New deep fringe prescription?

[resago]

1)Since you cant get the dehli antennas, what is your revised deep fringe prescription?

2)I live in the 35476 area code, what would you recommend if I want to try and pull in ION tv to my south?

3) Have you seen or had a chance to try the GaAs LOW NOISE preamps? from http://www.researchcomms.com/hdtv.html ?
if so, what is your opinion on them?

thanks,
D

[tigerbangs]

Since the Delhi antennas are no longer available, I have been using the Winegard YA-1713 or AntennaCraft Y-10-7-13 VHF high-band yagis for VHF reception. There are very few low-band VHF stations in the US, none in your area, and the need has greatly diminished for large, broadband VHF antennas like the big Delhi VIP-306SR and VIP-307SRs.

As for UHF antennas, I have always liked the AntennasDirect XG-91 yagi, however, the AntennaCraft G-1483 16-bay Hoverman design antenna MAY be just a bit better. That antenna is available only at SummitSource.com, and costs $150.00 delivered, and assembly is not an easy task, but it appears to be a real winner, based on what I have been told by reliable third-party sources. I haven't had any deep-fringe situations lately that would have benefitted from an antenna as powerful as the G-1483. Your area may not call for quite as extreme an antenna as that one. As for the ION station, it lies 80 miles to your south, and has a fairly weak signal: I would never promise that station to you on any regular basis with any antenna/tower combination that you are likely to install. The AntennaCraft Y-10-7-13 plus a G-1483 mounted on top of a tower with a rotator is probably the best VHF-high-band plus UHF combination around these days, and most likely to succeed, but at -25.9dB noise margin, it's a skip-catch, on it's best days.

As for your Research Communications preamp, my info is only anecdotal: several people who have ordered that preamp from Great Britain were pleased with it's performance, but it requires that you buy a 120 volt transformer to use it in the US, and two of them, of which I'm aware, blew up, and the owners had a VERY difficult time getting any satisfaction from the company in Great Britain. The owners claimed that the preamps were not at all resistant to power surges such as lightning storms, and the company didn't want to warranty them. On the company's website, they cite a 2.5% failure rate on their products: a figure that is unacceptably high in the world of modern electronics. If replacing a defective unit is not of much concern to you, the preamp is promising, but a preamp is still NOT a replacement for enough antenna metal on the roof. I use preamps to insure adequate signal when using long coaxial cables and/or when splitting to multiple TV sets. Preamps can also be useful when dealing with older generation digital TV tuners, whose sensitivity may not equal the best of the current crop of digital TV tuners, but if you are using a single TV set and less than 75' of RG-6u coaxial cable, a preamplifier is likely to hurt more than it will help.

[resago]

thanks for the response.
pertaining to the preamp, looking at the specs, it looks like I could use any domestic dc wall unit of correct voltage and hook it to the injector. the blowing up part however doesnt seem as easy to remedy.

are there any gain maps for that huge antenna you mentioned, perhaps comparing it to the xg91?

also, could I get your opinion on the 1-wire rotators like this one : http://www.tvantenna.com/products/tvrec ... TR100.html

sorry for all the Q's

[tigerbangs]

Stay away from the Eagle-Aspen rotator and the other coax-powered rotators: they don't have enough current available to them to move a large antenna array. An additional 3-wire cable run into the house isn't hard to do, and you'll be much happier with the results. I'm sorry that I don't have any other gain charts from AntennaCraft G-1483