Thread: DishHD and OTA setup help needed

The preamp is more to push the signal down the wire than to boost the incoming signal. So if you can keep your longest run under 75', you shouldn't need it. Yes, antenna preamps use the coax wire for carrying it's supply voltage, a lot like the satellite wiring does.



Radio Shack has everything that you need, but at obscene markups. Lowe's doesn't have everything, but they do have diplexers, splitters, and the tools you'd need for terminating your own cables (get the compression type, not crimp-on type).

I use Summitsource.com for a lot of my gear. A word of warning about the U4000 antenna; if you decide to go with it, you'll have to design your own clamps if you use an antenna mast that's more than 1-1/2" in diameter. I do strongly recommend a factory-built antenna, they're typically much more durable than something you can assemble in the garage.

Yes your relatives can add a digital converter box to the non digital TVs. You can pick them up for less than $40 ea.

Here is my advice.

You are wasting your time with a homemade antenna and anything inside of the house.

Because your body is made up mostly of water, whenever you roam around the room in your house where the antenna is located, you will loose your television signal to multipath issues.

What you need to do, and again, like others has told you - a generic report - with nothing more than a Zip code does nothing to help your situation.

To properly receive UHF signals, your antenna needs to be 10 feet above the main roof and pointed in the proper direction.

The difference in gain between 24 and 34 feet is approximately 5 db.

3 db is a factor which doubles or reduces your signal by 50%, so that is a significant amount of power to loose.

In 100' of good RG 6 wire, you can expect to loose almost 6 db at 700 Mhz - channel 51

That means that if you had a station transmitting on VHF channel 2 and another on channel 51, the signal from the channel 2 would be twice as strong after it came though the wire to the televison then the station that transmitted on channel 51 - even though they both had the same amount of receive power at the antenna.

The purpose of a pre amplifier is to compensate for line loss for the upper frequency's and not to compensate for a crappy antenna or a crappy signal.

If you butt a crappy signal in one end of the wire and amplify it, all that will come out of the other end of the wire will be a stronger crappy signal.

What you want to do is have a good signal and try to keep as much of the signal as possible to deliver to the television tuner.

Since VHF signals are more susceptable to noise - from electrical appliances and storms, you will have more problems now with VHF then what you will with any UHF signal.

Most 2 way splitters has about 3.7 or more db of loss.

A 4 way splitter or larger will have about 7 db or more per a port of loss.

That is because a 3 way or larger splitter is not unilateral. What that means is that you can have one port that might have 3.7 db of loss and the other two would probably have 7 db or more loss.

One television might have a good signal, while all the other televisions in the house would have a crappy signal, and it doesn't matter if the other televisions are connected or not or if the other televisions are turned on or not.

So if you wished to split your signal more then 2 times, you would need to buy 3 - two way splitters and connect them together so that all the signals would have the same amount of loss.

Also Don't forget about some "other" resources when looking for antenna supplies, in many instances taking a look around the neighbourhood, and looking for antenna's that might look a bit in disrepair. ALOT of people get a dish, or even cable, and just abandon their antenna and towers, these in most instances can be gotten for the effort of taking them down, as people just don't want to bother with them. in most cases they are in really great shape, with only a coat of paint for the tower, or some new coax needed.
Most of the "combo" heads, or as I refer to them" flying arrows", work simply awesome for digital reception. Also in most cases they come with the rotor/control, even a good amplifier (usually a channelmaster). With a little good old fasion elbow grease, and politly asking the owner, "if they still use it" you can have a premium antenna and everything to go with it, at the most needing a new outdoor 300 ohm to 75 ohm transformer(5 bucks) , and new coax to get it up and running,.
Even the local news paper, or community internet boards are good sources too. And by "recycling" it saves you some serious bucks and also saves the landfill at the same time.

Here is my TVFool report for those of you that were interested. Any input based on this report is also appreciated.

TV Fool

Bouncy64 i read your post and it made me realize I may have the antenna I need already.
Why haven't i thought of this before????

My mother recently purchased a brand new Antenna that pretty much looks like her old one. She bought it when the HD TV conversion happened. She thought her old one was old and not HD compatible. (she's the one that gave me the antenna rotator)

Going by what I remember about it, the only real difference was the new one came with coax connectors and the old one only had screws that you connected the old "flat" antenna wire to. Going by memory and after looking at some pictures, her old antenna looks a lot like the Channel Master cm3016. I know it can't be that actual antenna because it has to be at leat 15-20 years old. How much difference can there be in the old ones and the new ones? Anyway I just called her and she said it's been sitting on her back porch since she had it changed out. She said there is nothing wrong with it other than a little rust and I can get it whenever i want it.

Am I right in thinking all I need to do is attach a balun transformer to it and it should work?

JB Antennaman - funny you should mention that about the body being made up of water and interfering with the antenna in the house. My wife and I were laughing about that last night. Every time she walked by the tv in a certain spot, the channel would cut out.

You guys have convinced me. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. If the old antenna my mom has works thats great. I put up a wanted add at work for old antennas and towers. I'll see what responses I get. If I don't hear anything in a week or so, I'll go ahead and buy what I need. Can't blame me for trying to save a few bucks especially now. Maybe after I'm done I can convince the wife we don't need our Dish subscription anymore.

Thanks again for all the responses. You guys are great.

Here is the "old" antenna she had. It has no markings but it looks like a Channel Master cm3018. Anyone had any experience with these?

There's also another solution... "move" your service address to Atlanta and call it done. 5 minutes on the online chat is all it takes.

That antenna looks a little beaten-up. The UHF section is 90deg off-axis, and it looks like some of the VHF elements are broken, too. If you can fix the UHF section, that antenna should be useful.