Antenna Recommendation

RatLabGuy said:
woops, edited the previous post so it does now.
w/o an amp I get nothing. part of the problem is that b/c of the way the coax is in my house, there is no short access to the TV. I had to run the line from the corner of the roof (antenna is outside) through the attic about 30', then all the way down to the basement where it joins the line that goes up and over to the living room. I had a distribution-box setup from the cable input I bypassed. So it's a good 60-75'.
The amp is just inside the attic. I don't recall now but I believe w/ the VHF antenna alone + amp it's a little worse than the 2 together.
I've also tried one of the (generic) Leaf-style flat sheet ones that goes inside on the wall... got very little at all, with it's supplied amp.

Looking back over the Amazon ad this weekend I realized that the range on the VHF may just not be enough, so I ordered yet another VHF/UHF antenna, this time a big one rated for a longer distance and actually shaped like you'd expect for VHF. And I'm going to see what kind of meters and amps I might borrow from work to really test the signal coming in.
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shawn said:
Get a yagi. The RCA one I posted works fine.
So long as it's good quality coax, your run length is fine. If you buy new, get quad-shielded RG-6.
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RatLabGuy said:
It has separate inputs for UHF and VHF antennas.

The one I just ordered is basically a yagi style. More logical for VHF.
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So here's my update:

I ordered this antenna
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C1YL16Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and removed both of the pervious ones, and flipped the RCA amp back to single-input combined VHF-UHF.
VIOLA, get everything now. Get channels from DC, Baltimore, and PA, including the VHF ones I was having trouble with.

I'm sure it was just a matter that the antennas I had were not structured for picking up the relatively weak longer wavelengths, hence this yagi-style fits the bill.
 
RatLabGuy said:
relatively weak longer wavelengths
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You mean the antenna wasn't tuned for the frequencies you were trying to receive. :flipoff2:

Longer wavelengths are more efficient from a transmission perspective. Takes less power to generate a signal that travels much further than if the frequency were higher.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
Any updates or new suggestions?

Heres my map. Not to bad, but everything is spread out.

View attachment 228471
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I think you're in good shape, based on that map. If you just had a halfway decent omni-directional antenna and pointed it due south, you'd get CBS/NBC/FOX/ABC at least. Those are all on UHF (channel 14 or higher for the kids out there), so you'd be okay with a UHF-only antenna. You'd be better off with an antenna with about a 180* reception range and split the difference by pointing it SW or WSW. You've got a few strong signals out of the NW (PBS, an independent) that would probably be nice to have. One like the one that Fabrik8 posted back at the beginning of the thread might work.
 
shawn said:
I think you're in good shape, based on that map. If you just had a halfway decent omni-directional antenna and pointed it due south, you'd get CBS/NBC/FOX/ABC at least. Those are all on UHF (channel 14 or higher for the kids out there), so you'd be okay with a UHF-only antenna. You'd be better off with an antenna with about a 180* reception range and split the difference by pointing it SW or WSW. You've got a few strong signals out of the NW (PBS, an independent) that would probably be nice to have. One like the one that Fabrik8 posted back at the beginning of the thread might work.
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That's what my interpretations were also.

Is there any issue going with "too good" of an antenna? Im thinking crosstalk/interference from other channels.

I guess you would just not amplify or turn down the amp if so?
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
That's what my interpretations were also.

Is there any issue going with "too good" of an antenna? Im thinking crosstalk/interference from other channels.

I guess you would just not amplify or turn down the amp if so?
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To answer the crosstalk issue, I don't see any co-channel issues on the chart you posted.

As for the "too good" question, it depends. The antennas direct page has the gain diagrams for the clearstream 2v antenna. It shows that it's at least unity gain (1:1) across a 120* wide band. That's pretty good. The VHF reception isn't quite as wide. It's unity gain across about 90*, then drops to -5dB once you get out around 120*. You could probably pick that back up with an amp. The only 4V diagrams I can find are tiny, but suggest that it's much more directional than the 2V version. It's got a hot spot right in the middle, but the reception pattern isn't nearly as wide. That suggests to me that - while the 4V version is rated for more distance - it's sweet spot is much narrower. Given that your PBS station is 130* off from the networks and all the signals are relatively strong, I think you want to bias in favor of the antenna with the widest possible sweet spot, rather than one that is really strong but very directional.

To think of it another way, you want something that has good peripheral vision, rather than a telescope which can look at one thing in high detail at the exclusion of everything else.


2V gain diagrams:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_files/attachmentlibrary/Technical Data PDF's/C2+VHF-TDS.pdf

4V gain diagrams:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_files/attachmentlibrary/pdf/C4-sellsheet.pdf
 
Fabrik8 said:
Holy shit, when was the last time you've seen polar gain plots for something like a consumer TV antenna? That's stellar.
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It's damned hard to find. Most of the stuff out there just says "60 mile range!" or something equally uninformative. There's another place out there that was selling their own antennas. I'll have to see if I can find them again. I don't think they had the gain diagrams posted, but they would say that a particular antenna was +5dB over a 90* wide field, or something along those lines.
 
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