[Falconers]

I mounted the antennas this weekend, and the reception is great and has surpassed my expectations. I ended up picking up 93 channels and mounted it on my exterior wall facing about 220 degrees. I received all of the local Sacramento area network channels with a solid signal and also many of the San Francisco Bay area channels that are about 100 miles away with a solid signal, as well.

The weakest signal UHF I reliably get is from KBCW and VHF signal is KNTV from the San Francisco area, but some of the signals that are supposed to be a little stronger don't come in reliably enough for me to want to have in my programming. I could probably climb back up on the ladder and fine-tune the aim to improve a couple more stations, but I'm more than satisfied with the number and quality of the signals I receive. I am not using a pre-amp, but did some testing with an RCA TVPRAMP1R and found it made the signals stronger but less reliable (cutting in with the pre-am and out versus completely normal and stable without it). It made a marginal improvement with the UHF, but the issue I have is that when the power is out for some reason; the signal is horrible.

I also confirmed that reception, even to the distant San Francisco stations like KRON-TV, worked well both in clear weather yesterday and heavy rains this morning.

Reception was the same using the 4 tuner Tivo Roamio base model compared to my Panasonic TV digital tuner, and I highly recommend it to people who are used to DVRs or video on demand. It does a great job tying my Netflix and Hulu Plus in with my local channels and shows with the integrated search.

The only snafu I ran into was the wiring in the existing wiring in my wall to the outlet I tried to reuse that was previously for a Dish install. The signal was terrible, but worked great when I ran a direct wire. I spent some time in the attic pulling new wire, which overall resulted in a shorter run. It's about 70 feet total, a little longer than I though it would end up being. I mounted the diplexer to combine the UHF/VHF signals that came with the CS5 antenna in the included box below the overhang.

In case it matters to anyone, here is a picture of the mounted antennas on the exterior wall. The antennas are separated by 3 feet from each other. Hopefully I didn't mess things up too much and that this post is helpful to someone in a similar situation.

I appreciate all the great advice!