Quote:
Originally Posted by GroundUrMast
You've got it right, the key to reliable reception is primarily, antenna selection and it's location.
A preamp will help when you are faced with a long run of coax, splitter loss and poor tuner noise figure.
Amplifiers do not improve the performance of the antenna.
Some preamps are designed to work well with a mix of weak and moderate strength signals. A few preamps are able to work well in the presence of fairly strong signals. The AP8275 is intended for use where no strong signals are present.
If you installed a higher gain antenna and aimed it at the Toledo stations, I would expect the AP8275 to have trouble. I would expect it to act as an RF mixer, generating sum and difference products of the various signals arriving at the input. The output would be a combination of the original signals plus many interfering signals produced inside the preamp, the by-products of overloading the amplifier.
A high gain antenna (8-bay panel or DXing Yagi) aimed at Fort Wayne equipped with a Winegard HDP-269 or Antennas Direct CPA-19 would be far less inclined to overload if it was turned toward Toledo.
|
I'm only using one splitter to two upstairs tvs.
Initially I thought distributors were used for distributing the signal. I guess if the 8275 was supposed to be used when only a low signal is present it COULD help if I was aiming for distant stations but I guess I'm not close enough/my antenna is not good enough to even pick up a weak signal.
Oh well, I know now. I bought the 8275 because I though it would help with weak signals from other cities, for all I know it does but only at night. The 8275 was also cheaper than the 8700. I guess the worse case scenario is I get all my Toledo stations, which I do so no big deal.