Dual OTA Antennas

[ralfyguy]

Got a new Winegard Sensar III Antenna and I get a bunch of DT locals in my area which is really difficult to get here. But I have to rotate it in order to get them all. My question is, if I would get a second one and have both pointed in different directions and couple them together with a splitter and hook it up to the diplexer, would that work?
Well one of the winegards requires 60ma, means 120ma for both of them. I've got one so far and a second one getting here soon. My first one didn't come with the power source, so I attached it to the VOOM diplexer in order to power the antenna amp. So I wonder if both of them hooked to the receiver would fry something up in there...

 

[red hazard]

Got a new Winegard Sensar III Antenna and I get a bunch of DT locals in my area which is really difficult to get here. But I have to rotate it in order to get them all. My question is, if I would get a second one and have both pointed in different directions and couple them together with a splitter and hook it up to the diplexer, would that work?
Well one of the winegards requires 60ma, means 120ma for both of them. I've got one so far and a second one getting here soon. My first one didn't come with the power source, so I attached it to the VOOM diplexer in order to power the antenna amp. So I wonder if both of them hooked to the receiver would fry something up in there...

If you want to try it, make sure you can return the second antenna if it don't work out. You are going to have to run each antenna with separate power supplies. At the output of the power supplies toward the TV or satellite receiver, you can combine the two antenna coax cables with a two to one splitter. You won't have to worry about the current with this set up because there is no DC current on the output of the amplifier toward the TV. Of course that means two separate coax runs to the outside antennas from each power supply.

 

[ralfyguy]

So the dc outout from the receiver diplexer can't power both antenna's?

 

[red hazard]

So the dc outout from the receiver diplexer can't power both antenna's?

Since your particular Sensar model is parasitically powered from the receiver, my previous answer does not apply to your situation.

I seriously doubt that merely paralleling the DC current to two different antennas would work. The DC output of the receiver is already powering the LNBs plus the an OTA antenna; an additional load that the designer did not engineer for but obviously works. Basic ohms law would indicate that the resistance load of two antennas would be halved and accordingly, the current load doubled. I doubt it would work. It would really stress the DC power supply in the receiver of this particular application.

 

[ralfyguy]

Red Hazard, that's what I thought too, but there's no dish/lnb's hooked up to it anymore. Instead it powers 2 amplified antennas. Wouldn't it be kinda the same load as with an lnb's/ota antenna load?

 

[Ilya]

In general, combining two antennas may actually cause problems to otherwise good signals: two good signals received out of phase may partially cancel each other. If I were you, I would simply get an A-B switch from Radio Shack.

By the way, welcome to the forum!