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I live in the mountains of Western Massachusetts near the NY border just under 40 miles from (east of) the transmission towers. I have mountains in front of me (in relation to the Albany, NY tower) and the sides of me and directly in back of me. I have been working on OTA setup and am posting what I have done and asking a question at the end. I also posted this in the local AVS Forum for the Albany, NY HDTV DMA, but I figure there are smart people here who don't go there, so I came here also. Here is my Rabbit Ears info: RabbitEars.Info. I guess they don't update TV Fool anymore?

I kind of let my OTA setup go dark a couple years ago when I had to rebuild a wall on the side of my house that my OTA cable came through and I hadn't gotten around to running another cable from the antenna into the house. As luck would have it, my DISH Network satellite dish sits about 10 feet from my OTA antenna setup and I had 4 RG-6 lines going from the dish into the house through an eave and snaked down to my basement right near where my OTA dead Channel Master 7777 preamp (now replaced with an updated nearly identical model) and amplified splitter route my OTA out to the rooms of my house. So now my Sat dish is down to one wire (soon to be two when I install a second Hopper 3) so I repurposed one of the Sat lines to OTA. I got it working but was only able to get WRGB Channel 6, which is by far my strongest and most reliable OTA station. I haven't been able to play with it again until this week. I decided to take a small 24" Vizio TV that someone recently gave me over to my sister's house in Troy, NY where they have a small outdoor OTA Yagi antenna installed. I scanned 56 channels there pretty much everything available because they have no mountains in their way. My idea was to have the channels scanned in so I could use it as a reference to see what I might be able to pick up and it worked pretty well. For my OTA setup I have a Winegard HD8200U and an Antennas Direct XG91 stacked on the same 10 foot mast on a tripod on top of my roof at the peak, which is about 25 off the ground. That would put the top of my mast at 35 feet off the ground. My house sits at 1350 FT above sea level. In the past I have gotten most of the Albany channels reasonably watchable although dropouts and blockiness did occur except for Channel 6 (RF 6 from the Albany Tower [AT]) and CW 45 (that I got from the Jiminy Peak translator 1.6 miles to my southwest) which were both rock solid.

I decided to try to connect each of my antennas in their current configurations to see what I would get on the Vizio. My HD8200U has always been aimed just about directly at the AT and my XG91 has been pointed directly east of my house and at a slight angle up into Brodie Mountain where I was getting the UHF signals to bounce back to me. At the time I was also picking up CW 45 off the back of the same antenna on RF 19 off the WRGB Jiminy Peak translator. That translator is now RF 5. So I started with VHF and connected the HD8200U directly to my Vizio that I brought up on the roof with me. I cycled through the VHF stations 1 at a time and was only able to receive Channel 6 loud and proud. I decided to tune to Channel 13 and see if I could pick it up by rotating the antenna one way or the other. I tried about 10 to 15 degrees in each direction with no luck. So I decided to just keep rotating to see if it would make any difference and believe it or not, when I got to the direction pointing to Jiminy Peak, about 100 degrees left of the direction of AT I got locked steady signal on Channel 13! It locked on and stayed on steady with no dropouts. So I tried 23 and I got locked signal on it! Then I tried 51 and sure enough I got a locked steady signal on that!! Did I mention I love VHF? Well maybe not. So I figure I'll tune to Channel 6 and see if it works there too. No joy. Had to turn all the way back to face AT to get 6 back. Oh well onto UHF. So I decided to take my HD8200U down off the mast and carry it all the way to the other side of my roof about 45 feet away to avoid interference I had the XG91 at the top of the mast with the HD8200U about 5 feet below that on the mast. So I hook up the XG91 and tuned to Channel 10 (RF 24) and nothing, not a whiff of signal. I tried 17 (RF 25) and same thing, not a whiff. Tried aiming directly at AT, no joy. So I put up my 6 foot step ladder to check out the balun. Something seems really loose. So I take down the antenna (not easy because of rusted nuts) and discover that the coax cable was barely screwed onto the F connector and the balun was hanging out the back of its box. So I take that all apart and fix it up and put it back on the mast. I'm still tuned to Channel 10 but really getting nothing. So I start rotating slowly back and forth in the direction I know I have gotten UHF signal in the past and finally I got a faint quick hit of signal. Yes! The antenna still works. I tried Channel 17 too but wasn't getting any bites. I decided to go get another section of mast and lift the antenna up another 5 feet for a total of 15 feet off the roof, which I really didn't want to do because at that height I would have to guy it. It wasn't windy today so I decided to try it. So I'm up there at 15 feet and I seem to be getting signal but nothing really watchable. I tried that for a while, but really didn't get it to improve. So I decided to take the mast down and take the 5 foot section back off and connect the XG91 to it and try walking the roof with it to see if I could find a watchable UHF signal. So I connect it back up with the short mast sitting directly on the roof and the antenna at about 5 feet off the ground ready to start walking when I notice I have a solid steady signal of channel 10. It was pretty good. I decided to see what would happen if I took the slight elevation off the antenna and just have it level and that locked it up nicely. So I tried Channel 17 and I got a watchable picture on 17 too. I decided to cut my losses and just put the antennas back on the mast and see what I get.

So I decided to try putting the HD8200U at the top of the mast so that I could leave the XG91 down at the 5 foot level to try to avoid multipath from the antennas. I did a quick check and all VHF channels (6, 13, 23, and 51 all came in perfect at the new height, but again 6 came only in the direction of the AT and the others came in only in the direction of Jiminy Peak. So I decided to go in the direction of Jiminy Peak hoping that I would also get CW 45 off the translator, which carries Channel 6 on 45.3 and try another solution later to try for Channel 6. I hooked up my replacement Channel Master Antenna Preamp. Cut equal lengths of RG6 coax for each run from each antenna to the preamp and pressed on new terminals. I tidied up the wiring and connected the existing house feed coax from the previous satellite wire and began the arduous task of dragging all my tools and ladders back off the roof. I took my Vizio TV down to the basement where my CM preamp plugs in and where my splitter farm is and hooked everything up down there (except the splitter) and did a scan for channels. I got Channel10 with its subchannels, Channel 13 with its subchannels, Channel 17 with its subchannels, Channel 23 with its subchannels, Channel 45 with its subchannels twice!! (assuming RF 5 off the Jiminy Peak translator and RF 22 from AT), Channel 51 with its subchannels, and Channel55 with its subchannels!! Seemingly quite a success. Now I just have to figure out a way to get Channel 6. Would it be possible to get a third antenna up on my mast, maybe one of those small RCA Yagi's that might pick up Channel 6 and put a combiner in to see if it works? 6 has always been my strongest station. Or is it not worth pursuing?