Stuck in the middle

[rtknowle]

I live in Sheboygan Wisconsin (53083) and most of the signals come from the north (Green Bay) and from the south (milwaukee). I want to get an outdoor antenna and don't know which one, or type to get. When I entered my location, most of the compass readings where 193 and 348, and I am about 40 to 45 miles from each direction. I currently have a bunny ears with a built in amplifier and recieve a couple of digital channels. (abc and fox occasionally, and almost always channel 24 (WCGV) but that channel stinks) I get nbc channel 26 pretty good, but it is not digital and very snowy. I have two large digital tvs that I would lke to hook up. Looked at the reviews, is an omin directional my best bet?
Thanks for the input.

[tigerbangs]

Forget about an omni-directional antenna: you are too far from the transmitters to have much hope of getting a good signal. You really need a deep-fringe antenna with a preamplifier and a rotator on the roof to get what you are looking for clearly. You can probably use a Channel Master Crossfire 3671 or a Winegard HD8200P on the roof with a Chanel Master Titan 7777 preamplifier or a Winegard AP-8275 preamplifier. Use the Channel Master 9521a automatic rotator, which will let you easily change between Milwaukee and Green Bay via a remote control. I will give you some links to help you pick the equipment and how to install it all when you get it. Put a high-quality 1 GHz of better splitter at the output of the preamplifier inside the house to split the signal between the two TV sets, and you'll enjoy perfect reception!

http://www.channelmaster.com/
http://www.winegard.com/
http://www.pctinternational.com/channel ... lation.pdf

[rtknowle]

Thank you for the advice. I will try it out and let you know how it goes.
Thanks again!

[Richard Taylor]

I have had success in mixing 2 outdoor antennas (either UHF or VHF/UHF combo antennas with a 2-way splitter used "backwards" as a signal combiner or mixer. Then you can run the combined signal thru a pre-amp if necessary, assuming you do not have a local strong transmitter near you, which you don't seem to need to worry about. If your transmitter sites are mostly in opposite directions from each other, this technique may alleviate the need to use an antenna rotor. The mixing technique will not work with analogue signals, because of multi-path and ghosting, but may work well for digital signals. Try to use antennas with good front-to-back ratios (good directionality) if possible.

You couild also run two separate coax leads to your TV and then switch them using an A/B switch, but this may cause confusion when the set scans for available channels. You can always manually add the other channels from the Menu functions. Be sure to check Antenna Web for any stations that will be switching their UHF digital channel to another channel after Feb.17. I call this the "double switch, " and it's not widely publicised yet. Any station whose original digital channel lies above channel 51 must change to a lower UHF or "high-band" VHF channel for digital broadcasts after Feb. 17. Channels above 51 will be auctioned byh the FCC. If a stations "legacy" channel was, say 17, and their original DTV assignment was, say, 55, they might move their DTV back to 17 after Feb. 17. Some original high-band (7-13) VHF channels might move their DTV transmitter back to their original legacy VHF after the 17th. Since VHF propogates better than UHF, they can use less power for the same coverage than if they were UHF.

[perdignus]

Hi rtknowle,

I also live in Sheboygan and am curious about what you ended up getting.

Your insight might help me decide what to do too.

Thanks,
Patrick.