Philip Partain
Vice President Sales
Dow Electronics
Tampa Fla.

I’ve been around this industry for 33 years. I’ve seen and tested a lot of antennas. That’s afforded me a lot of practical experience with off-air antennas. I’ve conducted 50-60 seminars on off-air antennas over the past 5 years. And I’ve never seen an antenna like this antenna.

We’ve got our own antenna testing farm out back with over a dozen antennas in it. They’re mounted 25 to 30 feet high to maximize their performance. Any height less than that, we get ghosting and multi-path from the test. We know we need that 25 foot height to get the signal. The signals that we get during these teats are naturally the most powerful channels, ABC, NBC, and CBS. And naturally the low and high range signals would come in fairly will, but we would still get some ghosting. Even using the WS-5646 or Channel Master 5646 Super V, we got ghosting.

We put the Square shooter up on a 15 feet pole in the middle of our parking lot in an area that we knew from past experience we would get ghosting, because Bob Howell told me this unit had the ability to eliminate some ghosting, even at this lower height. We put it up, attached an amplifier, hooked it up to a TV set and the picture was absolutely phenomenal.

We tested with the Channel Master Batwing, the square shooter outperformed it. It outperformed 4 bay bow ties. I was amazed.

We tuned in on some Sarasota channels. Channel 40 in Sarasota is about 40 miles from were we’re located in Tampa and the Square Shooter brought it in. I’ve tested other antennas on Sarasota stations the size of your WS-0038 (Winegard special) and would just barely receive channel 40. Most people would say that it was not possible to pick up Channel 40 from Tampa with a traditional element antenna, even with one that large, let alone a small 15 inch square antenna, but I saw it with my own eyes. Not only did it pick up the signal, but it eliminated all ghosting. I was flabbergasted.

Another truly unique benefit of this antenna is its back-to-front ratio performance. It was smart of Winegard to incorporate in the design of the Square Shooter its ability to reject ghosting, particularly because that feature allows it to pick up ghost-free bounced signals. From our location, almost all of the transmit towers are due south, as is channel 40 in Sarasota. We pointed this antenna south and still picked up Channel 10 here in Tampa exceptionally well which was behind the Square Shooter to the northeast and Channel 32 which was behind us to the northwest. That ability to bring in that bounced signal, eliminating the ghosting, and deliver a clear signal, is exceptional.

We checked it from several other locations and it performed the same way in each of those places. One place was exceptionally close to the towers and it did a terrific job. This was a good test because we have checked so many other antennas in the past and had their results to compare with the Square Shooter.

Price is not a concern for me with the Square Shooter, because it does the job it’s supposed to do. It solves problems no other antenna can solve. We will be able to go into metropolitan areas where we now have a real ghosting problem, particularly for the reception of HDTV signals, were we still have concerns. The Square Shooter antenna will be a “Drop-dead” antenna for that market place and also for some analog channels that we have had some problems with in some metropolitan areas where we are not going to see local satellite availability.

The antenna offers extremely versatile mounting options and can be mounted practically anywhere. One of the best and fastest mounting options is over a satellite dish using the DS-1111 allowing for a 360 degree rotation to aim it at the transmitting towers and not need any more room than that already used for a 20 inch satellite dish.

It’s the antenna winner we’re looking for.

It will sell itself once distributors see what it’s capable of doing.

We’re very much looking forward to it.