowiness.  No matter how I twisted and angled the antenna, the reception didn't improve. I got talking with a few camp neighbours to see what their reception was like, and many of them had small flat aluminium antennas. Several said, "Oh yes, TV around here is bad unless you get one of the Phaselink antennas from the Cotton Tree Caravanning Bait and Tackle shop in King St. They sell a Phaselink with 6m cable for about $60" - you fit it to your existing mast - if you need longer than 6m, they will make you up one on the spot for a modest extra price. We had ours made up to 7m to allow variations of position of both the TV and antenna.

 

UPDATE - Cotton Tree Caravanning Bait and Tackle shop has new owners, and the Phaselink antenna is no longer available.

A possible alternative antenna is available from Jaycar - 

http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=LT3138&form=CAT2&SUBCATID=1016#4

 

So, I went and bought a Phaselink, removed the Foldaway antenna and cable (but kept the plastic mast, mountings and Direct Connector) and fitted the Phaselink instead - I retained the exact same antenna position on the Aliner and pointed it in the same direction as before. WOW! What a difference, not only did we get the 5 analogue channels, but all the 16 digital channels as well, even 4 stereo radio channels! And with great clarity, sound and colour! Needless to say the Foldaway is back in its storage tube languishing in the back of our garage, probably never to see the light of day again!

One small hint that I have found - if you frequent commercial caravan parks, many will have a detailed park site map on their websites - the better ones even have a direction arrow on the map showing where to point your TV antenna - why don't all parks do this?

At some stage in the future, I'll look into replacing the plastic mast with a tubular metal one, probably mounted at the front, clamped to the drawbar A-frame (I was originally thinking in terms of clamping the antenna mast to the rear spare wheel carrier bracket, but I've now used this location to mount the reversing camera).

PS - the aerial shown on my van in the avatar is the Phaselink unit mounted on the Foldaway mast.

-- Edited by ShortNorth on Sunday 20th of October 2013 07:38:33 PM

Hi
We too have a foldaway and have never had a problem with reception .Usually picks up most digital channels and always ABC
Cheers

Welcome maanpa to our community. Following with interest too.

Peter

Hi John

I don't mind paying if they WORK.  Have already returned one which I tried out at home. Cheapie from Good Guys

Thanks, will look them up

Regards

Joy

A fold Away antenna came with the van we recently purchased. They have a high rating and are manufactured by Camec in Caloundra Qld, reasonably priced. My only problem was my external port and probably the internal wiring to the TV so I rang Terry from Camec (see web site camec.com.au) who advised a Direct connector about $35 and an amplifier (optional but handy if off grid). 

There is a great app. for your phone called (DTV Antennas), it is free and when you pull up and not sure of TV signal direction just open this app. and it will show the channels and the direction for the best signal strength.

Works well

gdayjr wrote:

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FMC wrote:

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There is a great app. for your phone called (DTV Antennas), it is free and when you pull up and not sure of TV signal direction just open this app. and it will show the channels and the direction for the best signal strength.

Works well

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 My android phone does not find any such app?

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 DTV Antennas. I have it installed on my Android Samsung. Search Play Store.

No mention of how the antennas here perform with Vertical Reception, which can become rather tricky in many locations that transmit vertical polarity only.

For instance do these antennas need to be reconfigured to suit Vertical Transmissions or are they the same as the Wineguard Sensar HV which is designed for Dual Transmission Polarity without reconfiguring.

Would be interested to hear from those campers that have received reception from vertical polarity transmitters.

The app, DTV Antennas, provides polarity information.