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Old 4-Oct-2010, 6:36 AM   #5
mtownsend
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 632
I would be worried that even the HDP-269 might get overloaded in this situation. It is a lower gain amp and therefore has more headroom before going into overload than most other amps. However, you are quite close to the Philly antenna farm and you have several channels that are pushing the upper limit of what amps can handle.

FYI, amps always boost the whole spectrum of RF energy going into them. All RF energy going into them (including VHF, UHF, FM and anything in between) gets boosted and sent back out. If the output power exceeds the maximum drive capacity of the electronics, then you have an overload condition.

You have about a dozen TV channels that are hitting you with around -30 dBm, which is pretty strong, and I'm guessing that you'll have another dozen or so FM transmitters nearby that are also pushing this much power. When you add it all up, it's quite a lot of power for any amp to handle.



Even a highly directional antenna like the 91XG has some side and rear lobes in its antenna pattern. If you are relying on the fact that the antenna is pointed away from the Philly transmitters, you will get far less gain out of the antenna, but some of the side lobes might still pick up enough energy to become a problem.

Depending on which way you point the antenna, you may still get the amp overloaded in certain directions. You have a few different transmitter groups of interest, like Allentown (at 342º), Hammonton (at 167º), and Trenton/NYC (at 59º/60º). It's hard to say exactly how much Philly signal energy you will get when pointed in these other directions. In my opinion, it's a bit of a gamble to use any kind of amp at all, but there's no way to be certain until you try it.



I'd still go back to the basic question of how badly you need the non-Philly channels? You can have tons of channels with hardly any effort (simple, low cost antenna, no rotator, no amp setup). By adding time, money, and complexity, you can fetch a few more channels out of Allentown and New Jersey (New York still seems like an unlikely stretch). Some of the extra programming might just be duplication of what you already get out of Philly.



If you really wanted to put in a lot of effort to get the New York stations, it will be extremely challenging. There's more than a 60 dB power difference between the near and far stations. You will probably also be up against a lot of co-channel and adjacent channel interference. Supposing that you could overcome these tough technical challenges, most of the programming you get would be a duplication of what you already have. How important is it to have multiple instances of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, MyN, PBS, and ION network channels?

I'm sorry to say that I think the only realistic way to get both Philly and NY channels is to move closer to NY and further away from Philly.
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