TV fool maps:
5’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda4c077038c4
10’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda84053cb1aa
15’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda850ae5acdd
20’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda772e2088fb
25’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda84231a200e
29’
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1dda3d9f8a4be8
I moved into my house 5 months ago. When I moved in, I put up a 10’ pole behind the house and put up antennas to get the local Baltimore channels. When I did my initial channel scan, I was quite surprised by how many DC stations I got.
What I have:
I have a Y5-7-13 five feet off the ground.
I have a Winegard HD-4400 ten feet off the ground.
They are both aimed at DC (228 magnetic).
They both have 300 to 75 baluns. Short pieces of coax go from the baluns to a UVSJ. A short piece of coax goes from the UVSJ into a Winegard HDP269 preamplifier. Then about 15’ of coax goes to a flat coax segment that is going in the basement door. A short piece of coax goes from the flat segment to the power inserter for the preamplifier.
Then the signal gets split at a two way splitter. One split goes to my computer room. The other goes to the living room. At both the computer room and the living room, a flat coax is used to get the signal up from the basement into the main floor next to a vent in the floor. In the living room the signal goes straight into the TV. In the computer room the signal is split with a PCT amplified 8 port splitter into 2 dual tuner PCI cards and a HDHR, with the remaining 3 outputs terminated.
The living room TV and the PCI tuner cards are quite good at getting signals. The HDHR does not seem as sensitive as the PCI tuner cards.
I reliably get perfectly clearly:
WMAR (Baltimore ABC) RF38
WBAL (Baltimore NBC) RF11
WJZ (Baltimore CBS) RF13
WUTB (Baltimore MyN) RF41
I reliably get with occasional pixilation on:
WNUV (Baltimore CW) RF40
WBFF (Baltimore Fox) RF46
WMPB (Baltimore PBS) RF29
WMPT (Annapolis PBS) RF42 [WMPB and WMPT show the same thing, so I only need one or the other.]
WJLA (DC ABC) RF7
WUSA (DC CBS) RF9
WGAL (A NBC from the north) RF8
WTTG (DC Fox) RF36
WRC (DC NBC) RF48
WFDC (Univision from the direction of DC) RF15
I can get:
WPXW (DC Ion) RF34
WDCA (DC MyN) RF35
But both get pixilated often and the signal quality of them seems weather related.
Sometimes I can get:
WVNC RF24
But it tends to be at night and it is very weather related.
Occasionally I see:
WBOC RF21
It is from the eastern shore and I do not have an antenna pointed in that direction at all, so when I get it, it is neat.
I have seen, but do not reliably or predictably get:
WDCW (DC CW) RF50
WETA (DC PBS) RF27
WHUT (another DC PBS) RF33
I would like to reliably/predictably/with minimal pixilation get the DC CW (WDCW), the DC ION (WPXW), The DC PBS with the kids sub channel (WETA), and the DC MyN (WDCA). I would like to have them reliable enough to DVR them.
The Baltimore CW moves shows my wife wants to watch for sports games, but the DC CW does not do that. TV fool predicts WDCW should be easy to get, but it is my least reliable channel high up in the TV fool report.
Ion has Qubo, which is good for kids, but there is no Baltimore ION, so I would like to get the DC one.
WETA out of DC has a sub channel aimed at Children, which would be good to have for kids.
The DC MyN has a different pre-primetime lineup with shows I like better than some of the Baltimore options in the 6 to 8 time block.
From looking at TV fool and Rabbit Ear’s reports for my house, I wonder if WPXW and WDCA (real 34 and 35) are suffering CO-channel interference from stations in Philly.
***
Whatever I did for VHF so far seems to work well, so I don’t plan to change it. When I setup the antenna, I wanted 11 and 13. Getting 7, 8, and 9 was a nice bonus, with 8 coming from the complete wrong direction and other side of the house.
All my “problem” channels are UHF. I included TV fool reports from where my antennas are now all the way up to 29 feet.
The peak of my roof is 17 feet high. As long as I stay within 12’ of that, the HOA can’t say anything, so the highest I can go with a UHF antenna is 29’.
So my question is what antenna should I use and how high does it need to be to get WDCW, WPXW, WETA and WDCA.
I will probably need a directional high gain antenna to do that, so I could see keeping the HD4400 to get the spread of the Baltimore stations from 219 magnetic to 246 magnetic, and using an A/B switch as needed. (I use WMC for DVR, so it is easy to have different tuners use different antennas)
Thank you for all your suggestions and input.