Aim Your TV Antenna at the Broadcast Tower with AR

You point a directional antenna at the broadcast towers that carry the stations you want, which for most homes cluster in one or two compass directions. You need each tower's bearing from your location and its distance. TowerLock computes both on your device from the bundled FCC transmitter dataset and shows them in AR, so you physically see which way to aim.

Yes. TowerLock ships the full US FCC list of full-power and LPTV transmitters inside the app and shows the ones near you in an AR camera view and on a map, with call sign, channels, distance and compass bearing. Because the dataset is on-device, it works with no signal at all.

An iPhone cannot see radio signals, but it knows your location and true heading, and TV towers do not move. TowerLock uses that to draw a bearing line through the wall in AR, pointing exactly where the tower stands. For a roof or attic antenna that is precisely what you need — the aim, not the wall.

TowerLock does. The entire US transmitter database is bundled in the app, and all distance and bearing math runs on the device, so attics, basements, rooftops and airplane mode all work. Apps that fetch tower data from a server stop working exactly where you need them — up a ladder with no signal.

Phone compasses drift near metal and magnets — roof flashing, HVAC ducts, speaker magnets — and an uncalibrated magnetometer can be off by 90 degrees or more. TowerLock asks for a quick figure-8 calibration and then displays a confidence badge; when confidence drops, it tells you to recalibrate instead of silently showing a wrong heading.

No iPhone app can read the RF signal your antenna receives — iOS has no access to TV tuner hardware. TowerLock is explicit about this: it shows a predicted strength ranking based on each tower's transmitter power, distance and bearing, which is enough to guide the sweep. The final check is always your TV's own channel scan.

Look up which towers broadcast your local networks and aim at their common bearing; in most metro areas the major stations transmit from one antenna farm. TowerLock lists nearby towers with their channels and bearings and shows a channel report for the direction you lock, so you can confirm the local stations you care about are covered.

As a rough guide, indoor antennas manage about 20–40 miles and good roof-mounted directional antennas 60–80 miles, depending on transmitter power and terrain. Distance to each tower is half the answer, which is why TowerLock shows mileage per tower alongside the bearing — you can immediately see which stations are realistic for your setup.

Aiming matters less for omnidirectional models, but tower data still matters: you want to know whether the stations you care about are within range at all, and where signal is coming from before you buy or mount anything. TowerLock's tower list, distances and channel report answer that in a minute.

It is an app that overlays broadcast-tower positions on your live camera view using augmented reality, so instead of reading compass numbers you look through the phone and see markers where the towers actually are. TowerLock adds a stable 3D bearing line and a warmer/colder sweep readout on top, turning aiming into a guided loop.

Different stations broadcast from different towers, at different power levels, on different bands — so one aim rarely captures everything. Usually the missing channels come from a tower in another direction or farther away. TowerLock shows every nearby tower's bearing, distance and channels, so you can see exactly which stations share the direction you have aimed at.

The bundled transmitter dataset covers US broadcast towers (full-power and LPTV), so tower finding is US-only today. The compass and AR tooling function anywhere, but without local tower data they have nothing to point at outside the US.