Antenna suggestions

fierohink · 4-Nov-2011, 7:27 PM

I currently run a homemade bowtie like THIS inside my living room and do okay. I'm getting everything in yellow with minimal pixelation. Sometimes I can get the Balto channels if I reaim.

I would like to upgrade to an outdoor antenna in the attic. I have a 100 year old house with a steep pitched roof and would rather not go up there. I know there will be signal loss putting an antenna in the attic, but I can't imagine it is much worse than my current setup. Plus using an off the shelf unit will allow mounting to a rotor and getting all my channels. Currently the TV is on the second floor so if I attic mount the antenna I would have ~20' of coax.

Is a preamp neccesary at my distance and cable run?

Is attic mounting that horrible?

What is the signal reception comparison of these 3 winegard antennas:

winegard hd7694p

winegard hd7697p

winegard hd7698p

I am about 50 miles from my furthest broadcast tower. Here is my tvfool:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...4bbaf01ccd86c3

As I said I am currently using a homemade db4 style antenna and would like to upgrade to one of these antennas with a rotor in the attic so I don't have to readjust my unslightly homebrew.

fierohink · 4-Nov-2011, 7:50 PM

I currently use a homemade db4 like THIS inside the living room. It does okay for the DC stations but is very sensitive to direction. I currently have it sitting on a chair which is a bit unsightly. I would like to upgrade to a traditional antenna and mount it in the attic so I can use a rotor and pick up Baltimore stations as well.

Here is my tvfool:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...4bbaf01ccd86c3

My house is on top of a hill and has no near obstacles. The roof is conventional shingles over old style construction rafters so my attic is open and large enough to accomodate a larger antenna. I need to be able to point to 126-145* for DC and 84-92* for Balto.

I have been looking at the winegard antennas, either the hd7694, hd7697, or hd7698. I am about 50 miles from Balto. With being in the attic will I be forced to the larger 7698 or will one of the smaller antennas work? Also the run from the antenna to my TV will only be about 20', do I need a pre-amp to cover that distnace?

GroundUrMast · 8-Nov-2011, 2:29 AM

Until you try in your attic, you won't know if your attic is 'good', 'bad' or "horrible". If the larger HD7698P will fit, use it. The few dB of additional gain provided by an antenna is much more valuable than gain offered by any amplifier. Don't be in a hurry to buy an amplifier, at UHF frequencies, 20 feet of coax will only have about 1 dB of loss, any amplifier will add more noise than that. Only if your tuner has a high (bad) noise figure would a quality low noise amplifier help.

Look at the "dB gain over reference dipole" to compare the difference in performance of the antennas you are considering. Winegard is one of the last antenna manufacturers to publish this data... (sad that the others are choosing to hide the information.)
http://www.winegard.com/kbase/upload/HD7694P.pdf
http://www.winegard.com/kbase/upload/HD7697P.pdf
http://www.winegard.com/kbase/upload/HD7698P.pdf