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Old 9-Aug-2015, 1:40 AM   #12
rabbit73
Retired A/V Tech
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: S.E. VA
Posts: 2,747
Quote:
My current thinking is to use two entirely separate antennas, equip each one with a USB tuner right on the back of the antenna, run their USB's into a Raspberry Pi running MythTV backend, and then run that into the house using Ether (POE to power everything). That way I get live TV everywhere.
Quote:
So, I'd like to fix the fading, and ideally add ION to my list.
Quote:
The question, then, becomes whether I should use a Yagi for the Buffalo direction. I've asked a couple of places, but no straight answers yet.
Thanks for telling us a little more about your goals; it helps us answer.

I like your idea of two antennas, but I don't think it's a good idea to put the tuners outside in the weather. Maybe this idea by GroundUrMast would work for you if you want to involve computers. I prefer to watch TV on a TV set myself; computers are too fickle and user-unfriendly for me:
An Alternative to Rotators and Antenna Combiners
http://forum.tvfool.com/showthread.php?t=820

ION isn't going to be easy. The curvature of the earth starts to interfere with TV signals at about 70 miles. If you look at the terrain profile by clicking on its callsign in your TVFOOL report, you will see a black arc at the bottom of the profile; that's the earth. And you will also see that only a small portion of the ERP is sent in your direction:



and if you look at the coverage map, you will see that the signal barely makes it to your location:



Antennas Direct makes a popular yagi, the 91XG. Yagis don't cover as wide a frequency range as collinear arrays, like the DB4E, DB8E, CM4221, and CM4228 which are more commonly called 4-bay and 8-bay bowtie antennas. The 91XG gain curve is low at low end of the UHF band, and peaks at the high end. Since you want gain for channel 23, you can see that it doesn't perform as well at that frequency: 524 to 530 MHz, as it does at the high end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_...on_frequencies
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_...y/91XG-TDS.pdf

Collinear arrays have a flatter gain VS frequency curve. This is the tech sheet for the DB8E:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_files/attachmentlibrary/Technical%20Data%20PDF's/DB8E-TDS.pdf
and the DB4E:
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_...y/DB4E-TDS.pdf

Notice also the tradeoff between gain and beamwidth. The higher gain antenna has a narrower beamwidth, which makes it more critical to aim.
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Last edited by rabbit73; 9-Aug-2015 at 11:56 AM.
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