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We received a nice note and beautiful antenna installation photos from ZapperBox customer Steve Trout on June 24, 2024. Note the grounding block and neat wiring in the photographs. Soon after Steve installed his ZapperBox A1 Antenna, Houston was hit by Hurricane Beryl. We reached back to Steve to ask how his external antenna had held up. This is Steve’s account with photos...
============== June 24, 2024, Spring, Texas
I am sharing some pictures of my ZapperBox A1 Antenna installation. The antenna is about 15' off the ground, pointing 180 degrees. All TV channels in the other directions are considered interference to us. So that reflector will help. All the main TV channels in our area are on multiple 2,000' towers due south of us, 30-40 miles, I think. Perhaps closer to 50 miles.
Before mounting the A1 Antenna, I had a monster VHF/UHF antenna mounted on the same pipe and pointed in the same direction for the reasons mentioned above. I designed that antenna system when TV was still mainly analog, so I needed all the Rx signal I could get so the signal could be divided between several TVs. The A1 Antenna line is split inside the attic, and it drives two TVs, although I could have added another split for a third TV but decided not to press my luck. Those 2,000' tower are still a long way from here.
Question: Since we are in hurricane season here in SE Texas, how do you think the antenna will hold up during high winds? The VHF/UHF antenna survived a couple of hurricanes and multiple other storms in the past 25 years. Looks like the A1 Antenna will present a heavier wind loading with the flat back plate, and it felt heavier than the VHF/UHF antenna to me. We are about 75 air miles to the coast (Galveston) and during our last hurricane that came ashore as a category 2, it provided us with 75-80 mph winds for a few hours (naturally in the middle of the night). The only loss that we had was that all our pine fencing was blown over and destroyed.
I hope we do not have any hurricanes to test it out, but we are overdue by a few years.
Steve Trout
============== July 11, 2024, Des Moines, Iowa
Hurricane Beryl hit Houston on July 8, 2024. On July 11 we wrote back to Steve:
Hi Steve. Were you impacted by the recent hurricane? Did the antenna hold up? We were planning to use the photos you provided in a social media post and thought we should check again first.
Best Regards,
ZapperBox Team
============== July 14, 2024, Spring, Texas
Good morning!
We got through the hurricane without any damage, including the A1 Antenna. Thanks for asking!
I attached two pictures that I just took this morning before the sun broke through the early morning clouds. As far as I can tell, the antenna never moved!Â
I do not have any equipment to measure wind speed, but the hurricane's eyewall passed just a few miles west of us. The eyewall was still intact as the storm passed by. The eastern half of a hurricane is the strongest half, especially the northeast and east of the center. Therefore, we were in the strongest section.
Houston's main airport (IAH) is just a few miles east of us, and they reported a wind gust of 83mph, sustained at 65mph. Since we were even closer to the eyewall there is reason to believe that our winds may have been even stronger.
I was really surprised that the antenna was not blown off the roof. Relieved to see that it never moved.
Overall, we were very lucky; we never lost power, and we have not found any damage yet. Our Internet service provider is still off (dropped a few minutes after the start), so we must use the ZapperBox & Antenna to watch any TV. It works great.
The hurricane season just started so August and September are our peak months. Will be happy to see November.
Steve Trout
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