Antenna help/suggestions So. NH

smikolaj

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Sep 8, 2006
69
4
Southern NH
Hi. I am running into a problem trying to get channel 59 which is WMUR-DT. Their regular analog broadcast is on channel 9 which comes in clear as day seeing as I am only 15 miles from their broadcast location - I looked up on the fcc database and it appears that 59 is broadcast from the same location. One thing is that boston channels are in the opposite direction of 9/59 so I am trying to get around the problem of using a rotor by doing the following...

I have a PR-7010 towards boston and I get everything fine. I have a VHF ya-6713 ( channels 7 - 13 ) pointing towards channel 9 and that gets me 9 just fine. I added a channel master 4221 going into a join tenna coupler that allows channel 59 to pass though and aim it the same direction as the ya-6713 and am only able to get 20% signal strength at best. I also moved this antenna to the top of my mast which is at the highest point of my house. My setup also includes the ya-6713 and the 4221 going into the jointenna, from there I am going into a channel master 0538 combiner to combine the output of the join tenna with the 7010 pointing towards boston. From there I go to a pre-amp and then inside. Not being an RF engineer I am not sure if this setup is good or bad.

I know that 59 is high UHF and I need a way better line of sight than I do with channel 9, but I figured if it is close enough I should be pulling in better than 20%? Should I try to not run the join tenna output through the pre-amp? Is that what the dc-pass is for on the 0538 coupler - to let the power go through that for the pre-amp?

Anyone else around the Manchester, NH area running into this. If I can't pick it up this way I am not sure if a rotor setup would buy me anything.

Am I putting too much throught and effort into this?

Funny what I will go through to try to get that one extra channel...

Thanks for reading,
Steve
 
Hi. I am running into a problem trying to get channel 59 which is WMUR-DT. Their regular analog broadcast is on channel 9 which comes in clear as day seeing as I am only 15 miles from their broadcast location - I looked up on the fcc database and it appears that 59 is broadcast from the same location. One thing is that boston channels are in the opposite direction of 9/59 so I am trying to get around the problem of using a rotor by doing the following...

I have a PR-7010 towards boston and I get everything fine. I have a VHF ya-6713 ( channels 7 - 13 ) pointing towards channel 9 and that gets me 9 just fine. I added a channel master 4221 going into a join tenna coupler that allows channel 59 to pass though and aim it the same direction as the ya-6713 and am only able to get 20% signal strength at best. I also moved this antenna to the top of my mast which is at the highest point of my house. My setup also includes the ya-6713 and the 4221 going into the jointenna, from there I am going into a channel master 0538 combiner to combine the output of the join tenna with the 7010 pointing towards boston. From there I go to a pre-amp and then inside. Not being an RF engineer I am not sure if this setup is good or bad.

I know that 59 is high UHF and I need a way better line of sight than I do with channel 9, but I figured if it is close enough I should be pulling in better than 20%? Should I try to not run the join tenna output through the pre-amp? Is that what the dc-pass is for on the 0538 coupler - to let the power go through that for the pre-amp?

Anyone else around the Manchester, NH area running into this. If I can't pick it up this way I am not sure if a rotor setup would buy me anything.

Am I putting too much throught and effort into this?

Funny what I will go through to try to get that one extra channel...

Thanks for reading,
Steve


Your setup sounds well engineered.

The first thing that I would do is run the feedline directly from the 4221 that is aimed at 59 and run it directly to the TV set. If that works perfectly, there's a problem with the combiner setup. If it doesn't, a larger antenna for 59 or a preamp on the 59 coax before the Jointenna will be needed. Once that is working properly, you can put the combiner system back together.