Help With Antenna Selection

[Gray1]

Looking to buy a new TV antenna.
Here is my TVfool data

http://members.localnet.com/~pcguy/allen.png

I am in a deep fringe area. I have some trees. My goal is to get St. Louis TV and FM radio stations. They are in a northerly direction from me. Namely KDNL, KPLR, KETC, KTVI, and another channel that is not even on the list KSDK. This will also be used for FM Radio. All the channels are about 50 miles from me. I have an old Radio Shack antenna and booster that is at least 15 years old. I do use a rotator for the southern stations.

Any Advise would be appreciated.

Gray1

 

[boba]

Looking to buy a new TV antenna.
Here is my TVfool data

http://members.localnet.com/~pcguy/allen.png

I am in a deep fringe area. I have some trees. My goal is to get St. Louis TV and FM radio stations. They are in a northerly direction from me. Namely KDNL, KPLR, KETC, KTVI, and another channel that is not even on the list KSDK. This will also be used for FM Radio. All the channels are about 50 miles from me. I have an old Radio Shack antenna and booster that is at least 15 years old. I do use a rotator for the southern stations.

Any Advise would be appreciated.

Gray1

The 4 listed broadcasters all use UHF channels so a Channel Master 8 bay antenna is the old stand by. You complicate it by wanting FM radio stations they are broadcast on frequencies between VHF channels 6 & 7 so that requires a different antenna. For FM you will need either a VHF/UHF antenna or an antenna designed for FM reception. I would go with a CM4228 UHF antenna for the TV stations and split it for FM and see what it can receive for FM.

What is wrong with your 15 year old Radio Shack antenna it will still receive the new digital broadcasts? The most common problems is corrosion at connection points causes signal loss or weather over time has removed some elements. Corrosion can be cleaned missing elements means antenna replacement. Adding a new mast mounted preamplifier may restore the signal lost by time without replacing the antenna.

 

[DRCars]

Does not look good for getting those St. Louis stations. They are 2 Edge (not line of sight - LOS) reception. Add to that the trees you mentioned and I don't see it happening. There might be a chance if you had a tower that made it up to LOS (however far that is), found a spot that dodged trees, and had the largest antenna(s) available (like one or two 8 bay CM 4228HD ganged together). Getting to LOS might be the killer.

That said, you could try a CM 4228HD or an Antennas Direct 91XG as high as you could get it (reasonably). The 91XG is UHF only. The CM 4228HD is designated as UHF only but actually performs rather well on High VHF channels (7-13) also.

Like it says at the bottom of the TV Fool report page for the "Grey" channels:

These channels are very weak and will most likely require extreme measures to try and pick them up

If you were out in the flats with no trees and LOS it might be a different story.

DRCars

 

[Gray1]

I realize I am in a hard reception area. I have to have my FM radio. My radio shack antenna does very well with FM. I can get some of the TV stations. However some pixelate so bad they are not watchable at times. I called the local electronics place. They install the CM4228-HD in my area.
However they say it is a hit and miss. boba makes a good point. I could replace the amplifier with a new one.

Thanks Guys

 

[Jim5506]

The first thing you need to do is get that antenna up about 45-65 ft, that will greatly increase the NM dB numbers.

dB numbers below -10 are not realistically expected to be reliably receivable with any antenna.

Run your TVFool report at 45 and 65 ft AGL and look at the numbers for KDNL, my estimate goes from your -24 at 20 ft to +0.1 at 45 ft. and +13.2 at 65 ft.