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Winegard uses a 'standard dipole antenna' as the reference to compare the performance of their antennas against. An antenna specified with 10 dBd of gain will produce that much more signal than the reference dipole antenna.
A high front to back ratio means that a signal arriving from the rear of the antenna will not be received well.
For example, if you have two stations on the same channel, one to the east and the other to the west, an antenna with a high front to back ratio will be able to receive the station it's pointed at while receiving little interference from the station behind the antenna.
On the other hand, if you had desirable signals coming from opposite directions, an antenna with low front to back ratio would be able to receive signals from the front and rear without need of a rotator.
Sometimes you'll see the unit dBd which is the same as saying 'decibels referenced to a dipole'. Some vendors use an isotropic antenna as the reference standard and specify this using "dBi". A standard dipole has 2.15 dB gain compared to an isotropic antenna. So to compare the gain specifications of different vendors, you may need to add 2.15 to the dBd value or subtract 2.15 from the dBi value to get an 'apples to apples' comparison.
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If the well is dry and you don't see rain on the horizon, you'll need to dig the hole deeper. (If the antenna can't get the job done, an amp won't fix it.)
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Last edited by GroundUrMast; 24-Dec-2011 at 6:58 AM.
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