Pittsburgh reception help
 

Hello,
I just installed a tilt tower and I'm looking for a recommendation on an antenna & rotor, maybe need an amplifier?
My primary interest is trying to pick up Pittsburgh channels, KDKA, WPXI ,WTAE,WPGH, secondary would be rotating towards Erie.
I have a smaller fixed antenna to get Youngtown stations.
I got KDKA, WTAE in analog before,I'm ignorant about digital signal strength.
My tower height is 35' , the area has 30' trees about 100 yards to the South of the tower, the coax run will be around 50'.
Also how high of an antenna mast can be used?
Here's my signal analysis for the tower elevation of 35':

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...3e475f1a220ca1

Thank you,

JEFF

Pittsburgh is going to be a real problem for you in digital, as the signals are all in the negative noise-margin category. You will need to take extraordinary measures if you want to see the Pittsburgh and/or the Cleveland stations. Complicating the issue is that the Youngstown stations are quite strong in your area, making overloading a high-gain preamplifier a likely event. You will need a deepest-fringe UHF antenna such as an AntennasDirect 91XG or an AntennasDirect DB-8 or a Channel Master 4228HD. You should not need a preamplifier if you are using only 50' of RG-6u coax cable and are running only one TV set from the antenna, however, converting to RG-11 cable will yield a small improvement in available signal. There are no guarantees of success using such antennas with the local terrain and the distance that you are from the transmitters.

Thank you for the help, yeh I heard Pittsburgh is tuff with the terrain.
Also what height (max for high winds) of antenna mast and rotor would you recomend?

Thanks again,
Jeff

You will need as much altitude as you can possibly manage: it doesn't look great at 35', it won't look a lot better with an additional 15': I would guess that you'll need at least 100' to make a real improvement.

Oh wow thats a little out of my league, well I'll check into the antennas and see what happens I guess.
Thanks again for the help it's much appreciated!!!

Jeff

You can experiment with different antenna height and location using the Interactive TV Maps tool. Adjust the antenna height, looking for a NM figure of -5 dB or better. (An antenna with 15 dB of gain would theoretically add to the -5 dB NM, yielding a net NM of +10... enough to hope for fairly reliable viewing.)

That still leaves you with the problem of adjacent and co-channel interference and as TB pointed out, strong locals.

If this is a system specifically aimed at DX reception, intermittent reception may be the norm for the very weak or interfered signals. Wade is a commercial grade antenna source, Blonder Tongue is another. The Wade Parabolic is an extreme example of high gain antenna... If you are determined to see weak signals like WTAE... you will need a big tower and a big antenna.

Tv Antennas and Reception
 

I recommend a Winegard HD7698P antenna with a Winegard HDP269 preamp mounted on a CM 9521A rotor. Here are places to buy Tv antennas and etc. , http://www.solidsignal.com , http://www.amazon.com , http://www.starkelectronic.com , http://www.3starinc.com

Tv Antennas and Reception
 

Here is how to aim Tv antennas , http://kyes.com/antenna/pointing/pointing.html

That's the simplest system to try, but will be marginal for the Erie, PA stations. The AP8700 preamp may help slightly, but could be overloaded when the antenna is aimed at Youngstown.

The second option is a 91 XG plus a VHF antenna Y10-7-13 with an AP2870 preamp.

Thanks everyone for the info, I looked at the antennas and think I'll try the
91-XG on a rotor and go from there.
I'll update the post when I get it hooked up.

Thanks again,
Jeff