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Old 9-Feb-2010, 11:20 PM   #2
mtownsend
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 632
Hello and welcome!

It looks like you're up against at least two issues:

1) The CS2 is really a UHF only antenna despite what their marketing brochure might say. KCTS (ch 9), KSTW (ch 11), and KCPQ (ch 13) are all in high-VHF and are not being picked up well by the CS2.

2) The transmitters on West Tiger Mountain are pretty close and strong. They might be strong enough to cause overload on your current amp. If so, this can create distortion (corruption) that might be making things worse rather than better.



The first things I would recommend is to try running without the pre-amp and see how things look. You should physically disconnect the pre-amp rather than just turning off the power supply because an un-powered pre-amp does NOT simply allow the signal to pass-through.

If things seem any better without the pre-amp, then there's a good chance that there was too much signal for the pre-amp to handle.



To address the high-VHF channel issue, you can either add a high VHF to your current one, giving you a 2-antenna setup, OR your can replace your current UHF only antenna with a single VHF/UHF combo antenna.



If you want to add a VHF antenna to your existing one, I suggest something like a Winegard YA-1713 or Antennacraft Y10-7-13. These antennas cover channels 7-13. Join the VHF antenna with your UHF antenna through a UVSJ combiner/splitter for optimum signal preservation. The UVSJ is a "diplexor" and will do a much better job of combining different-band antennas than a regular 2-way splitter would.



If you want to replace the CS2 with a combo antenna, I recommend something like a Winegard HD7696P or Antennacraft HBU-44.



Either of these antenna setups should be pointed at a compass heading of around 295 degrees. The channels from Tiger Mountain are off-aim, but they are so close and so strong, that they should come in anyway.

If aimed this way, it might be safe to include your pre-amp in the setup because the strong signals would be coming in through the weak side of the antenna. You should probably try it with and without the amp to make sure the amp is not making things worse. I do expect the amp to improve things slightly if the antenna is aimed away from Tiger Mountain.
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