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Antenna Positioning Tools
The Station Manager's Antenna Positioning tab has tools for finding the best place and direction for a DAB antenna before a full scan. Open the Station Manager from the plugin's settings or at http://<player address>:3456.
The tools need the dongle. A station that is playing is stopped when one of them starts, and the player shows it as stopped.
Shows how much signal the antenna delivers across DAB Band III, from 174 to 240 MHz, channel by channel. One pass takes a couple of seconds.
Use it to see at a glance whether the antenna picks anything up, and to compare positions: move the antenna, scan again, and watch the channels rise or fall.
It shows power, not whether a station can be decoded. A strong reading on a channel means something is transmitting there; whether the plugin can play it is what the next tool and a scan tell.
Tries to synchronise to the DAB channels you select and reports, channel by channel as each finishes, whether an ensemble was found and how many services it carries.
- A channel with a signal takes 10 to 15 seconds; a channel without one is given up after 2 to 3 seconds.
- Results appear as they come; there is no need to wait for the whole list.
Use it to check the channels you expect at your location while adjusting the antenna, without waiting for a full scan each time.
Measures a DAB channel's signal against the noise beside it at a row of gain settings and shows which gain gives the best ratio. With automatic gain switched on (the default) the plugin makes this choice itself at every tuning; the tool is for those who set the gain by hand, and for comparing antenna positions by a number.
- Start with the spectrum scan to see whether the antenna delivers anything in the band you want.
- Validate the DAB channels that carry the ensembles of your area.
- Move or turn the antenna and repeat, until the channels you want are found reliably.
- Then run the full scan (see Scanning).
For what to look for in an antenna and where to put it, see Antennas.