OTA, gang or stack .. what is needed..

not to mention having two aim-able ants on one unit seems alot easier than having to put up multiple ants
 
looking at about 63 bucks for the ant, and ill have to go to the hardware store for a 4 ft pipe to mount it on the mast that i have, or eles ill have to mount it like 12 feet high. ide rather it be about 15 foot.
 
hi everyone, ive been away for a good bit. My last time toying with my OTA ant just left me in aa O screw it condition... but im back to ask another question. So anyway... ok with my OTA antenna so far i got a 4 bay 4 bow tie high gain.. so it says, but ok i got that running to a AMPed distro box going to two tvs. My picture jumps and digitizes in the living room but in the bed room, it skips much much less. Whats strange is the bed room tv is on a Longer cable and even a cheaper cable. the living room tv is on a short like 5 ft rg6. Ive replaced all the cables with rg6 cables aswell except the one going to the bed room. I believe that cable is rg58, but like i said that one works way better, Anyway, i wanted to ask if a Masthead Amp might help this ? Ive read that a masthead amp can really help things IF your getting a good signal already. It seems i am getting a good signal but the living room tv skips so bad we cant even watch it. Ive tried bypassing the distro box and even using a splitter to lower the ohms but both seemed about the same. The mast head amp is about the only thing i havent tried yet. Im planning on putting the Antenna up about 6-7 feet higher this summer aswell its currently about 15 ft right now. Another thing is ..do you think its just the Tvs Tuner ? Its a Phillips tv but ive hooked up a DTV converter box i had laying around and the picture did seem to not jump as much but the quality was way lower cause its not a HD converter. The picture didnt jump as much but .. it did still jump. Any ideas here would be great ! thanks guys.
 
A pre-amp is typically what offers the most benefit unless you have four or more outlets. The idea is to get the signal boosted before any downlead loss. RG6 probably has less loss as well as providing a better conduit for the power to a pre-amp than RG59. RG58 features 50ohm impedance so it isn't suitable for TV signals where everything should be 75ohm for maximum signal transfer.

As was commented after you posted your TVFool report, you're in a terrible situation. PBS is almost certainly NOT in your future as channels that are near or below -100dB are pretty much off the table.

There must be some pretty serious hills between you and most of the towers. If you can't clear the hills, there's not much any antenna can do.

Be very careful going forward as there is an increasing likelihood that all of us are going to be seeing more VHF stations due to the FCC repack that will reportedly begin this Spring or Summer.

Finally, you have to be somewhat careful about how much antenna you point at WJAC as they're apparently broadcasting on the same frequency from two different locations (at 95 and 124 degrees from you) and no good can come from that.
 
WJAC - NBC, Metv, Comet and Grit , is what im aimed at now but get a jumpy reception, fox i think is behind a ridge but fox if i turn over that way, comes in good. thats why ide like to do a stack to get fox and cw and a gang to up the gain to try and keep the channels a lil more stable
!!!!!!!! up 10ft hire should do the trick !!!!!!!¡
 
0:1:8432511

sadly prob the 6-7 is the most i can do. im worried about the 6 ft let alone 10, i live in a moble home and 6 ft is goin to have way less stability as it is =/ ill prob have to tether it at just moving it 6 ft more.
 
Your biggest problem is elevation of the antenna.

As the antenna sways, it moves in and out of peaks and valleys in the signal diffraction pattern especially on 1 and 2 edge signals, so you need to use guy wires to stabilize it.

There used to be an excellent site called HDTVPrimer.com, but it looks like it has gone dark, great info on antennas and ganging them - anybody know if it is still around by another name?

At 65 ft three of the channels around you will be LOS (line of sight) and immeasurable improve reception on the two weaker ones.

I suggest you get a telescoping antenna mast and guy it for stability and get that antenna at least35 ft up in the air.

Better yet would be a tower, but they are quite expensive - if you could get the antenna up about 65ft you'd have 3 stations LOS (line-of-sight).
 
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