More off air TV antenna questions

Feb 22, 2009 3 Replies
T

I bought and installed a new Winegard 7697P antenna with a rotator. I want to install a pre-amp but I'm not sure which one. I will be keeping the noise at or below 3dB but I'm not sure if I should get the strongest pre-amp I can afford or can it be too strong? I have a couple very strong stations, one that will actually come in perfect with a bent paper clip for an indoor antenna but I'm also trying to reach some fringe stations that even though the DTV converter found them, they don't come in very well. They fade in and out, often giving the "no signal" message or sometimes the "audio only" message, and sometimes I can't tune them in at all.



I am using the TVfool.com website to rotate the antenna to the proper direction.



Thanks again, Tony


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S

With that strong station around, you will get huge crossmodulation with high amplification. So keep amplification as low as you can use, and use a high quality adjustable amplifier.

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R

Or rotate the antenna to put the paper-clip-strength station onto a null. With the rotator, one could probably do that by trial and error. Or, the OP could try modeling the array with 4nec2.

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Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
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T

Thanks, I think I should have bought an antenna that was more directional. At first I thought this would be good so I don't have to rotate the antenna for each and every station, but for picking out those stations 75 to 100 miles away I probably didn't pick the best antenna. If things don't work adding a pre-amp I just may buy a highly directional antenna and add the new/old one 5' down below the rotator and couple them. First I'll try a low power low noise pre-amp and see what happens.

Thanks again, Tony

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