Winegard SS-1000 SquareShooter UHF Only Digital/Analog/HDTV TV Antenna System (SS-1000)

 

Winegard’s newest digital antenna. A true technological break-through and Innovations award winner. It’s the Best designed, Best-built, Best performing, Best looking, Easiest to install, Urban/metropolitan HDTV antenna available. An absolutely unique antenna with unlimited installation options. Fast and easy installation, Requiring no assembly. Because of its revolutionary design, it offers multiple mounting solutions for the best digital TV reception up to 50 miles out. Can be easily mounted using familiar DBS satellite antenna hardware, on Walls, Fascias, Roofs, Railings, Over a Satellite Dish, In the attic, On patios, Almost any place an installer needs to place it.

The latest DTV set-top boxes show significant improvements in receiving DTV signals, particularly with respect to multipath echoes that can in some cases prevent successful reception. However, antenna characteristics are still an important part of the whole system. While difficult DTV reception can often be overcome using high gain and directional Yagi, logperiodic, or multi-element bow tie antennas, these tend to be expensive, large and suitable only for outdoors or attic mounting. There continues to be a need for small antennas optimized for DTV reception in urban environments, where signal strengths may be good but multipath is frequently a problem.

At the Consumer Electronics Show this year the Winegard Company introduced a compact antenna specifically for DTV reception in urban locations but with the ability to receive signals over longer distances. The SS-1000 “SquareShooter™” design won a CES Innovations Award in the Design and Engineering Showcase. Winegard says that the SquareShooter utilizes non-traditional electromagnetic antenna design for superior performance and, at the same time, provides that new contemporary “look and feel” desired by DTV/HDTV consumers, and states that it will outperform all but the largest high-band VHF/UHF directional antenna systems.

The SS-1000 is specified as having an average gain of 4.5dB from 470–806 MHz with an average VSWR of 1.3:1. Its achieves these results in a compact design the antenna uses a “sinuous” element. This is based on earlier designs for military antennas, with element size and spacing adjusted for TV broadcast frequencies. Increased front-to-back ratio is obtained using a rear "scatter plane" to block signals from the back of the antenna. The good front-to-back ratio, absence of side lobes, and quite narrow acceptance angle should all contribute to excellent performance under multipath conditions. A key feature of the sinuous antenna is its equal sensitivity to signals of all polarizations – a technique suggested by others but not previously implemented in a consumer product. Field tests have shown that, as well as providing rejection of multipath echoes when receiving the main signal, the antenna allows reception in urban environments using a signal reflected from an adjacent building. The antenna has no internal preamplifier. However, Winegard has a new external preamp (HDP-269) for DTV with very uniform gain over the full band and excellent intermodulation performance, which is suggested for long feeder runs.

The SquareShooter antenna element is produced using conductive ink that is screen-printed onto a polycarbonate base. The element is housed in an enclosure size 16” x 16” x 4” suitable for indoor or outdoor use, with a wide range of mounting options.