Rick0725 - last question.

[Dennishp]

You've answered my posts under the thread "Pre-amp or not" regarding antenna size, etc....and my particular situation with dish and hi power lines. Before I ordered the Wingard HD7080..I thought I'd better check and make sure my placement wouldn't interfer with the dishes on my roof (learned from experience to always measure twice and cut once). I put a 90" PVC pipe on the mast an set it where I was hoping to mount the mast and antenna, and sure enough...I was right into the dishes...I'd have to raise the mast an additonal 1 1/2 feet to put the antenna beam over the dishes...but I'm now concerned with running a two piece 15 foot "free standing" antenna mast with a 90" antenna on top. It can get pretty windy down here in SW Florida.

So...I am going with your original Antenna suggestion of the HD 7082 w/ HDP 269 and mounting it on a mast that I can tie into my house roof fasica. With this layout I will have to increase my cable run but approx 25 feet and use a female to female connecter to tie the extra 25 feet of RG 6 into the original 100 feet. I'll run the cable on top of my gutter to the new antenna postion.

Sound okay so far?

My question is..will the Wingard HDP 269 preamp and the HD-7082 be enough to compensate for my cable run of 125 feet RG6 outside and an additonal 100+ feet of RG6 cable loops in the house?

Since my cable run is grounded at the cable box outside (thank you Comcast)...I'm assuming I'll only have to run a ground wire from the antenna to a copper rod down the antenna mast to have everything safe and sound....true?

Have I missed anything?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[Tower Guy]

My question is..will the Wingard HDP 269 preamp and the HD-7082 be enough to compensate for my cable run of 125 feet RG6 outside and an additonal 100+ feet of RG6 cable loops in the house?

Thanks in advance for your help

RG6 has 2.8 db loss per 100' at 200 mhz (channel 10) and 5.5 db loss per 100' at 700 mhz (channel 52). Your total loss will be about on channel 10 will be about 3.5 db and 6.9 db on channel 52. The gain of the HDP-269 is about 12 db. The performance on channel 13 and lower would be ideal. The performance on channel 52 would be degraded by about 1 db. I would not worry about 1 db unless you happen to have pixelation on the highest UHF channels.

 

[Dennishp]

My channel frequency assignments are 9 (CBS),15,33,35,41,45.

 

[Dennishp]

I am starting to believe that Antenna Installation is an esoteric art rather than a science. The more I read, the more confused I become...lol

Here's a little more information regarding my area as reference information.

My neighbor (who lives two houses to the East of me on the same side of the street, and I finally had a chance to talk to regarding his new antenna) has a Winegard 7080 on a 20 foot tower with a short run of cable (20-25 feet) from his antenna to the cable box grounding block. He has no preamp on the antenna but is using a Radio Shack line amp (with the adjustment dial to raise db gain from 10-30db as needed). He says he pulls all the Digital stations in with a signal strength in the low to high 90's...except for channel 33 (PBS which is a bit off axis from the other transmission towers which he draws in at the high 70's-low 80's).
The one thing that struck me as odd about his line amp set up is that our RS only sells an adjustable inside amp as a part of a preamp/amp set up ($59.95) Which is what he said he paid for it). I'm thinking my neighbor did not install the Amp on the antenna but is just using the inside portion in his set up.

I submit the following reasoning, assuming all things being equal (that's a pretty big assumption in the area of antennas as I'm beginning to learn). if I purchase the larger Wingard antenna HD-7082, which should clearly out perform his HD-7080...my signals at the cable grounding block should be similar to his signals at the grounding block after factoring in some signal loss due to my longer cable run. My bigger antenna vs. his shorter cable (almost like the sound of that). (To me this seems logical) Yes? No?

Our homes are similar as they have the same cable loops which he is using to feed his TV's and receivers. He added a RS line amp to boost the signals entering his house to feed his TV's and HD receivers.

If I add a pre-amp such as the HDP 269 to my antenna, It should perform as well as or better than his RS adjustable line amp (assuming it's working like it's supposed to in his house). Yes? No?

Is my logic flawed?

At this point in time, I know I'm buying the HD-7082 and just purchased a 30" telescoping tower on which to mount it. I also know that I will replace my current 100 feet of quad shielded low loss RG6 with a straight run 125 feet of good RG6. Put it up, and see how it performs.....
Beyond that, I'm guessing I'll try the RS adjustable pre-amp/ amp set up which I will install as intended by the manufacturer and allow me to see how much a 10 db boost gives me and then increase it a bit at time until I get the best signal strength...if I get over amplification any where below half power, I'll return it and get the Winegard HDP 269 as I'm sure it will perform better than the RS.

That sound sane and reasonable? We have absolutely no antenna installers down here.....all are Dish or Direct TV guys, and no one knows anything about OTA antennas or installing them. Makes you feel like a voice in the wilderness..thank heavens there are internet forums like this.

 

[texasbrit]

Rick, that is a great post!

Let me add a couple of things:
Rick is assuming - and I completely agree - that you start with a visit to www.antennaweb.org
where you can enter your address and get a list of channels you might be able to receive. Antennaweb is not perfect! You may not get all your digital stations listed. Go through the list of stations that antennaweb gives you. If a station has the suffix -DT that's a digital station. If you see non-digital stations without a digital equivalent (for example WFAA) , you need to find the channel allocation for the corresponding digital station (WFAA-DT). You can usually find this by googling WFAA-DT, going to the analog station's web site or by going to the FCC's web site. One warning. Some of the stations have elected to move back to their VHF channel, or to a different UHF channel, after the transition to digital is complete. The FCC web site has a list of these "elections".
When you have completed your list of stations by adding the "missing" ones and correcting the channel numbers for any "elections", you
need to decide if you want to get the analog stations as well as the digitals, between now and the shut-off of analog stations in 1999.
Why might you want the analog channels? If you have TVs in the house with only analog capability and you want them to get OTA channels....
Why do you need to make that decision? Because several of the analog channels maybe on VHF; it's likely that your digital channels will all be on UHF (or maybe hi-band VHF) and antennas for UHF (some of which perform well at hi-band VHF also) are significantly smaller than the VHF/UHF combos you need for distant reception. Life is much easier in general if you don't have to deal with lo-band VHF stations.
So now you have a list of stations you want to receive, with their corresponding ratings from antennaweb (where available). Now you can use Rick's post to help you find the correct antenna.

 

[texasbrit]

One thing to add. Although your particular situation can be completely different from your neighbor, it can be useful to see what other people in your area are doing, and what may be going on with your local stations as regards channel allocations, power levels and so on. If you go to http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 you will find posts arranged by geography (by DMA I think) so you can easily see HD reception information of local interest.