spotty reception

[keegs]

Hi,

My zip is 07874. I'm about 50 miles from the primary transmitter in the area. (the Empire State building)

I've been using an antenna to receive local TV broadcasts forever. I'm too cheap to pay for cable. Since the digital conversion however, TV reception seems to have gotten unreliable. My guess is that weather (overcast/rain/snow conditions) and the distance to the signal source are the main factors but internal wiring may also contribute.

Is there anything I can do to improve reception?

My house is on a hill with little or no obstructions (trees/buildings etc.) I have a 12' UHF/VHF Radio Shack antenna on a mast attached to the gable of the roof which is about 30'-35' off the ground. Inside the attic where the antenna coax cable enters the house I have an RF amplifier. South of the amp I have a 2x splitter. One line off the splitter goes to an upstairs bedroom and a second line goes to a TV room on the ground floor. The upstairs bedroom receives somewhat better reception than the TV room and I attribute that to the greater distance (about a 50'-60' cable) to the TV room. I'm pretty sure the internal cabling I ran is 75 ohm (coax) cable.

I recently purchased a Yagi UHF directional antenna that advertised a 60 mile range. Will installing this antenna make a big difference in my reception?

Thank you ...keegs.

[tigerbangs]

In order to make a good recommendation, I really need your street address or coordinates: you can PM them to me if you are more comfortable that way. Your generic TVFool.com report looks pretty grim, but I'll bet that your actual address is somewhat better. Before I make an recommendations to you, I need to see the report on your actual address

[tigerbangs]

Thank you for your PM. The NYC TV stations are available at your address, but they are weak, and I suspect that the reason is that you have a combination of an inadequate antenna and a poor distribution system. The old Radio Shack antennas are especially poor on UHF, and also deficient on channel 13, so it does not surprise me that you are having reception issues. You are a prime candidate for my deep-fringe prescription: An AntennasCraft Y-10-7-13 VHF high-band yagi plus an AntennasDirect XG-91 UHF antenna mounted on the same mast and separated by 4', which the XG-91 at the top of the mast. Use a Channel Master Titan 7777 preamplifier, which has separate VHF and UHF inputs on it to combine the signals from the two antennas. You will need to select the 'separate' position on the input switch when you have the preamplifier open while installing it.

I strongly suggest that you use a rotator in your location, as you also have a number of New Jersey and Philadelphia stations available to you if you can turn the antenna to see them. The Channel Master 9521a is a good and inexpensive rotator that seems to work well, but there is also the Hy-Gain AR-40 available, which is a very heavy-duty rotator.

The Channel Master preamplifier has enough gain that you should be able to power 4 TV sets with cable lengths in excess of 100' should you choose to do so. If your coaxial cable is more than 5 years old, I suggest that you replace it with new RG-6u cable, and use a high-quality, low-loss 1 gHz of better splitter to divide the signal.

http://www.channelmaster.com
http://www.antennasdirect.com
http://www.antennacraft.net
http://manuals.solidsignal.com/AntInstallGuide.pdf

[keegs]

Thank you Tigerbangs....

We have a particular problem receiving channel 13 (PBS) in bad weather and according to our DVico receiver, the channel 13 signal is typically weaker than most other stations under most circumstances. I'm curious about the shortcomings of the RadioShack antenna in this regard.

Have a happy new year ..and thanks again.

[tigerbangs]

The Radio Shack VU-190 has only about 5 dB gain at channel 13 frequencies: the antenna AntennaCraft Yagi has over 10 dB gain at those same frequencies. That 5 dB difference means that the Y-10-7-13 has over 3 TIMES the pulling power of the Radio shack antenna in the same situation. Likewise the UHF section of the VU-190 has about 8 dB gain at channel 30, wheras the XG-91 has about 13.5 dB gain: the difference is great enough to make the difference between seeing a clear, undistorted picture and seeing nothing at all.
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/comparing.html

[keegs]

Thank you Tigerbang.